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> In this case BoA are saving money but in exchange retain additional layers of staffing, that require oversight, and ultimately decision makers willing to take

> In this case BoA are saving money but in exchange retain additional layers of staffing, that require oversight, and ultimately decision makers willing to take risks. I think some companies, like BOA, look at this as the safer alternative. We all assume that large Cloud providers are bulletproof. That's just because we haven't seen them taken down yet. Someday we will. Just wait until there's another major world conflict. These global companies with outsourced IT will be in ruins because politics and digital DMZ's will keep them from acting cohesively. For an organization like a bank that's worth over $400b that layer of staffing, equipment, oversight, and all the inefficiencies are a $400b insurance policy that you will be able to continue operating regardless of geographic or political events outside of your control.

dwoozle 7y ago
Exactly. Jeff Bezos tweets something that gets Xi’s panties in a ruffle and AWS is blocked in China and Bank of America can’t do cross border payments... no way should such a big company have their eggs in such a basket.
Someone1234 7y ago
I believe you misread the quoted remark. It was about decision maker's personal (career) risk when making decisions. Keeping things in-house means more decisions are taken in-house which increases personal risk to the management for getting things wrong. In context this is much clearer: > This isn't simply about having fewer staff (although that can reduce internal politics and inefficiencies), but making fewer decisions and more importantly reducing the potential for making the wrong decisions (which can be career-costly, regardless of right decisions made previously). The post above doesn't discuss cloud Vs. non-cloud security/safety at all.
TuringNYC 7y ago
> In this case BoA are saving money but in exchange retain additional layers of staffing, that require oversight, and ultimately decision makers willing to take risks. I've been at multiple Fortune 50 companies at multiple levels. Many times these types of infrastructure building are just forms of empire building and an attempt to embed ones' services in the organization at a very deep level. You convert one set of costs (AWS/GCP/Azure bills) for another set of costs (Infrastructure + Payroll). You also convert one set of headaches (CSP overcharging/auditing) for another (prima donna internal infra engineers.)
- angry_octet 7y ago
  What's worse, someone being a prima donna or the unchangeable facts of AWS operation policies? You will always encounter roadblocks and misfeatures, but can you get around them? Don't get me wrong, most corporate IT is deeply incompetent at their core job. It's just that you can't fix the deep problems by outsourcing the computer part.
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    > What's worse, someone being a prima donna or the unchangeable facts of AWS operation policies? There's this great thing about BOA-sized support contracts where you get to call up the senior product managers and demand that they build the features that you want. And if you're not happy about something, engineers will drop what they're working on to appease you. I wonder how many customers were interested in setting up a Custom Keystore for KMS on CloudHSM? https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/are-kms-custom-key-stores-right-for-you/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/are-kms-custom-key-sto...
    - kthejoker2 7y ago
      Can confirm, I'd say 20-30% of all Azure features come directly from the product teams' Partner Advisory Council (read: top customers) meetings. Like "snap your fingers" implementation.
      - bonesss 7y ago
        And what's the alternative? Losing your biggest customers because you couldn't be assed to put a new button on some load-balancer configuration? Of course, for small or medium customers whose finger snaps are ignored... WYSIWYG. The roadblocks in not-your cloud are still your roadblocks.
        kthejoker2 7y ago
        Sorry, I guess it wasn't clear that I wasn't complaining or anything, just confirming the facts on the ground. But (in a vacuum) when developing a solution to serve diverse needs and stakeholders, the HiPPO effect is definitely an anti-pattern.
allthecybers 7y ago
BOA also didn't (doesn't) really trust the public cloud. During several all hands meetings in the org, the inevitable question of "when are we gonna start using the public cloud" came up and the leaders would always say "we aren't because it isn't secure enough" or "we'd rather maintain our current governance model over what our devs build". To your point, we need only point to recent events to show the universal customer pain that can be caused by a bad code push at Azure or AWS.
- snowwrestler 7y ago
  A factor that is easy for developers to overlook is that the legal system still cares who owns the hardware. So if all your stuff is at Amazon, a warrant can be served to Amazon and they will let the cops into your stuff. No contract can keep that from happening. If a company (or person) really wants complete visibility and control into their relationship with law enforcement, they have to host their own hardware... ideally, their own data center.

