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Actually the cost savings hinge on the massive cost savings from moving to a commercial cloud, laying off workforce would save more, but would prefer to save a

Actually the cost savings hinge on the massive cost savings from moving to a commercial cloud, laying off workforce would save more, but would prefer to save a bunch by moving to cloud and keep the workforce for other things.

patrickg_zill 8y ago
How much actual benchmarking have you been able to complete for your applications? Have you already virtualized your own server and applications in the DC you have?
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Moving to the cloud doesn't save money for an established business which knows their datacenter needs. Cloud providers pay for the same hardware, staff to manage that hardware, and then add a layer of profit on top. Going to the cloud only makes sense if you believe you can fire people. And realistically, you need most of those people to maintain and configure your cloud service. It's hard to imagine someone Fortune 50 scale gaining any cost efficiency from going to a cloud service, is this a temporary pricing promotion you're looking to take advantage of or have you done all your homework on the savings? How confident are you on what your cloud expenses will look like?
- brogrammernot 8y ago
  I have to assume the massive savings are from a top tier deal to secure a f50 as a client. You know once they move they aren’t going to move again. Google, AWS, Azure would all love a f50 client and I don’t think they’d care too much about breaking even on the costs of the service or even losing some money because of the amount of social capital they earn from the “partnership”.
  - joewee 8y ago
    They are all about profits from inertia. I’m seeing organizations migrate to the cloud lured by low initial upfront cost that increase once they have completed their migration. When the real bills come in people do hand waving and say the increased cost are negated by “agility.” And don’t even think about migrating out of a cloud provider...you will have to beg for permission. There are a lot of benefits to migrating to the cloud, in my experience, cost isn’t one of them. Unless of course you are mucking around with accounting tricks by cutting employees and moving that cost to services or cost of goods sold, I’m not a expert in this, but it works and will save you money because you can control these expenses more easily and because of how payroll vs services are accounted for.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    Nobody's going to do the scale of an F50 for free. Any sort of good deal is going to have an expiration date, or it won't cover expansion that will almost certainly be needed, potentially almost immediately if all of their needs aren't immediately apparent. This is one of the other risks of moving to a cloud provider: You add a new dependency on a single company. If you don't have a multi-cloud strategy that allows you to force Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to fight for your business each time you expand, you're going to eventually end up paying top dollar.
    - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
      If you plan on being „cloud agnostic“, not using the services they offer like databases, you might as well stay in your own DC.
      - cjalmeida 8y ago
        This is a non sequitur. You can, and should, leverage the flexibility of cloud computing without being too locked down to a single vendor. That’s one of the things tools like Terraform, Kubernetes or Mesos were designed for.
        MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
        Terraform doesn’t buy you anything. It supports multiple vendors, but you have to re-write all the code when switching. If the lowest common denominator is K8S/Mesos, while not using any of the cloud services, you’re doing it wrong.
        joewee 8y ago
        Which would do you have to re-write? Your deployment code or your application code. If it’s the latter you’re not using the cloud correctly. If it’s the former, re-writing deployment scripts is much easy than physically migrating a DC which is think is the real comparison.
mmt 8y ago
That's extremely surprising. I see two possible explanations (both of which may apply): (1) You're getting the cloud servers for a remarkable discount, which, as other commenters mentioned, may not last if you don't put in the engineering effort to be vendor-agnostic (though I'm not sure I agree it's as huge a cost as otherwise implied). (2) You're grossly over-paying for your current environment. Given what I know about the purchasing habits over merely large (nowhere near the size of F50, mind you) companies and, more importantly, the pricing of "enterprise" hardware and support, this seems likely. If the second is true, then I expect you could gain the same savings, if not more, by implementing your own "private cloud" by emulating the purchasing and ops habits of larger-scale startups or established tech companies (but not yet so huge as to be too custom) who run their own hardware. You'd still have to retrain and put an end to manual configuration, but I expect that would ultimately be welcomed. Some might be able to keep their jobs almost as-is. What likely would not be welcomed, and therefore might make it impossible to do, is the political upheaval, since you'd have to put the kibosh on buying expensive, brand-name gear, all but a few bare-bones service contracts, and the level of enterprise sales perks that the decision makers have come to expect. You'd probably have to hire someone who knows how to be frugal like that from an engineering/ops standpoint for architecture/purchasing and is willing to work for such a large company and isn't already employed by FAAMG.
- throwawayacct4q 8y ago
  Maybe so, I haven't made this move before, which is part of the reason I'm asking here, as unlikely as it may be that "someone who is in this position would be asking on HN." Sorry for being vague on all of this. Regardless: 1.) No specific discount, this is standard, public pricing on major commercial clouds, with some tricks applied like reserved instances, which is part of the reason I am not worried about low prices first and then ballooning pricing later, 2.) Our operations and maintenance and sustaining are in fact more expensive that anyone would reasonably expect, I believe partially due to vendors getting their hooks in decades ago and expanding scope and increasing prices, I've walked the data center floors and coded with the ops teams. It is #2 that is really hitting us. I have personally moved several apps as a PoC and you wouldn't believe the savings, or maybe you would, which is even more when not ported 1:1 but used in conjunction with smaller VMs and autoscaling. I would like to retrain to to end all manual configuration and have the current workforce take over all of this, which is a big deal for me personally. Thank you for the response.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

