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Microsoft will reap the rewards of supporting XP and Office for decades, that wins enterprise trust & goodwill, and clients will expect that from Azure. On the
by lalos 8y ago
Microsoft will reap the rewards of supporting XP and Office for decades, that wins enterprise trust & goodwill, and clients will expect that from Azure. On the other hand, every month we have a new product/service of Google being deprecated (officially or by raising prices). Even if it's technically better, the most sane business decision from enterprise would be to bet on Microsoft for support reasons. Microsoft talks the enterprise talk and walks the enterprise walk. Google probably has a fun and hackster image in the eyes of enterprise.
- writepub 8y agoWhere are you getting this "price hike" narrative for Google from? Google's presence in the cloud market is instrumental in across the board price drops.
- thanatropism 8y agoGoogle Maps left probably thousands of small, barely viable projects with their shorts down and no belt.
- writepub 8y agoGoogle maps is NOT a part of Google cloud! https://cloud.google.com/products/ https://cloud.google.com/products/
- arctux 8y agoThis is not correct: https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/ https://cloud.google.com/maps-platform/
- jkaplowitz 8y agoGoogle Maps Platform is a part of Google Cloud, but not a part of Google Cloud Platform, despite now integrating with Google Cloud Platform's web console for purposes of managing billing and API keys. Yes, this is a branding and communication mess, but nevertheless true.
- arctux 8y agoYou seem to be correct. > Google Maps Platform is a part of Google Cloud, but not a part of Google Cloud Platform I have never felt that I have been confused by something so justifiably.
- skj 8y ago(googler working in gcp here) The basic way to tell if something is part of GCP or another Google product that some marketing whiz managed to have "cloud" tacked onto the name is whether or not you need a GCP project to work with it.
- komali2 8y agoDo you not for Maps? All my API keys are lumped under "test_prjoect_1" for me, which I don't even remember creating.
- chrisbroadfoot 8y ago(GCP employee) Not true, as far as I know. Many (if not all) Google APIs require a GCP project for access via API key, service account credential, or mobile application.
- jkaplowitz 8y agoNo argument here on that point! I'll defend many things about the technical quality of GCP and its appropriateness as a viable choice in many cases, but not Google's branding, external PR, or external perception management. They've always been bad in those areas and that pattern continues. (Relevant disclosure I've said in other comments: I used to work for Google, including GCP, ending in 2015. I've never worked for Google PR/comms/marketing and I don't work or speak for Google now.)
- briffle 8y agoFunny how everyone here complains about Google maps changing their licensing, but nobody brings up MS changing changing from per socket to per core licensing a few years ago. That burned several medium businesses I know.
- toast0 8y agoPer socket vs per core happened with a version bump right? If Google maps pricing changes only happened when you used a new api, and you could keep using your existing code with your existing prices, that would be a lot less grudge worthy.
- manigandham 8y agoAre you talking about SQL Server? You can keep using old versions, and the performance improvements of modern hardware and new versions end up providing more value overall. With Maps, there's suddenly a new price and you have no options.
- Spooky23 8y agoAlso Windows and System Center. It’s very painful for Microsoft shops as many applications really need standalone SQL. With our scaled up SCCM environment, SQL alone increased licensing cost by a very significant factor, as you need to license SQL Enterprise when you exceed the core limits of the gratis SQL Standard license.
- thanatropism 8y agoProbably not a lot of people used Microsoft services then.
- puzzle 8y agoProbably from the AppEngine change of almost a decade ago or the double Maps bumps (the big shrinking of the free tier years ago, then another one in 2018). Usually those are adjustments to make prices match reality.
- jkaplowitz 8y agoGoogle also puts a lot of weight in certain nuances that get overlooked and then quickly forgotten in the Internet's memory. Your first example: App Engine price hike happened when App Engine departed preview, not after the service had already been intended for mission-critical production use. Your second example: what they're now calling Google Maps Platform has never been part of Google Cloud Platform, is only relatively recently in a nearby part of the org chart & branding structure (aka Google Cloud which also includes Chrome and Android and G Suite), and has never been subjected to the Google Cloud Platform Deprecation Policy. Yes, this is a communication failure on Google's part and I'm not blaming the Internet for the common misimpression. But Google's substantive actions in these price changes can be distinguished from how they approach generally available and policy-covered services within GCP, and customers can plan on that basis. (Similarly with G Suite - one should plan differently for core G suite services covered by the G Suite terms and SLA, as compared to other additional Google services that one might use with G Suite.)
