Big dumb companies and government agencies pay the price. Layers and layers of business people in between the actual product, nobody really sure what's going o

Big dumb companies and government agencies pay the price. Layers and layers of business people in between the actual product, nobody really sure what's going on... many of them are on 'cost plus' programs so they are incented to drive up cost. I worked for (then) Spar aerospace, making the Space Shuttle robot arm, paid for mostly by NASA and Canadian gov. We paid through the teeth for everything. And then collected 10% on top. It's a perverse system. That said, it keeps a lot of people employed. Oracle spends much more $ on sales than they do R&D, about 1/2 of their operation costs are 'sales' - meaning, that guy sitting there telling you about how great Oracle products are? 1/2 of your purchase price goes towards paying his salary. 'Business people' and 'sales people' are important components of the process, but when there is massive institutional gestation around these projects, it gets unwieldy very quickly. AWS is a move in the right direction and should help drive efficiencies in a lot of places.