patrickg_zill 8y ago

How much actual benchmarking have you been able to complete for your applications? Have you already virtualized your own server and applications in the DC you have?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Moving to the cloud doesn't save money for an established business which knows their datacenter needs. Cloud providers pay for the same hardware, staff to manage that hardware, and then add a layer of profit on top. Going to the cloud only makes sense if you believe you can fire people. And realistically, you need most of those people to maintain and configure your cloud service. It's hard to imagine someone Fortune 50 scale gaining any cost efficiency from going to a cloud service, is this a temporary pricing promotion you're looking to take advantage of or have you done all your homework on the savings? How confident are you on what your cloud expenses will look like?

brogrammernot 8y ago
I have to assume the massive savings are from a top tier deal to secure a f50 as a client. You know once they move they aren’t going to move again. Google, AWS, Azure would all love a f50 client and I don’t think they’d care too much about breaking even on the costs of the service or even losing some money because of the amount of social capital they earn from the “partnership”.
- joewee 8y ago
  They are all about profits from inertia. I’m seeing organizations migrate to the cloud lured by low initial upfront cost that increase once they have completed their migration. When the real bills come in people do hand waving and say the increased cost are negated by “agility.” And don’t even think about migrating out of a cloud provider...you will have to beg for permission. There are a lot of benefits to migrating to the cloud, in my experience, cost isn’t one of them. Unless of course you are mucking around with accounting tricks by cutting employees and moving that cost to services or cost of goods sold, I’m not a expert in this, but it works and will save you money because you can control these expenses more easily and because of how payroll vs services are accounted for.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Nobody's going to do the scale of an F50 for free. Any sort of good deal is going to have an expiration date, or it won't cover expansion that will almost certainly be needed, potentially almost immediately if all of their needs aren't immediately apparent. This is one of the other risks of moving to a cloud provider: You add a new dependency on a single company. If you don't have a multi-cloud strategy that allows you to force Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to fight for your business each time you expand, you're going to eventually end up paying top dollar.
  - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
    If you plan on being „cloud agnostic“, not using the services they offer like databases, you might as well stay in your own DC.
    - cjalmeida 8y ago
      This is a non sequitur. You can, and should, leverage the flexibility of cloud computing without being too locked down to a single vendor. That’s one of the things tools like Terraform, Kubernetes or Mesos were designed for.
      - MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
        Terraform doesn’t buy you anything. It supports multiple vendors, but you have to re-write all the code when switching. If the lowest common denominator is K8S/Mesos, while not using any of the cloud services, you’re doing it wrong.
        joewee 8y ago
        Which would do you have to re-write? Your deployment code or your application code. If it’s the latter you’re not using the cloud correctly. If it’s the former, re-writing deployment scripts is much easy than physically migrating a DC which is think is the real comparison.

mmt 8y ago

That's extremely surprising. I see two possible explanations (both of which may apply): (1) You're getting the cloud servers for a remarkable discount, which, as other commenters mentioned, may not last if you don't put in the engineering effort to be vendor-agnostic (though I'm not sure I agree it's as huge a cost as otherwise implied). (2) You're grossly over-paying for your current environment. Given what I know about the purchasing habits over merely large (nowhere near the size of F50, mind you) companies and, more importantly, the pricing of "enterprise" hardware and support, this seems likely. If the second is true, then I expect you could gain the same savings, if not more, by implementing your own "private cloud" by emulating the purchasing and ops habits of larger-scale startups or established tech companies (but not yet so huge as to be too custom) who run their own hardware. You'd still have to retrain and put an end to manual configuration, but I expect that would ultimately be welcomed. Some might be able to keep their jobs almost as-is. What likely would not be welcomed, and therefore might make it impossible to do, is the political upheaval, since you'd have to put the kibosh on buying expensive, brand-name gear, all but a few bare-bones service contracts, and the level of enterprise sales perks that the decision makers have come to expect. You'd probably have to hire someone who knows how to be frugal like that from an engineering/ops standpoint for architecture/purchasing and is willing to work for such a large company and isn't already employed by FAAMG.

throwawayacct4q 8y ago
Maybe so, I haven't made this move before, which is part of the reason I'm asking here, as unlikely as it may be that "someone who is in this position would be asking on HN." Sorry for being vague on all of this. Regardless: 1.) No specific discount, this is standard, public pricing on major commercial clouds, with some tricks applied like reserved instances, which is part of the reason I am not worried about low prices first and then ballooning pricing later, 2.) Our operations and maintenance and sustaining are in fact more expensive that anyone would reasonably expect, I believe partially due to vendors getting their hooks in decades ago and expanding scope and increasing prices, I've walked the data center floors and coded with the ops teams. It is #2 that is really hitting us. I have personally moved several apps as a PoC and you wouldn't believe the savings, or maybe you would, which is even more when not ported 1:1 but used in conjunction with smaller VMs and autoscaling. I would like to retrain to to end all manual configuration and have the current workforce take over all of this, which is a big deal for me personally. Thank you for the response.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]