- Dylan16807 8y agoYeah, that stuff isn't part of Google Cloud Platform. But trust in the stability of products can't be siloed that easily.
- jkaplowitz 8y agoWith different communication that's harder to misunderstand, it would have been possible for Google to get a much better trust and expectations outcome from exactly the same substantive price changes (at least for GAE and GCP if not Maps). I think we're mostly or entirely agreeing?
- arctux 8y agoThe Google Maps API is a good example. They increased prices by an order of magnitude while simultaneously decreasing the free tier with one month's notice. [0] [0] http://geoawesomeness.com/developers-up-in-arms-over-google-maps-api-insane-price-hike/ http://geoawesomeness.com/developers-up-in-arms-over-google-...
- azurezyq 8y agoProduct has their lifecycle. Nothing lives forever even for AWS/Azure. In GCP, if a product is GA, deprecation got announced ahead of time and customers got notified and workarounds generally there. Enterprise products and consumer products are very different and subject to different terms. Please do not consider them as the same thing. (I really think that Google should name Google Cloud something else under Alphabet.)
- ghayes 8y agoI would add that AWS seems to moth-ball projects, where Google would officially announce an end-of-life. For example, I strongly regretted using AWS OpsWorks after I realized the only priority for AWS seemed to be keeping it running under SLA.
- Pxtl 8y agoIf we're going to talk about "mothball without formally announcing deprecation" Microsoft is pretty awful for that too. There are so many zombie libraries and frameworks and tools in the Microsoft family, and they never have the decency to say "stop using that". Even windows.forms was default in visual studio until like 2013 or so.
- TomMarius 8y agoWindows Forms were also the only sensible option until at least 2014. Only after 2014 Microsoft has fully commited to one solution, before that it was very wild.
- thrower123 8y agoWhat is that solution? You're not talking about UWP, in it's myriad and shifting incarnations, are you?
- TomMarius 8y agoTo be honest I don't have much insight anymore, I left the .NET space around 2015 for these exact reasons.
- ubernostrum 8y agoI know I'm unlikely ever to trust Google's cloud offerings simply because of their track record of support/service, or rather lack of it. Yes, even for paying customers who paid them payments by paying. "Oops, the algorithm decided to wipe out your business. No, you can't talk to a human. No, you can't appeal it and there's no review, and we can't tell you why, because the algorithm said so" is something Google has gotten away with for years with many of their services. But it's going to wreck them as they keep moving into spaces where people expect a level of support commensurate with the amount of money they're paying. Even if there is real support available, the reputation for a horrible lack of it is so entrenched I don't see how they'll overcome it.
- elguyosupremo 8y agoIf you pay for their enterprise level support for GCP you can get human responses very easily (and quickly on high priority requests) though they tend to have to escalate and complicated issues to their engineering teams. We also have weekly meetings with their CRE team where we can give general input, make feature requests and get support requests/etc expedited as needed. Their support for small customers could use some improving but their enterprise support is nothing like you describe.
- ubernostrum 8y agoAgain: Even if there is real support available, the reputation for a horrible lack of it is so entrenched I don't see how they'll overcome it.
- netheril96 8y agoGCP may overcome the bad reputation if many satisfied customers speak up, like your parent post has done.
- matchagaucho 8y agoThe inability to connect with a real human when escalating Google Cloud issues seems to be recurring theme on HN.
- scarface74 8y agoI can’t speak to Azure, but with a business support plan, it’s really easy to connect with a human on AWS. My experience is that they won’t give up until they resolve your issue. They’ve even gone as far as creating a simplified CloudFormation stack to duplicate the issue and then talk to their developers and get back to you.
- asadlionpk 8y agoI have been using Azure and their support is top notch too.
- notyourwork 8y agoCustomer obsession is one of Amazon's primary focus. This isn't just for selling merchandise on retail.
