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I know a company that got a very, very, very sweetheart deal with GCP on a tens of million dollar contract. They have a huge sales team with a monsterous entert

I know a company that got a very, very, very sweetheart deal with GCP on a tens of million dollar contract. They have a huge sales team with a monsterous entertainment budget to land "traditional" companies.

ttul 7y ago
Please lavish some of that on me, oh lords of cloud.
- shiftpgdn 7y ago
  If you have a CIO/CTO title at a "traditional" fortune 500 there are a busload of cloud sales people waiting to take you out to the finest steak houses and gentlemen's clubs as often as you please. Along with all expenses paid trips to Jackson hole, Aspen or any other upper crust resort city for company trainings and seminars.
  - ttul 7y ago
    I'll get right to work on obtaining that title now so that I can benefit from this largesse.
- ttul 7y ago
  More seriously, I have heard that you need to be doing $300K+ a month in order to attract the attention of the Jackson Hole sales people.
jbigelow76 7y ago
Translation, both Microsoft and Google have train cars full of money to light on fire in the short term to subsidize long term contracts and integrations. It'll be interesting to see who is number 2 in three and then five years.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  > train cars full of money to light on fire Is there any indicator that these credits are actually "lighting train cars full of money on fire", as opposed to "selling product with a small instead of a huge markup"?
  - Ameo 7y ago
    The cloud provider market seems too competitive for them to be getting huge markups; if there was a 50% margin on storage, why wouldn't Microsoft or whomever just knock 20% off and undercut all of their competitors thereby making them the obvious choice?
    - thu2111 7y ago
      All three are totally dependent on cloud services to power revenue growth in the forseeable future. Amazon's retail efforts aren't where the big exciting growth for investors is, it's all AWS. Windows/Office has been stagnant for a long time, or even in decline. MSFT price only took off once Azure took off. And as for Google, well, what exactly are they doing that's new other than GCP? They've got nothing that can absorb growth at their scale. If you look at the costs of the big 3 tech firm cloud solutions relative to what you can get from smaller providers, it's an enormous markup. None of them are going to compete with each other on price because that'd void the point of doing cloud to begin with. Plus tech firms hate competing on price. It signals to the market that you've run out of innovations.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- Techies4Trump 7y ago
  It will be more interesting to see who is no. 1. (it may not be AWS)
jrockway 7y ago
> They have a huge sales team with a monsterous entertainment budget to land "traditional" companies. This is the disillusionment I experienced in the B2B industry. Nobody cares about your products, they just care about getting free stuff from you. When people are buying something for a company, the money they're spending isn't theirs... but they're the one that gets free sports tickets or free dinners or whatever. It almost feels like stealing to me, but it's "business as usual".
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  Sounds like embezzlement.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    I completely agree but that is how it all works. I think if the IRS wanted to crack down on this, the US economy would grind to a halt. (I never see people paying taxes on these gifts.)

ttul 7y ago

Please lavish some of that on me, oh lords of cloud.

shiftpgdn 7y ago
If you have a CIO/CTO title at a "traditional" fortune 500 there are a busload of cloud sales people waiting to take you out to the finest steak houses and gentlemen's clubs as often as you please. Along with all expenses paid trips to Jackson hole, Aspen or any other upper crust resort city for company trainings and seminars.
- ttul 7y ago
  I'll get right to work on obtaining that title now so that I can benefit from this largesse.
ttul 7y ago
More seriously, I have heard that you need to be doing $300K+ a month in order to attract the attention of the Jackson Hole sales people.

jbigelow76 7y ago

Translation, both Microsoft and Google have train cars full of money to light on fire in the short term to subsidize long term contracts and integrations. It'll be interesting to see who is number 2 in three and then five years.

tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
> train cars full of money to light on fire Is there any indicator that these credits are actually "lighting train cars full of money on fire", as opposed to "selling product with a small instead of a huge markup"?
- Ameo 7y ago
  The cloud provider market seems too competitive for them to be getting huge markups; if there was a 50% margin on storage, why wouldn't Microsoft or whomever just knock 20% off and undercut all of their competitors thereby making them the obvious choice?
  - thu2111 7y ago
    All three are totally dependent on cloud services to power revenue growth in the forseeable future. Amazon's retail efforts aren't where the big exciting growth for investors is, it's all AWS. Windows/Office has been stagnant for a long time, or even in decline. MSFT price only took off once Azure took off. And as for Google, well, what exactly are they doing that's new other than GCP? They've got nothing that can absorb growth at their scale. If you look at the costs of the big 3 tech firm cloud solutions relative to what you can get from smaller providers, it's an enormous markup. None of them are going to compete with each other on price because that'd void the point of doing cloud to begin with. Plus tech firms hate competing on price. It signals to the market that you've run out of innovations.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
Techies4Trump 7y ago
It will be more interesting to see who is no. 1. (it may not be AWS)

jrockway 7y ago

> They have a huge sales team with a monsterous entertainment budget to land "traditional" companies. This is the disillusionment I experienced in the B2B industry. Nobody cares about your products, they just care about getting free stuff from you. When people are buying something for a company, the money they're spending isn't theirs... but they're the one that gets free sports tickets or free dinners or whatever. It almost feels like stealing to me, but it's "business as usual".

erikpukinskis 7y ago
Sounds like embezzlement.
- jrockway 7y ago
  I completely agree but that is how it all works. I think if the IRS wanted to crack down on this, the US economy would grind to a halt. (I never see people paying taxes on these gifts.)