4 ms·

> The super perplexing thing is that cloud providers jumped on the kubernetes bandwagon so quickly and this is what made this commoditization possible. Pessimis

by kahnjw 7y ago

> The super perplexing thing is that cloud providers jumped on the kubernetes bandwagon so quickly and this is what made this commoditization possible. Pessimistically speaking, this means either they're either about to butcher the cross-cloud usability of kubernetes (i.e. drift between EKS,AKS,etc) or kubernetes was a wolf in sheep's clothing from the start. Is it perplexing? Didn't Google do the same thing with Chrome and Android? Understandably those aren't enterprise systems, but they successfully entered a market by open sourcing something that became wildly popular. In the case of Android and k8s, user cost is also reduced. Once it was clear that k8s won over mesos and docker's solution, AWS and MSFT didn't have much of a choice but to adopt it.

hardwaresofton 7y ago
Yes, but it's weird that all the providers did this. I think in that analogy, what's happening is like Apple (the competitor to beat) at the time also started offering Android phones as soon as Android started to get traction. It makes sense for Microsoft/IBM/Oracle to jump on the k8s bandwagon because they're basically doing the worst/newest entrants but why AWS? They already had CloudFormation, along with lots of energy already dumped into SDKs for various tools (ECS, beanstalk, etc). There are a few other technologies that could have done this before k8s really took off, like pre-k8s openstack -- why didn't that get adopted?
- wmf 7y ago
  AWS acts like they can win without obvious lock-in and so far it's working.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    AWS uses proprietary sinplifying management layers on top of common technology as a lock-in mechanism, and have announced their product in this direction (Fargate for EKS) for k8s, though it hasn't been deployed yet. AWS doesn't act like they can win without obvious lock-in, they act like they can win by extending open technologies with proprietary management layers that customers will depends on and be locked in by, which they do in pretty much every area.
    - dtech 7y ago
      They're always pretty solidly in the "Extend" phase of EEE, and things like Aurora and DocumentDB are flirting with "Extinguish".
- raincom 7y ago
  openstack was such a mess, not as easy as k8s. One can just pxeboot bunch of servers, and create k8s so fast.
- kahnjw 7y ago
  My guess is they felt they didn't have a choice. Having worked at a company with a very large AWS bill in the past, they actually listen to what their customers want. I also think it's clear that most cloud-going engineers and decision makers wanted a solution like k8s and "native" cloud support for it. If they had chosen to use their own proprietary platform they risk Google and MSFT peeling customers away who want to work on a well designed open and portable orchestration platform. That might start slow but Amazon didn't get this big by allowing competition to take customers without throwing their own punches. They could have made their own _open source_ platform that would directly compete against k8s but by the time it was clear that demand was huge (I'm thinking early 2016) k8s already had to ton of momentum. Again they probably saw that and figured this was the best move with a high probability of success, even if it meant less lock-in. They also have a whole slew of other products that serve almost exclusively as lock-in mechanisms. One truly portable product isn't going to be a huge deal. EDIT: Distinguish proprietary and open source options in the second paragraph.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > If they had chosen to use their own proprietary platform They have chosen that, but for rather than instead of k8s; they've announced that they are working on a fully managed system for k8s (Fargate for EKS, parallel to their existing ECS Fargate offering.)
- quanticle 7y ago
  It makes sense for Microsoft/IBM/Oracle to jump on the k8s bandwagon because they're basically doing the worst/newest entrants but why AWS? They already had CloudFormation, along with lots of energy already dumped into SDKs for various tools (ECS, beanstalk, etc). I think it makes sense for AWS to jump on the bandwagon because they understand that Google is trying to commodify its complements [1]. The thing that AWS is betting on, I think, is not only surviving but thriving in a commodified environment [2]. The bet that AWS is making is that just like Amazon's retail business, commodification will hurt their competitors more than it hurts them, which will then allow them to make the most of the newly cleared competitive environment once the dust settles. Google's play, on the other hand, is to use the fact that Google is massively profitable elsewhere to allow Google cloud to run at negative profitability for a while in order to try to take a chunk out of AWS. The big loser I see from Kubernetes is Azure. Unlike Google, Microsoft does not have massive and growing profits from elsewhere. Enterprise and consumer Windows sales, while profitable, are on a declining profitability trajectory, according to Microsoft's own estimates. At the same time, Azure, in my estimation, doesn't have to survive extremely low margin environments in the same way that AWS can. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ [2]: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/13/margin/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/13/margin/

