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A frequently overlooked aspect in enterprise is billing, accounting and supplier agreement overhead. In enterprise, Joe developer can often add / use more AWS
by zxcmx 7y ago
A frequently overlooked aspect in enterprise is billing, accounting and supplier agreement overhead.
In enterprise, Joe developer can often add / use more AWS services and it just goes on the giant enterprise bill, no questions asked.
If you want to use a third party service, waay more work. Supplier assessment needs to be done (by the department that does that) looking at security, company stability, data sovereignty etc. Procurement get involved to negotiate supplier agreement with the vendor and your project needs a specific budget line item which might require a trip to accounting. To get signoff and justify your vendor selection you might also have to do a stupid internal evaluation thing / bakeoff (even though of course you know the thing you really want) where you build feature matrix and carefully adjust the rows so your preferred vendor gets the most ticks.
All this paperwork can take weeks or months.
While a lot of the AWS service offerings are sub-par compared to alternatives, the technical work of papering over this is usually less risky than dealing with all the internal departments which will delay your project if you try to use another vendor.
I think this is a big driver towards bundling being a win for them.
- user5994461 7y ago>>> While a lot of the AWS service offerings are sub-par compared to alternatives If you try to get some services in an entreprise, maybe a physical server or get a database, you may easily find that it takes months of paperwork and waiting. Then it's poorly operated and broken half of the time (why are they provisioning a hundred databases on a single shared host? or using a shared NAS as storage?) AWS services may not be perfect but it's miles ahead from the shitty services you get in an enterprise.
- caseymarquis 7y agoHeck, I work at a 20 person company and this is still generally true. No one is stopping me from using a new service, but using AWS means no new paperwork and no questions. Actionable advice on this would be: If you're B2B, have an option for yearly billing via invoice. Billing yearly via invoice vs a monthly direct debit means our finance people deal with payment, and just ask Engineering once a year if they should pay this weird bill they got. Billing via direct debit means I have to do paperwork every month. I don't enjoy things like paperwork. I do enjoy things like building a single customer MVP version of your service on AWS in a couple hours. You can guess which I'm going to choose if you don't offer yearly billing.
- fierarul 7y agoSeems a bit risky to wait a whole year to collect what's due. I don't believe I ever heard of yearly invoicing like this. Of course, if your small company would like to pre-pay towards an approximation of your early invoice I'm pretty sure some company would be accommodating.
- caseymarquis 7y agoI figured paying for a year up front was implied.
- iakh 7y agoNot sure how that could work since most services are based on consumption
- therockspush 7y agoConsumption buying is mostly done through the AWS marketplace. Its a good model for companies to try a new vendor but AWS is going to take a big wet bite out of the vendors bottom line. Buying licenses directly from vendors is going to benefit both sides if they have a known demand. You'll generally see an "all you can eat" license after a certain threshold.
- scarface74 7y agoIt goes even further. Even if you are a third party, it makes sense to use the AWS marketplace to allow enterprises to consolidate billing. ACloudGuru offers its subscriptions on AWS just because it makes procurement easier.