5 ms·

> Or is the answer simply, own all the layers of the stack yourself? Like Apple?

discodave 8y ago
I think AWS and the other cloud providers owning the whole stack is what Jessie is thinking of with that statement. AWS has their own ARM processor (Graviton), and hardware designs. All completely proprietary. GCP has TPUs, and so-on.
- rbanffy 8y ago
  This is also a nice way to differentiate and not compete in price/performance alone.
cryptonector 8y ago
That doesn't make Conway's Law inapplicable. There is still organizational structure within the self (Apple in your hypo). Consider for example Windows 2000. In the years during which it (NT5) was developed, Microsoft merged security and directory teams. That yielded Active Directory, and it was a resounding success. Other companies, like Sun, failed to see the brilliance and importance of this, and treated their directory products as a cash cow -- that it was then an ever decreasing cash cow wasn't good, but hey, milk it for all it's got. Now imagine Apple owning the whole stack. But they too could make a mistake like, e.g., Sun's, or they could get do better than Microsoft in my example. There's no guarantee either way, and it's not necessarily easy to spot the mistake / opportunity as it comes up. Besides, owning the whole stack is really difficult. Once you get to where you own 90%, the benefit of each additional 1% is more and more outweighed by the cost.
stcredzero 8y ago
> Like Apple? The way Bose succeeds is that they are willing to market to the majority tastes, and they are willing to use vertical integration to deliver a great user experience with ok to good performance using cheaper hardware. I have no idea if this can apply to security and Conway's Law. Apple is serious about security, because they are serious about payments. They are willing to put clean architecture before backwards compatibility.

I think AWS and the other cloud providers owning the whole stack is what Jessie is thinking of with that statement. AWS has their own ARM processor (Graviton), and hardware designs. All completely proprietary. GCP has TPUs, and so-on.

rbanffy 8y ago
This is also a nice way to differentiate and not compete in price/performance alone.

cryptonector 8y ago

That doesn't make Conway's Law inapplicable. There is still organizational structure within the self (Apple in your hypo). Consider for example Windows 2000. In the years during which it (NT5) was developed, Microsoft merged security and directory teams. That yielded Active Directory, and it was a resounding success. Other companies, like Sun, failed to see the brilliance and importance of this, and treated their directory products as a cash cow -- that it was then an ever decreasing cash cow wasn't good, but hey, milk it for all it's got. Now imagine Apple owning the whole stack. But they too could make a mistake like, e.g., Sun's, or they could get do better than Microsoft in my example. There's no guarantee either way, and it's not necessarily easy to spot the mistake / opportunity as it comes up. Besides, owning the whole stack is really difficult. Once you get to where you own 90%, the benefit of each additional 1% is more and more outweighed by the cost.

stcredzero 8y ago

> Like Apple? The way Bose succeeds is that they are willing to market to the majority tastes, and they are willing to use vertical integration to deliver a great user experience with ok to good performance using cheaper hardware. I have no idea if this can apply to security and Conway's Law. Apple is serious about security, because they are serious about payments. They are willing to put clean architecture before backwards compatibility.