4 ms·

but why aren't those fat profit margins being competed away by competitors?

by thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

rapsey 7y ago
There aren’t that many competitors and they like profit as well.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Finnucane 7y ago
Who has the resources and interest to compete in that market who isn't trying to already?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
manigandham 7y ago
Because of the capital and talent required to build a competitive offering. Even large companies like IBM and Oracle have failed to keep up. The big 3 clouds have built a nice moat and can charge whatever they want. They still compete on prices but it's clear they're colluding on network fees at least.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  It's not just capital or talent. I have seen first hand non-tech executive decision makers pick a specific cloud provider because of the old adage "No one got fired for buying IBM". That momentum is incredibly hard to compete against. Google Cloud is fairly solid from a technology perspective, not to mention Google's deep pockets, and still has an uphill climb against MS and AWS.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    GCP may be just as good technologically, but their customer support and especially enterprise support is piss poor.
    - justesjc 7y ago
      Some would say, non-existent.
    - castlecrasher2 7y ago
      Not directly a response to you, but GCP is actually phenomenal in some areas over AWS: BigQuery, Data Studio (I know it's not really "GCP" but vs AWS' offering), and Pubsub come to mind. Oddly enough, they falter in other areas: no equivalent to Kinesis Firehose, and true to your point, I was told by customer service just to build my own DataFlow job to take a Pubsub topic and make files. It's like some of their product managers have a very customer-first mindset (BigQuery, Pubsub) and some could not care less.
    - sgt101 7y ago
      Their model is third party partners.
- signal11 7y ago
  IBM and Oracle are really not in the same class as AWS, Azure and GCP, when it comes to investing in cloud infrastructure. They’re bit players at best: http://www.platformonomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/clip_image003.png http://www.platformonomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/cl... From this article: https://www.platformonomics.com/2018/05/follow-the-capex-separating-the-clowns-from-the-clouds/ https://www.platformonomics.com/2018/05/follow-the-capex-sep...
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Yea, that's the point. If they can't keep up then nobody else can.
x0x0 7y ago
There's not much competition because of enormous lockin effects. Once a cloud provider is chosen, you're pretty wedded to it. Inside your dev team, every institutional bit of knowledge about how AWS works, how to configure it, how to work around their mostly bad docs, and how to navigate their hot garbage UI. Every line of code that touches an AWS api. If you need data centers in certain regions for eg localization laws, AWS is afaik the only choice.

but why aren't those fat profit margins being competed away by competitors?

rapsey 7y ago

There aren’t that many competitors and they like profit as well.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Finnucane 7y ago

Who has the resources and interest to compete in that market who isn't trying to already?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

manigandham 7y ago

Because of the capital and talent required to build a competitive offering. Even large companies like IBM and Oracle have failed to keep up. The big 3 clouds have built a nice moat and can charge whatever they want. They still compete on prices but it's clear they're colluding on network fees at least.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
It's not just capital or talent. I have seen first hand non-tech executive decision makers pick a specific cloud provider because of the old adage "No one got fired for buying IBM". That momentum is incredibly hard to compete against. Google Cloud is fairly solid from a technology perspective, not to mention Google's deep pockets, and still has an uphill climb against MS and AWS.
- scarface74 7y ago
  GCP may be just as good technologically, but their customer support and especially enterprise support is piss poor.
  - justesjc 7y ago
    Some would say, non-existent.
  - castlecrasher2 7y ago
    Not directly a response to you, but GCP is actually phenomenal in some areas over AWS: BigQuery, Data Studio (I know it's not really "GCP" but vs AWS' offering), and Pubsub come to mind. Oddly enough, they falter in other areas: no equivalent to Kinesis Firehose, and true to your point, I was told by customer service just to build my own DataFlow job to take a Pubsub topic and make files. It's like some of their product managers have a very customer-first mindset (BigQuery, Pubsub) and some could not care less.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    Their model is third party partners.
signal11 7y ago
IBM and Oracle are really not in the same class as AWS, Azure and GCP, when it comes to investing in cloud infrastructure. They’re bit players at best: http://www.platformonomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/clip_image003.png http://www.platformonomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/cl... From this article: https://www.platformonomics.com/2018/05/follow-the-capex-separating-the-clowns-from-the-clouds/ https://www.platformonomics.com/2018/05/follow-the-capex-sep...
- manigandham 7y ago
  Yea, that's the point. If they can't keep up then nobody else can.

x0x0 7y ago

There's not much competition because of enormous lockin effects. Once a cloud provider is chosen, you're pretty wedded to it. Inside your dev team, every institutional bit of knowledge about how AWS works, how to configure it, how to work around their mostly bad docs, and how to navigate their hot garbage UI. Every line of code that touches an AWS api. If you need data centers in certain regions for eg localization laws, AWS is afaik the only choice.