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I would argue that the majority of AWS' profits come from inefficiencies of their customers. They know, and try to educate. The crazy thing is, even used inef

I would argue that the majority of AWS' profits come from inefficiencies of their customers. They know, and try to educate. The crazy thing is, even used inefficiently, the Cloud is still a very good value prop for a lot of businesses.

danpalmer 7y ago
They might try to educate, but I don't think they engineer their products to make "getting it right" easy. It's not in their interests, but they _could_ make a product that is much easier to use correctly, cheaply, or both. AWS creates work, and creates spend, much more than it needs to.
- iends 7y ago
  Yes, AWS incentives are not aligned with their customers. Any sufficiently sized organization on AWS ends up building custom tooling to help manage cost. They may also hire consultants to help optimize cost. This is all by design.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    My experience is that AWS is remarkably open to helping you get things right. They seem to focus on making things possible before easy, but (Enterprise) support is quite good and have specific incentives on spend efficiency that run counter to the short-term goals of Amazon. I can only imagine how the Oracle cloud must go for victims^Wcustomers. Systems engineering is hard, on-prem or in-cloud.
    - jacob019 7y ago
      TIL ^w
      - pm90 7y ago
        I don't get it yet... what does it mean?
        detaro 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace#^W_and_^U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace#^W_and_^U
    - nostrebored 7y ago
      AWS TAMs I know spend a sizable portion of their time making sure that their costs are low for their customers, monitoring monthly spend and looking for inefficiencies. Business and Enterprise support customers also receive full access to Trusted Advisor, an automated tool which checks your account for spending inefficiencies and best practice violations.
    - Macha 7y ago
      Enterprise support has saved our team from our own screwups in the past, so I've also had positive experiences with them.
    - secabeen 7y ago
      When your profit margin is 25%+, the bigger risk is not people reducing spend, it's moving to a different cloud. Helping people decrease spend by increasing complexity is a form of vendor lock-in, and preserves the long-term revenue.
marcosdumay 7y ago
> The crazy thing is, even used inefficiently, the Cloud is still a very good value prop for a lot of businesses. What is there to say? There are huge scale inefficiencies in maintaining a small datacenter.
- tatersolid 7y ago
  > What is there to say? There are huge scale inefficiencies in maintaining a small datacenter. At $dayjob we have a small DC (8 racks). We’re facing chiller, UPS, and core switching/cabling replacements all within the next two years. We did the math, public Cloud is cheaper for us, especially since about 80% of our instances can be shut down outside business hours.
  - joncrane 7y ago
    Nice. It's always nice to see grass roots use cases for Cloud.
matwood 7y ago
> I would argue that the majority of AWS' profits come from inefficiencies of their customers. Agreed. I've spoken with a few companies that could save quite a bit of money by buying RIs with a few clicks. With a little bit of work they could save a lot more moving large parts of their workload to spot instances. Almost feels like they want to brag about the AWS bill size...

danpalmer 7y ago

They might try to educate, but I don't think they engineer their products to make "getting it right" easy. It's not in their interests, but they _could_ make a product that is much easier to use correctly, cheaply, or both. AWS creates work, and creates spend, much more than it needs to.

iends 7y ago
Yes, AWS incentives are not aligned with their customers. Any sufficiently sized organization on AWS ends up building custom tooling to help manage cost. They may also hire consultants to help optimize cost. This is all by design.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  My experience is that AWS is remarkably open to helping you get things right. They seem to focus on making things possible before easy, but (Enterprise) support is quite good and have specific incentives on spend efficiency that run counter to the short-term goals of Amazon. I can only imagine how the Oracle cloud must go for victims^Wcustomers. Systems engineering is hard, on-prem or in-cloud.
  - jacob019 7y ago
    TIL ^w
    - pm90 7y ago
      I don't get it yet... what does it mean?
      - detaro 7y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace#^W_and_^U https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backspace#^W_and_^U
  - nostrebored 7y ago
    AWS TAMs I know spend a sizable portion of their time making sure that their costs are low for their customers, monitoring monthly spend and looking for inefficiencies. Business and Enterprise support customers also receive full access to Trusted Advisor, an automated tool which checks your account for spending inefficiencies and best practice violations.
  - Macha 7y ago
    Enterprise support has saved our team from our own screwups in the past, so I've also had positive experiences with them.
  - secabeen 7y ago
    When your profit margin is 25%+, the bigger risk is not people reducing spend, it's moving to a different cloud. Helping people decrease spend by increasing complexity is a form of vendor lock-in, and preserves the long-term revenue.

marcosdumay 7y ago

> The crazy thing is, even used inefficiently, the Cloud is still a very good value prop for a lot of businesses. What is there to say? There are huge scale inefficiencies in maintaining a small datacenter.

tatersolid 7y ago
> What is there to say? There are huge scale inefficiencies in maintaining a small datacenter. At $dayjob we have a small DC (8 racks). We’re facing chiller, UPS, and core switching/cabling replacements all within the next two years. We did the math, public Cloud is cheaper for us, especially since about 80% of our instances can be shut down outside business hours.
- joncrane 7y ago
  Nice. It's always nice to see grass roots use cases for Cloud.

matwood 7y ago

> I would argue that the majority of AWS' profits come from inefficiencies of their customers. Agreed. I've spoken with a few companies that could save quite a bit of money by buying RIs with a few clicks. With a little bit of work they could save a lot more moving large parts of their workload to spot instances. Almost feels like they want to brag about the AWS bill size...