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>The hardware was getting cheaper each year. More software became available via open source. Then several ubecorporations entered the hosting/cloud business, an

by jasode 8y ago

>The hardware was getting cheaper each year. More software became available via open source. Then several ubecorporations entered the hosting/cloud business, and suddenly no one seems to be able to afford their own infrastructure. The decision framework the executives use isn't just the "hardware+software" -- it's the whole "IT organization". In other words, it's not "in-house cpu" vs "Amazon's cpu". It's in-house IT employees' speed of tech innovation vs Amazon's engineers'. An example of this disparity was Guardian's disaster with its in-house organization trying to use OpenStack.[1] For many non-tech companies where IT computing is a cost center, their employees won't be able to match the iteration speed of Google's engineers constantly improving on GCP or Amazon's employees enhancing the features of AWS. We've all heard the stories where a company's project submits a requisition to internal IT department for 2 development servers for their programmers -- and then the IT bureaucracy tells them that it will take 2 weeks. Over time, the internal IT dept treats the other departments as adversaries instead of customers. Executives get fed up with slow IT departments and get excited when a few clicks on AWS dashboard gets them servers spun up in 10 minutes. It's not just a cpu+hardware comparison. Companies outsource to AWS/GCP/Azure because it's quicker turnaround with more datacenter features than their internal IT teams can deliver. Most companies are not like Facebook or Dropbox that can maintain an internal IT organization at a high level equivalent to AWS. [1] https://www.computerworlduk.com/cloud-computing/guardian-goes-all-in-on-aws-public-cloud-after-openstack-disaster-3629790/ https://www.computerworlduk.com/cloud-computing/guardian-goe...

gambler 8y ago
>Most companies are not like Facebook or Dropbox that can maintain an internal IT organization at a high level equivalent to AWS. Let's try this with different phrasing. In 200X a lot of companies were able to maintain their own infrastructure, just like Facebook and Amazon did at the time. Forward 10-13 years. We have cheaper hardware. We have extra 10+ years of development in open-source software. And yet that list of self-hosting companies shrunk by a huge degree. Doesn't that seem interesting?
- lixtra 8y ago
  Ok, I will try to counter that. The stack grows higher. More specialized employees become more effective. In 200X you just needed a Linux admin. Now on top of being good a good Linux admin you also need to know docker, kubernetes (the admin part, not the user part) etc. If you don’t need that daily, because you also need to maintain some apps, you will be less professional than a cloud provider. Of course it’s a trade-off. If you’re large, with constant high resource needs and benefit from custom optimization, you may be better off with your own team/infrastructure. If you’re small (2 it guys), fast changing, normal speed requirements / easy to scale out then the cloud should be interesting to you.
  - apple4ever 7y ago
    Really good points. Maintaining your own infrastructure may be "boring" with "old" technologies. But its a known process. Its really easy. But with the cloud its a whole different domain. It may be easy too, but I don't think its as easy as hosting your own. And your last two lines are great. It really comes down to the company about which tradeoff is appropriate.
- jasode 8y ago
  >In 200X lots of companies were able to maintain their own infrastructure, just like Facebook and Amazon did at the time. But my point is that companies' IT departments did not maintain infrastructure just like Amazon did. In ~2005 when companies were first experimenting with AWS cloud, they might start with dev & test servers. They click a few buttons and are amazed when new servers get spun up in minutes and their programmers are productive immediately. The natural question that company execs ask is, "why can't our own internal IT department spin up servers for us in 10 minutes?!? Why does it take them so damn long?!?" They wouldn't have asked those hard questions if their internal IT capability was equivalent to AWS. Eventually, their improved experiences with AWS on Dev&Test&QA convinced them to migrate mission-critical Production workloads to AWS as well. >We have cheaper hardware. We have (supposedly) better software. You're still focusing on on hardware+software and not considering the IT employees' speed of execution in how company executives compare the situation. Even Netflix as a tech company maintained their own datacenters for over 10 years but ended up migrating to AWS. Their "Guardian" moment was a big database corruption in 2008. They also had ambitious plans to expand into countries outside of USA. Those were some of the factors that convinced them they didn't want to invest anymore in their own datacenters and preferred AWS take care of it. Amazon employees iterated on datacenter capabilities faster than Netflix engineers could do it.
user5994461 8y ago
>>> the IT bureaucracy tells them that it will take 2 weeks You're not in touch with reality. Try 2 months at a bare minimum.
johngalt 8y ago
> For many non-tech companies where IT computing is a cost center, their employees won't be able to match the iteration speed of Google's engineers constantly improving on GCP or Amazon's employees enhancing the features of AWS. Exactly this. As an ops person, this is exactly how I explain it. Sure we can build something fairly competitive on-prem or in a colo, but we won't have an entire team of top-flight experts bent on improving it as fast as possible. That per-GB cost is buying a lot more than just bandwidth and drive space. > Over time, the internal IT dept treats the other departments as adversaries instead of customers. Executives get fed up with slow IT departments and get excited when a few clicks on AWS dashboard gets them servers spun up in 10 minutes. This tends to be more of a problem with organizational mandates & processes. If those processes aren't addressed, then you'll end up with all the same problems. Perhaps they will have different labels on them, but underneath it will be the same issues, delays, outages, and recriminations