- fludlight 8y agoAbout seven or eight years ago, I tried to migrate my small employer to Microsoft cloud Exchange (email). I forget what they were calling it back then. We were an Outlook shop so MS seemed like the logical choice. I spent a few days setting everything up and testing it. I flipped the switch and...silence. No incoming email for a few hours in the middle of a Friday night. CEO calls me at 2am asking why our prospective Hong Kong client's emails are bouncing back. Ooops...flip the DNS back to the old email server. Call tech support. It's an Indian call center reading the tech support web site. After 20 minutes they escalate. Wait 24 hours. "We're looking into it." Wait another 24 hours. "We've found the problem and are fixing it." Wait 48 hours. "There is weird edge case bug with the code that manages the online signups. This affects you and a few dozen other SMBs. Since you are an SMB you are dealing with a third party customer service company. We cannot contact the division that has authorization to fix this part of the codebase. We have tried speaking to our Microsoft contacts but they are not allowed to contact the engineering team behind their product. Speaking from experience, this will only be fixed if someone with 10k seats has the same issue. You should close your account now. Sorry." Never again.
- ChuckMcM 8y agoI see the same thing, it was also IBM's cloud services pitch that they "understood the enterprise" better than Google or Amazon does. It is a pain to try to compare stuff though because there aren't good standards for "cloud revenue." According to [1] IBM generated $18.5B over 12 months in cloud revenue. While Forbes[2] talks about $6.1B and $6.9B in quarterly cloud revenue of Amazon and Microsoft (a $24 - $28B annual run rate), and this from Forbes[3] in April of this year that has them at $44B(Amazon), $19B (Microsoft), and $17B (Google). Which would make Google #4 if IBM's numbers hold up under scrutiny. I try to keep an eye on these numbers to maintain a sense of the shifting landscape, and it doesn't seem like Google has yet found the right combination of goods and services to really be solid in this space yet. [1] https://www.lightreading.com/enterprise-cloud/infrastructure-and-platform/ibm-rises-to-$20b-in-revenue-on-cloud-growth/d/d-id/744779 https://www.lightreading.com/enterprise-cloud/infrastructure... [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/08/03/1-microsoft-widens-lead-over-2-amazon-in-cloud-revenue-6-9-billion-to-6-1-billion/#21644e3e3fc0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/08/03/1-microsof... [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/04/30/cloud-revenue-2020-amazons-aws-44b-microsoft-azures-19b-google-cloud-platform-17b/#9f7c07c7ee5a https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/04/30/cloud-r...
- Spooky23 8y agoIMO AWS is the true king — the Microsoft numbers are spiked by Office 365 licenses, most of which is renting Office itself. Amazon is the only one not playing games with definitions. IBM is very vague, and I would guess that they are recharacterizing traditional software sales as private cloud by giving away cloud management components. Google historically had a strange attitude towards enterprise sales and truely and royaly screwed over their search appliance customers for reasons that baffle the mind. They seem to investing, and hopefully don’t repeat those mistakes.
- jpatokal 8y ago> truely and royaly screwed over their search appliance customers Got context? Are you referring to the (still ongoing!) deprecation of hardware search appliances as announced in 2016?
- VikingCoder 8y agoI can't even tell you how many connectivity and graphics technologies MS launched, I developed on, and then they abandoned. I struggle to understand why people think MS deserves enterprise trust & goodwill.
- sfifs 8y agoBecause businesses fundamentally run on Outlook and Office and support for that has been pretty amazingly consistent. Yes I've seen SharePoints and Skydrives and OneDrives and Yammers but none of them are critical the way Office and Outlook are
- brazzledazzle 8y agoThey burned people with their original on-prem OneDrive bullshit.
- MisterTea 8y agoYou can also add Active Directory to that list. Stupid simple to setup, join machines and setup policies. Small businesses with tens of pc's are easily managed from a single domain controller and the licensing isn't that bad when you're revenue easily covers costs. Oh, and Office 365 is a blessing. I never thought I'd actually like SaaS anything from Microsoft but it works really well Office. It's also much easier than selling a $6000+ purchase req for 15-20 new office licenses. Especially when the boss doesn't see why office 2003 is obsolete in 2011 if it "still works fine for me". ~$240 a month was an easy sell with "free" exchange email and upgrades. Yea small shops are fun to work at.
- paulryanrogers 8y agoLike GDI? (Honest question, not much of a graphics coder myself)
- AlexeyBrin 8y agoYou can use GDI and GDI+ on Windows 10 from VS 2017 without a problem.
