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Since we're guesstimating numbers a lot, it would be interesting to also guesstimate the human resources costs required to run the infrastructure: X electrical

Since we're guesstimating numbers a lot, it would be interesting to also guesstimate the human resources costs required to run the infrastructure: X electrical engineers, Y cooling engineers, Z SREs, W infrastructure devops ppls, etc. Using the cloud you don't need X,Y,Z and presumably will need less of W. Assuming a 100+k/year salary, that's like 200+k/year total cost of employment. If X+Y+Z-ΔW ~= 1000, then the cloud provides a 200M savings on that front. The real number is probably 2x 3x higher, but I'm not going to bother going back and updating the guesstimates.

exelius 9y ago
Right; but it doesn't change the fact that any company capable of operating technical infrastructure at scale (aka any company with compute/storage needs above a half-dozen long rows of racks at a datacenter) can do it for about 60% of what it would cost on AWS. AWS is still a huge boon to startups from a cash flow perspective - it's like leasing equipment rather than buying it, except you're also leasing a very small fraction of all the folks you need to build/operate the equipment. It's also very cheap compared to trying to build and run the infrastructure yourself at small scale. And don't kid yourself -- you still need SREs in AWS. They're working on different issues, but AWS introduces as many issues in an SRE's scope as it removes.
p0rkbelly 9y ago
You are also thinking about this in a perfect vacuum. Global scale presents an entirely different --non-technical-- challenge. Take for example, Dropbox stated they are moving off AWS -- except in Europe (and other non-US areas I'm sure). Having boots on the ground abroad, operating 24/7, dedicated to the mission of the company where they have not even visited ... near impossible. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/09/making-european-infrastructure-available-to-our-customers/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/09/making-european-i... Why? Hiring people around the globe is hard who are going to remove that HDD 24/7 is pretty hard. Hiring lawyers to understand foreign law is hard. Keeping your company focused abroad and building a culture abroad is very hard. How long does it take for a company to expand to India on their own? In AWS, you just change your CloudFormation template to another region.

exelius 9y ago

Right; but it doesn't change the fact that any company capable of operating technical infrastructure at scale (aka any company with compute/storage needs above a half-dozen long rows of racks at a datacenter) can do it for about 60% of what it would cost on AWS. AWS is still a huge boon to startups from a cash flow perspective - it's like leasing equipment rather than buying it, except you're also leasing a very small fraction of all the folks you need to build/operate the equipment. It's also very cheap compared to trying to build and run the infrastructure yourself at small scale. And don't kid yourself -- you still need SREs in AWS. They're working on different issues, but AWS introduces as many issues in an SRE's scope as it removes.

p0rkbelly 9y ago

You are also thinking about this in a perfect vacuum. Global scale presents an entirely different --non-technical-- challenge. Take for example, Dropbox stated they are moving off AWS -- except in Europe (and other non-US areas I'm sure). Having boots on the ground abroad, operating 24/7, dedicated to the mission of the company where they have not even visited ... near impossible. https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/09/making-european-infrastructure-available-to-our-customers/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/business/2016/09/making-european-i... Why? Hiring people around the globe is hard who are going to remove that HDD 24/7 is pretty hard. Hiring lawyers to understand foreign law is hard. Keeping your company focused abroad and building a culture abroad is very hard. How long does it take for a company to expand to India on their own? In AWS, you just change your CloudFormation template to another region.