by jasode 8y ago

gambler 8y ago

>Most companies are not like Facebook or Dropbox that can maintain an internal IT organization at a high level equivalent to AWS. Let's try this with different phrasing. In 200X a lot of companies were able to maintain their own infrastructure, just like Facebook and Amazon did at the time. Forward 10-13 years. We have cheaper hardware. We have extra 10+ years of development in open-source software. And yet that list of self-hosting companies shrunk by a huge degree. Doesn't that seem interesting?

lixtra 8y ago
Ok, I will try to counter that. The stack grows higher. More specialized employees become more effective. In 200X you just needed a Linux admin. Now on top of being good a good Linux admin you also need to know docker, kubernetes (the admin part, not the user part) etc. If you don’t need that daily, because you also need to maintain some apps, you will be less professional than a cloud provider. Of course it’s a trade-off. If you’re large, with constant high resource needs and benefit from custom optimization, you may be better off with your own team/infrastructure. If you’re small (2 it guys), fast changing, normal speed requirements / easy to scale out then the cloud should be interesting to you.
- apple4ever 7y ago
  Really good points. Maintaining your own infrastructure may be "boring" with "old" technologies. But its a known process. Its really easy. But with the cloud its a whole different domain. It may be easy too, but I don't think its as easy as hosting your own. And your last two lines are great. It really comes down to the company about which tradeoff is appropriate.
jasode 8y ago
>In 200X lots of companies were able to maintain their own infrastructure, just like Facebook and Amazon did at the time. But my point is that companies' IT departments did not maintain infrastructure just like Amazon did. In ~2005 when companies were first experimenting with AWS cloud, they might start with dev & test servers. They click a few buttons and are amazed when new servers get spun up in minutes and their programmers are productive immediately. The natural question that company execs ask is, "why can't our own internal IT department spin up servers for us in 10 minutes?!? Why does it take them so damn long?!?" They wouldn't have asked those hard questions if their internal IT capability was equivalent to AWS. Eventually, their improved experiences with AWS on Dev&Test&QA convinced them to migrate mission-critical Production workloads to AWS as well. >We have cheaper hardware. We have (supposedly) better software. You're still focusing on on hardware+software and not considering the IT employees' speed of execution in how company executives compare the situation. Even Netflix as a tech company maintained their own datacenters for over 10 years but ended up migrating to AWS. Their "Guardian" moment was a big database corruption in 2008. They also had ambitious plans to expand into countries outside of USA. Those were some of the factors that convinced them they didn't want to invest anymore in their own datacenters and preferred AWS take care of it. Amazon employees iterated on datacenter capabilities faster than Netflix engineers could do it.

user5994461 8y ago

>>> the IT bureaucracy tells them that it will take 2 weeks You're not in touch with reality. Try 2 months at a bare minimum.

johngalt 8y ago

> For many non-tech companies where IT computing is a cost center, their employees won't be able to match the iteration speed of Google's engineers constantly improving on GCP or Amazon's employees enhancing the features of AWS. Exactly this. As an ops person, this is exactly how I explain it. Sure we can build something fairly competitive on-prem or in a colo, but we won't have an entire team of top-flight experts bent on improving it as fast as possible. That per-GB cost is buying a lot more than just bandwidth and drive space. > Over time, the internal IT dept treats the other departments as adversaries instead of customers. Executives get fed up with slow IT departments and get excited when a few clicks on AWS dashboard gets them servers spun up in 10 minutes. This tends to be more of a problem with organizational mandates & processes. If those processes aren't addressed, then you'll end up with all the same problems. Perhaps they will have different labels on them, but underneath it will be the same issues, delays, outages, and recriminations