- ekianjo 8y agoI remember seeing Google folks in Japan coming to sell their products in T shirts and jeans in a business world where everyone wears suits and knows it. I have nothing against the casual style, but knowing the etiquette is primordial in business.
- Aeolun 8y agoDawut? For real? I honestly cannot imagine the words ‘sales’ and ‘no suit’ together in a sentence anywhere in the world, much less Japan. I’m not even Japanese and I think by now I’d consider it more or less an insult.
- irrational 8y agoIt depends. At my company (70,000+ employees the last time I checked) even the CEO doesn't wear a tie, much less a suit (usually he wears a t-shirt and jeans). A sales guy wearing so much as a tie would not be taken seriously.
- Aeolun 8y agoWhen they go to visit clients? In the office I can understand.
- irrational 8y agoAbsolutely. I work in global sales for my company. No sales person would be caught dead wearing a tie or suit.
- scirocco 8y agoIn the Nordics few salespeople wear suit (especially in tech)
- ekianjo 8y agoMaybe they did not mean it as an insult, they just came in their everyday working clothes I guess. The problem is that looked super unprofessional and left the impression to be a bunch of hipsters. After all, they are the image of the company, and dressing so casually in front on your client is... disturbing.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- cenal 8y agoDon’t forget the rapid and severe Google maps price increases. These are the gift that will keep on giving for Microsoft and Amazon in the mindshare of developers and business leaders. Incredibly stupid move.
- BallinBige 8y agoI N C R E D I B L Y stupid move @google
- binomialxenon 8y agoI have to thank Google for that, it was probably the quickest way to drive more competition in the maps space.
- scirocco 8y agoAm not too well-read on this - what are some good AWS/MS alternatives to Google Maps?
- Johnny555 8y agoDo most enterprise companies care about the price of Google Maps? My company hosts on AWS, Azure and GCP, and I couldn't tell you how much Google Maps costs (or indeed, that there was even a paid tier, though it makes sense for embedded maps and such).
- nprateem 8y agoToday's developer is tomorrow's enterprise architect.
- matt4077 8y ago> every month we have a new product/service of Google being deprecated Indeed! Just ~~~last month~~~ 62 months ago they shut down Reader. (I see that you're hedging with the reference to Maps. But I'd love if this time, we wouldn't make a single event a 10-year talking point)
- ldiracdelta 8y agoGoogle Reader still hurts.
- pkroll 8y agoThat one hurt, but "single event" is a little off. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon... (nearly a hundred in 12 years, is the answer to the question "how many then?")
- llampx 8y agoGoogle Reader is like "the one that got away" because the landscape changed so fundamentally with it, that no other product could take its place. If Google had killed Gmail we would still have Yahoo mail and Hotmail and what not. We would bitch and moan but life would go on. Reader was... different.
- realusername 8y agoI've created an account to try Azure last weekend, it took me 2 hours to sign-up due to issues in the registration on their end, and then once it finally worked, I copied an example from their documentation. 5 minutes after, I received an email that I was banned for "security reasons", so yeah if they can't even handle a sign-up properly, I wonder how they want to reach the top spot of the cloud market, I'll for sure try to avoid Azure in the future for any company I go.
- brazzledazzle 8y agoThe AWS console is far from being great but last time I used Azure’s it was terribly slow and full of little bugs. The UI was kind of flashy and hip and combined with the bugs it made them seem silly, especially contrasted against the AWS console’s utilitarian look. It was painful. I’m not saying I’ll never try it again but I’d need to be convinced.
- realusername 8y agoI totally agree with that, during the small amount of time I had access I found that the UI clearly has some issues. It's clunky, slow and difficult to navigate. AWS isn't exactly a great model of good UI but Azure is clearly even worse, I would personally put GCP in the top spot for the UI and Azure as the last one.
- halbritt 8y agoAgreed. GCP UI is... Actually usable. There are cases where I prefer that to the UI or API.
- alex_hitchins 8y agoThat and the fact you can speak to engineers at Microsoft will relative ease. Recently had an Azure support ticket open. The whole process was beyond my expectations to the point I'd have difficulty putting anything big anywhere else. Could be personal preference, but the way they manage introducing new services and grandfathering old ones is also very good.
- baseballMan 8y agoI've had an absolutely terrible experience with Azure support and I've worked on environments that have the highest level of support enabled. Amazon is so much better in my experience when it comes to supporting their platform.