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Why can't they just host their own servers/compute/etc? I never understand why the us government wants to contract these things.
by ReverseCold 9y ago
Why can't they just host their own servers/compute/etc?
I never understand why the us government wants to contract these things.
- jayonsoftware 9y agoEver been to DMV ?
- kss238 9y agoCounterpoint: USPS is cheaper than any other carrier for me.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- coredog64 9y agoAIUI, other vendors aren't allowed to undercut USPS on price. Instead they focus on UX for their particular niche.
- Spooky23 9y agoAlmost all states are using outsourced DMV in a can solutions that really suck.
- ams6110 9y agoFor the most part, they don't know how to do it, and people who are good at it have better opportunities than government jobs
- jethro_tell 9y agoIt just takes a lot of people and experience to do that. There are a few companies out there that can are already set up well for that. I don't know if I'd put Oracle in that list but Amazon isn't the only one with the experience.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoAt US government scale, they’d come out ahead if executed by the US Digital Service (no politics, executed rapidly). Amazon has outrageous margins on AWS, margins that could be better spent by the government on equipment and technical talent. Ideally, they’d contribute to OpenStack through such an initiative, ensuring an open source alternative to commercial closed cloud providers. I don’t want my tax dollars going towards Bezo’s attempts at a retail and cloud computing monopoly, but that’s just me. Maybe there’s an opportunity here for Trump considering his disdain for Bezos and the USDS being part of the Executive Office of the President.
- all_blue_chucks 9y agoThe government tried to do this stuff in-house. It turns out it's ridiculously cheaper to let Amazon do it. This kind of move saves you tax money.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cobookman 9y agodisagree. There comes a certain scale where doing it yourself is way cheaper. There's other reasons to outsource to Amazon than just cost though
- all_blue_chucks 9y agoThere is way more that goes in to operating a large scale computing infrastructure efficiently than the cost of hardware. Like way, way more. If anyone could replicate it at the right scale then every large organization would be competing with Amazon for the cloud infrastructure market.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoIs this your opinion because you work at Amazon? Or because you can prove this to be the case?
- valarauca1 9y agoFor the same reason any consumer of cloud services would. Building data centers is expensive and on-demand compute is nice
- toomuchtodo 9y agoIt cost the US government $20 billion for air conditioning alone during the Iraq war. A data center is a rounding error. On demand compute is nice for startups, but overly expensive for mature organizations.
- chrisseaton 9y agoJust because they spent $20 billion on this, and $20 billion on that, doesn't mean that they also have another $20 billion they can spend on something else as well. There's no logic in that argument.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoLarge organizations have the cash flows and reserves to realize efficiencies smaller organizations cannot. You cannot afford to own a refinery. Delta Airlines can and does, as a hedge against fuel costs (which turned out to be a very profitable decision for them). That is the point.
- jjirsa 9y agoShould they build their own planes, too? Just hire some engineers and make it happen, right? Governments outsource because the best people in various industries aren't working for the government (for lots of different reasons).
- FLUX-YOU 9y agoSeeing how the F-35 worked out, maybe they should consider it
- jknoepfler 9y agodatacenter construction and management is not exactly rocket science in 2018.
- manigandham 9y agoIt absolutely is not as simple as you seem to make it sound though... a poorly experienced team will end up costing more in time and money than the markup of an outsourced but scaled efficient team.
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- lsaferite 9y agoWouldn't the better comparison be if they just rented the planes from the manufacturer though? Or even better, have a 3rd party company buy and maintain the aircraft and they just rented the aircraft from them. What could go wrong?
- mtgx 9y agoEspecially when stuff like this tends to happen a lot with AWS: https://www.upguard.com/breaches/cloud-leak-inscom https://www.upguard.com/breaches/cloud-leak-inscom
- manigandham 9y agoThe US government outsources everything. Anything actually being produced or operated is done by some vendor on a government contract, with the big exception of the military (which still has plenty of outsourced business). Government IT expertise is not high-quality and will never match what AWS has. It's about value, not cost. It's better to have reliable and scalable infrastructure even if AWS is vastly more expensive.
- colek42 9y agoThey can't afford the technical talent on the GS scales and are unable grow it internally.
- r00fus 9y agoBecause this country was built on privatized everything.
- pessimizer 9y agoSteering contracts is the way you convert political power into personal wealth.