dwoozle 7y ago

Exactly. Jeff Bezos tweets something that gets Xi’s panties in a ruffle and AWS is blocked in China and Bank of America can’t do cross border payments... no way should such a big company have their eggs in such a basket.

Someone1234 7y ago

I believe you misread the quoted remark. It was about decision maker's personal (career) risk when making decisions. Keeping things in-house means more decisions are taken in-house which increases personal risk to the management for getting things wrong. In context this is much clearer: > This isn't simply about having fewer staff (although that can reduce internal politics and inefficiencies), but making fewer decisions and more importantly reducing the potential for making the wrong decisions (which can be career-costly, regardless of right decisions made previously). The post above doesn't discuss cloud Vs. non-cloud security/safety at all.

TuringNYC 7y ago

> In this case BoA are saving money but in exchange retain additional layers of staffing, that require oversight, and ultimately decision makers willing to take risks. I've been at multiple Fortune 50 companies at multiple levels. Many times these types of infrastructure building are just forms of empire building and an attempt to embed ones' services in the organization at a very deep level. You convert one set of costs (AWS/GCP/Azure bills) for another set of costs (Infrastructure + Payroll). You also convert one set of headaches (CSP overcharging/auditing) for another (prima donna internal infra engineers.)

angry_octet 7y ago
What's worse, someone being a prima donna or the unchangeable facts of AWS operation policies? You will always encounter roadblocks and misfeatures, but can you get around them? Don't get me wrong, most corporate IT is deeply incompetent at their core job. It's just that you can't fix the deep problems by outsourcing the computer part.
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  > What's worse, someone being a prima donna or the unchangeable facts of AWS operation policies? There's this great thing about BOA-sized support contracts where you get to call up the senior product managers and demand that they build the features that you want. And if you're not happy about something, engineers will drop what they're working on to appease you. I wonder how many customers were interested in setting up a Custom Keystore for KMS on CloudHSM? https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/are-kms-custom-key-stores-right-for-you/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/are-kms-custom-key-sto...
  - kthejoker2 7y ago
    Can confirm, I'd say 20-30% of all Azure features come directly from the product teams' Partner Advisory Council (read: top customers) meetings. Like "snap your fingers" implementation.
    - bonesss 7y ago
      And what's the alternative? Losing your biggest customers because you couldn't be assed to put a new button on some load-balancer configuration? Of course, for small or medium customers whose finger snaps are ignored... WYSIWYG. The roadblocks in not-your cloud are still your roadblocks.
      - kthejoker2 7y ago
        Sorry, I guess it wasn't clear that I wasn't complaining or anything, just confirming the facts on the ground. But (in a vacuum) when developing a solution to serve diverse needs and stakeholders, the HiPPO effect is definitely an anti-pattern.

allthecybers 7y ago

BOA also didn't (doesn't) really trust the public cloud. During several all hands meetings in the org, the inevitable question of "when are we gonna start using the public cloud" came up and the leaders would always say "we aren't because it isn't secure enough" or "we'd rather maintain our current governance model over what our devs build". To your point, we need only point to recent events to show the universal customer pain that can be caused by a bad code push at Azure or AWS.

snowwrestler 7y ago
A factor that is easy for developers to overlook is that the legal system still cares who owns the hardware. So if all your stuff is at Amazon, a warrant can be served to Amazon and they will let the cops into your stuff. No contract can keep that from happening. If a company (or person) really wants complete visibility and control into their relationship with law enforcement, they have to host their own hardware... ideally, their own data center.