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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'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.
meowface 7y ago
Hopefully you'd think they compared those costs and still found the in-house option would be cheaper in the long run. Who knows, though, or who knows how accurate their estimates were.
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  Once you are deeply embedded with the in-house option, you have no competition. Sometimes distinct layers bleed into each other and things get even more messy to untangle. Also, sometimes due to embarrassment alone, you continue with the in-house option. With CSPs, at least you have four major players (AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle Cloud, ?IBM?) competing prices downward and multiple theoretical options. Yes, you have your in-house CSP expert biasing things, but since most of the work is external, at least you dont have a heavy internal weight on a home-built choice. IMHO, the better option would be a CSP-agnostic Kubernetes based layer. But IMHO we're not there yet.

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.

meowface 7y ago

Hopefully you'd think they compared those costs and still found the in-house option would be cheaper in the long run. Who knows, though, or who knows how accurate their estimates were.

TuringNYC 7y ago
Once you are deeply embedded with the in-house option, you have no competition. Sometimes distinct layers bleed into each other and things get even more messy to untangle. Also, sometimes due to embarrassment alone, you continue with the in-house option. With CSPs, at least you have four major players (AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle Cloud, ?IBM?) competing prices downward and multiple theoretical options. Yes, you have your in-house CSP expert biasing things, but since most of the work is external, at least you dont have a heavy internal weight on a home-built choice. IMHO, the better option would be a CSP-agnostic Kubernetes based layer. But IMHO we're not there yet.