8 ms·

> they are fickle and extremely price sensitive Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. There are numerous people who are price sensitive,

> they are fickle and extremely price sensitive Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. There are numerous people who are price sensitive, the amateurs who are running a test app and complaining that digital ocean is cheaper, then move to the weirdest hoster they could find because that's only $2 a month. These are NOT AWS customers.

iamacynic 10y ago
> Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. you're out of your mind. customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. DESPERATELY. their entire business is being held hostage by amazon. jeff bezos has them by the balls and is squeezing harder and harder by the day. they have hired consultants to do the analysis, they have hired operations VPs to get them out, but they are failing. they are failing, and shoveling even more money to AWS every week, or their business goes dark. they are doing this because one side of their business (doing stuff) is outpacing their intelligence on the other side (paying for infrastructure to do stuff). this is the genius of amazon. this is why they are successful. amazon can arbitrage this opportunity better than anyone else currently. how do i know? i compete with amazon and talk to customers on a weekly basis. they are desperate. they woke up one day and are are now sending their entire profit margin to jeff bezos. every single CFO is thinking about it. how panicked are they? you could cut their bill in half and they still wouldn't do it. they're scared, like a deer in the headlights. they don't know what to do. what if they make a wrong decision? ohhhhh my goddddddddd but... let's do nothing and keep our jobs. that's the reality. meanwhile, s3 can go down for half a day, and amazon doesn't even really have to acknowledge it. becuase what are the customers going to do? MOVE? LOL! you might as well ask them to build a time machine. that is real. people live in that reality. sometimes against their will. people care about costs, and try hard, and all of those nice things, but they will soon be losers because jeff bezos is just BETTER at business than they are. jeff bezos is literally being paid by the people he is about to put out of business at the application level, and they're happy to pay him to do it. it's amazing. it truly is. here's the problem: more people know how to click a button on console.aws.amazon.com than to migrate and operate an entire site. people simply do not have the skills. they just don't. they don't know how the internet actually works, but they're operating a business on the internet. they're dumb. amazon capitalized on that, good for them. maybe the era where needing to actually knowing how the internet works is over. i don't know.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  If they're spending $1M/week, what do they expect to spend on their own? If you're too dumb to manage costs on AWS, the answer is "we have no clue".
  - iamacynic 10y ago
    a competitor that charges literally 75% less. except they won't do it, because they are SCARED out of their MINDS.
    - ximeng 10y ago
      Scared by what?
      - iamacynic 10y ago
        change.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Charging less... but for what service? ;) AWS is providing a service, not a price number.
- 013a 10y ago
  I agree. This is definitely the impression I've gotten from people I've talked to. In an ideal world, how would they solve this? Is it to move back to self-hosted infrastructure? Isn't that the same problem; they're just hostage to their own employees and capex instead of Amazon?
  - tgjsrkghruksd 10y ago
    Am I being a hopeless romantic to imagine that barons of days yore used to actually think owning the capital and employing the labor with which they went about their business made them powerful? Who is holding who hostage? Not everyone is an SV technoweenie too young to remember when the dot-com crash was a thing.
013a 10y ago
I have to agree with your other responders. Cloud consumers are, fundamentally, price sensitive. The only ones who might not be are venture-backed startups with deep pockets. Individual consumers are price sensitive, as you say. That's one of the reasons why Lightsail exists; its easier to understand why you're being charged what you are. Large customers are also highly price sensitive. They negotiate huge contracts that last for years and save them 35% or more on their end bill. We don't think of them as sensitive because they move slow, but their size essentially allows them to tell Amazon "give us this price or we go to Google." All the big cloud providers play ball with them.
- user5994461 10y ago
  I am thinking about big companies actually. Not VC startups. Big companies have huge money flows and some are truly terrible at managing expenses.

iamacynic 10y ago

> Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. you're out of your mind. customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. DESPERATELY. their entire business is being held hostage by amazon. jeff bezos has them by the balls and is squeezing harder and harder by the day. they have hired consultants to do the analysis, they have hired operations VPs to get them out, but they are failing. they are failing, and shoveling even more money to AWS every week, or their business goes dark. they are doing this because one side of their business (doing stuff) is outpacing their intelligence on the other side (paying for infrastructure to do stuff). this is the genius of amazon. this is why they are successful. amazon can arbitrage this opportunity better than anyone else currently. how do i know? i compete with amazon and talk to customers on a weekly basis. they are desperate. they woke up one day and are are now sending their entire profit margin to jeff bezos. every single CFO is thinking about it. how panicked are they? you could cut their bill in half and they still wouldn't do it. they're scared, like a deer in the headlights. they don't know what to do. what if they make a wrong decision? ohhhhh my goddddddddd but... let's do nothing and keep our jobs. that's the reality. meanwhile, s3 can go down for half a day, and amazon doesn't even really have to acknowledge it. becuase what are the customers going to do? MOVE? LOL! you might as well ask them to build a time machine. that is real. people live in that reality. sometimes against their will. people care about costs, and try hard, and all of those nice things, but they will soon be losers because jeff bezos is just BETTER at business than they are. jeff bezos is literally being paid by the people he is about to put out of business at the application level, and they're happy to pay him to do it. it's amazing. it truly is. here's the problem: more people know how to click a button on console.aws.amazon.com than to migrate and operate an entire site. people simply do not have the skills. they just don't. they don't know how the internet actually works, but they're operating a business on the internet. they're dumb. amazon capitalized on that, good for them. maybe the era where needing to actually knowing how the internet works is over. i don't know.

Spooky23 10y ago
If they're spending $1M/week, what do they expect to spend on their own? If you're too dumb to manage costs on AWS, the answer is "we have no clue".
- iamacynic 10y ago
  a competitor that charges literally 75% less. except they won't do it, because they are SCARED out of their MINDS.
  - ximeng 10y ago
    Scared by what?
    - iamacynic 10y ago
      change.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Charging less... but for what service? ;) AWS is providing a service, not a price number.
013a 10y ago
I agree. This is definitely the impression I've gotten from people I've talked to. In an ideal world, how would they solve this? Is it to move back to self-hosted infrastructure? Isn't that the same problem; they're just hostage to their own employees and capex instead of Amazon?
- tgjsrkghruksd 10y ago
  Am I being a hopeless romantic to imagine that barons of days yore used to actually think owning the capital and employing the labor with which they went about their business made them powerful? Who is holding who hostage? Not everyone is an SV technoweenie too young to remember when the dot-com crash was a thing.

013a 10y ago

I have to agree with your other responders. Cloud consumers are, fundamentally, price sensitive. The only ones who might not be are venture-backed startups with deep pockets. Individual consumers are price sensitive, as you say. That's one of the reasons why Lightsail exists; its easier to understand why you're being charged what you are. Large customers are also highly price sensitive. They negotiate huge contracts that last for years and save them 35% or more on their end bill. We don't think of them as sensitive because they move slow, but their size essentially allows them to tell Amazon "give us this price or we go to Google." All the big cloud providers play ball with them.

user5994461 10y ago
I am thinking about big companies actually. Not VC startups. Big companies have huge money flows and some are truly terrible at managing expenses.