> For companies that truly need them, "time" and "effort" are never a consideration. I'm not sure that's true. Sure, a few of the most famous software companie

> For companies that truly need them, "time" and "effort" are never a consideration. I'm not sure that's true. Sure, a few of the most famous software companies in the world have built their own at considerable cost. But numerous other huge, important companies are dependent on large-scale distributed systems whose major drawbacks (reliability and maximum scale, usually) and major benefits (simplicity, time/resources saved on not having to hire tons of specialists, quick development time) are based precisely in the time and effort constraints under which those systems were developed.