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> Because the cloud providers advertise to tech startups. That's not true at all. Cloud services are very attractive to good old fashioned companies, because t

> Because the cloud providers advertise to tech startups. That's not true at all. Cloud services are very attractive to good old fashioned companies, because they express the cost of using computational resources as a simple monthly bill, just like any other utility. Your manager goes through the monthly bills and he sees, say, electricity, water, cloud infrastructure, cleaning, office supplies. That's it. No need to know what a server is or what a spot instance is. If the costs fluctuate smoothly and within boundaries then you simply don't worry about them.

vidarh 7y ago
> That's not true at all. I have lost count of the number of startups I've evaluated that have gotten $25k-$100k in credits from AWS or Google Cloud, or both. When I was doing consulting I once got paid to first set up an environment on AWS despite them knowing it was too expensive for them, then to migrate from AWS to Google Cloud, then to migrate from Google Cloud to Hetzner - all because my fees for doing the setups and migrations were far lower than the free credits heaped on them by AWS and Google. There are certainly reasons why people in bigger companies like them as well, though from what I see most of the time it is because they can slip the cost under the nose of the manager one level up in a way that is harder to do with more clearly quantified contracts. It's boiling frogs - as long as the cost just slowly creeps up, it doesn't get queried.
- rumanator 7y ago
  I am a bit skeptical regarding your claims. Without any detail, if you're talking about companies whose business justifies $100k credits from AWS then you're not talking about normal businesses that have at best a local presence. If your company has a global presence then Hetzner doesn't quit cut it, as they only have data centers on Germany and Finland[1] and the added latency of accessing their data centers from non-european space is something that easily adds 100-200ms to each request. Hetzner is indeed excellent if you are a cost-conscious european client that is willing to absorb the cost of self-managed bare-metal or quasi-bare metal servers and cares about saving on bandwidth costs. However, if your goal is to provide a world-wide service then you are compelled to look elsewhere. Even competing european service providers such as OVH[2] or scaleway[3] fare better than Hetzner on this domain. [1] https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/rechenzentrum/ https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/rechenzentrum/ [2] https://us.ovhcloud.com/about/company/data-centers https://us.ovhcloud.com/about/company/data-centers [3] https://www.scaleway.com/en/datacenter/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/datacenter/
  - vidarh 7y ago
    I'm talking about tiny startups. And Hetzner works just fine for most small startups even if/when they have a US audience - the latency is perfectly manageable, though in those kind situations you will certainly want to expand into other regions later. The main point, though, is that even when you scale, nothing stops you from using Hetzner for Europe, and e.g. OVH for US, and indeed filling in with things like AWS when there are needs you can't otherwise meet. In reality very few startups gets to a scale where this starts to matter, and overoptimizing for it at the cost of infra spend at the start is a great way of running out of money - seen that happen way too many times.
    - warrenm 7y ago
      And Hetzner has cloud/VPS/etc offerings in Germany & Finland: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

vidarh 7y ago

> That's not true at all. I have lost count of the number of startups I've evaluated that have gotten $25k-$100k in credits from AWS or Google Cloud, or both. When I was doing consulting I once got paid to first set up an environment on AWS despite them knowing it was too expensive for them, then to migrate from AWS to Google Cloud, then to migrate from Google Cloud to Hetzner - all because my fees for doing the setups and migrations were far lower than the free credits heaped on them by AWS and Google. There are certainly reasons why people in bigger companies like them as well, though from what I see most of the time it is because they can slip the cost under the nose of the manager one level up in a way that is harder to do with more clearly quantified contracts. It's boiling frogs - as long as the cost just slowly creeps up, it doesn't get queried.

rumanator 7y ago
I am a bit skeptical regarding your claims. Without any detail, if you're talking about companies whose business justifies $100k credits from AWS then you're not talking about normal businesses that have at best a local presence. If your company has a global presence then Hetzner doesn't quit cut it, as they only have data centers on Germany and Finland[1] and the added latency of accessing their data centers from non-european space is something that easily adds 100-200ms to each request. Hetzner is indeed excellent if you are a cost-conscious european client that is willing to absorb the cost of self-managed bare-metal or quasi-bare metal servers and cares about saving on bandwidth costs. However, if your goal is to provide a world-wide service then you are compelled to look elsewhere. Even competing european service providers such as OVH[2] or scaleway[3] fare better than Hetzner on this domain. [1] https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/rechenzentrum/ https://www.hetzner.com/unternehmen/rechenzentrum/ [2] https://us.ovhcloud.com/about/company/data-centers https://us.ovhcloud.com/about/company/data-centers [3] https://www.scaleway.com/en/datacenter/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/datacenter/
- vidarh 7y ago
  I'm talking about tiny startups. And Hetzner works just fine for most small startups even if/when they have a US audience - the latency is perfectly manageable, though in those kind situations you will certainly want to expand into other regions later. The main point, though, is that even when you scale, nothing stops you from using Hetzner for Europe, and e.g. OVH for US, and indeed filling in with things like AWS when there are needs you can't otherwise meet. In reality very few startups gets to a scale where this starts to matter, and overoptimizing for it at the cost of infra spend at the start is a great way of running out of money - seen that happen way too many times.
  - warrenm 7y ago
    And Hetzner has cloud/VPS/etc offerings in Germany & Finland: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud https://www.hetzner.com/cloud