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You're neglecting management costs. IT teams don't buy hardware with corporate credit cards, they have to work through pre-existing requisition processes that p

You're neglecting management costs. IT teams don't buy hardware with corporate credit cards, they have to work through pre-existing requisition processes that properly budget for the hardware, make sure support contracts are in place, etc. You have to migrate whatever workload off the server where you installed the GPU (politically problematic since Murphy promises you that your users will be connecting to the server by its IP address, or the workload is "mission critical" and can't be stopped, or whatever) and reserve the server for GPU work. If you're running something like vCenter to virtualize your datacenter resources, you need to make sure that VMware picks up on the GPU in the new machine, doesn't schedule new VMs without GPU requirements on the server with the new GPU, etc. Comments like these (why can't I just do X?), it's like the difference between being single and being in a serious relationship. When you're single, you can do whatever you want. When you're in a serious relationship, you can't just make whatever decisions you want without talking to your partner. Well, big corporate enterprise is like that on steroids, because instead of having one partner, you have several or dozens, and everyone needs to buy in.

wetpaws 8y ago
Why I as developer should worry about this? It's their job.
PascLeRasc 8y ago
How often do employers wait for their employees' approval before making a decision?
sytelus 8y ago
In most (good) companies team/group have budgets where large portions are at discretion to group manager. I would expect group managers to approve for such hardware requests. It’s much harder to justify $4K bills on cloud services. This is not IT issue and I think this thread has got derailed little here.
candiodari 8y ago
However, this cannot justify just any disparity in prices. Data science FTW ! Capex => Opex has a name. It's called "a loan". So let's model cloud usage as a loan. Let's assume you want, for an employee, a machine learning rig and you set depreciation on 2 years. Let's also assume that the article is correct about the ballpark figures, somewhere around $1400/month for renting, and $3000 for the machine. And let's ignore the difference in power usage, extra space, bandwidth, ... (which is going to be 2 digit dollars at the very most anyway, since you need all that for the employee in the first place) So how much interest does cloud charge for this Capex => Opex change ? Well 33600/30000.5 or 613.5% per year. Pretty much every bank on the planet will offer very low credit score companies 30% loans, even 10% is very realistic. There are no words ... Just give the man his bloody machine. Hell, give him 5, 4 just in case 3 fail, and 1 for Crysis just to be a "nice" guy (you're not really being so nice: you're saving money) and you still come out ahead of the cloud. We both know why this doesn't happen, the real reason: you don't trust your employees. Letting this employee have that machine would immediately cause a jealousy fight within the company, and cause a major problem. That's of course why the GP comment is right: leave this bloody nightmare of a company, today.

wetpaws 8y ago

Why I as developer should worry about this? It's their job.

PascLeRasc 8y ago

How often do employers wait for their employees' approval before making a decision?

sytelus 8y ago

In most (good) companies team/group have budgets where large portions are at discretion to group manager. I would expect group managers to approve for such hardware requests. It’s much harder to justify $4K bills on cloud services. This is not IT issue and I think this thread has got derailed little here.

candiodari 8y ago

However, this cannot justify just any disparity in prices. Data science FTW ! Capex => Opex has a name. It's called "a loan". So let's model cloud usage as a loan. Let's assume you want, for an employee, a machine learning rig and you set depreciation on 2 years. Let's also assume that the article is correct about the ballpark figures, somewhere around $1400/month for renting, and $3000 for the machine. And let's ignore the difference in power usage, extra space, bandwidth, ... (which is going to be 2 digit dollars at the very most anyway, since you need all that for the employee in the first place) So how much interest does cloud charge for this Capex => Opex change ? Well 33600/30000.5 or 613.5% per year. Pretty much every bank on the planet will offer very low credit score companies 30% loans, even 10% is very realistic. There are no words ... Just give the man his bloody machine. Hell, give him 5, 4 just in case 3 fail, and 1 for Crysis just to be a "nice" guy (you're not really being so nice: you're saving money) and you still come out ahead of the cloud. We both know why this doesn't happen, the real reason: you don't trust your employees. Letting this employee have that machine would immediately cause a jealousy fight within the company, and cause a major problem. That's of course why the GP comment is right: leave this bloody nightmare of a company, today.