by kahnjw 7y ago

hardwaresofton 7y ago

Yes, but it's weird that all the providers did this. I think in that analogy, what's happening is like Apple (the competitor to beat) at the time also started offering Android phones as soon as Android started to get traction. It makes sense for Microsoft/IBM/Oracle to jump on the k8s bandwagon because they're basically doing the worst/newest entrants but why AWS? They already had CloudFormation, along with lots of energy already dumped into SDKs for various tools (ECS, beanstalk, etc). There are a few other technologies that could have done this before k8s really took off, like pre-k8s openstack -- why didn't that get adopted?

wmf 7y ago
AWS acts like they can win without obvious lock-in and so far it's working.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  AWS uses proprietary sinplifying management layers on top of common technology as a lock-in mechanism, and have announced their product in this direction (Fargate for EKS) for k8s, though it hasn't been deployed yet. AWS doesn't act like they can win without obvious lock-in, they act like they can win by extending open technologies with proprietary management layers that customers will depends on and be locked in by, which they do in pretty much every area.
  - dtech 7y ago
    They're always pretty solidly in the "Extend" phase of EEE, and things like Aurora and DocumentDB are flirting with "Extinguish".
raincom 7y ago
openstack was such a mess, not as easy as k8s. One can just pxeboot bunch of servers, and create k8s so fast.
kahnjw 7y ago
My guess is they felt they didn't have a choice. Having worked at a company with a very large AWS bill in the past, they actually listen to what their customers want. I also think it's clear that most cloud-going engineers and decision makers wanted a solution like k8s and "native" cloud support for it. If they had chosen to use their own proprietary platform they risk Google and MSFT peeling customers away who want to work on a well designed open and portable orchestration platform. That might start slow but Amazon didn't get this big by allowing competition to take customers without throwing their own punches. They could have made their own _open source_ platform that would directly compete against k8s but by the time it was clear that demand was huge (I'm thinking early 2016) k8s already had to ton of momentum. Again they probably saw that and figured this was the best move with a high probability of success, even if it meant less lock-in. They also have a whole slew of other products that serve almost exclusively as lock-in mechanisms. One truly portable product isn't going to be a huge deal. EDIT: Distinguish proprietary and open source options in the second paragraph.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > If they had chosen to use their own proprietary platform They have chosen that, but for rather than instead of k8s; they've announced that they are working on a fully managed system for k8s (Fargate for EKS, parallel to their existing ECS Fargate offering.)
quanticle 7y ago
It makes sense for Microsoft/IBM/Oracle to jump on the k8s bandwagon because they're basically doing the worst/newest entrants but why AWS? They already had CloudFormation, along with lots of energy already dumped into SDKs for various tools (ECS, beanstalk, etc). I think it makes sense for AWS to jump on the bandwagon because they understand that Google is trying to commodify its complements [1]. The thing that AWS is betting on, I think, is not only surviving but thriving in a commodified environment [2]. The bet that AWS is making is that just like Amazon's retail business, commodification will hurt their competitors more than it hurts them, which will then allow them to make the most of the newly cleared competitive environment once the dust settles. Google's play, on the other hand, is to use the fact that Google is massively profitable elsewhere to allow Google cloud to run at negative profitability for a while in order to try to take a chunk out of AWS. The big loser I see from Kubernetes is Azure. Unlike Google, Microsoft does not have massive and growing profits from elsewhere. Enterprise and consumer Windows sales, while profitable, are on a declining profitability trajectory, according to Microsoft's own estimates. At the same time, Azure, in my estimation, doesn't have to survive extremely low margin environments in the same way that AWS can. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ [2]: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/13/margin/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/13/margin/