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Bezos likes the analogy about Amazon services being "electricity" for other businesses, i.e. you don't to have to own a generator if you operate a restaurant (a
by tx 18y ago
Bezos likes the analogy about Amazon services being "electricity" for other businesses, i.e. you don't to have to own a generator if you operate a restaurant (as they used to back in the day) - just "hook up to the grid" and you're all set.
Funny analogy, since all data centers DO have their own generators: they're not restaurants.
- demandred 18y agodata center = electricity for startups. why is this analogy funny? Instead of running their own generator (server and storage), for those startups who don't need to, they can use Amazon's power, AWS. am I missing something here?
- gscott 18y agoYes you are missing the part where the eletricity cuts off, you don't know why, you can't do anything about it, and because you relied so heavily on your electricity provider you didn't set up a plan to make your own. If your site is your personal blog or something not important, then downtime might not be a big deal. If you don't have the money for a backup electricity provider then you have to take your chances also.
- emmett 18y agoYes, that's exactly so. Remember when there was a whole day of downtime for everyone in the colo in downtown SF? Running things yourself is no guarantee of uptime. The only real fix is to maintain fully redundant systems, which is extremely expensive. Otherwise, put up with downtime sometimes, because no other system will fully protect you.
- demandred 18y agoso the analogy still works. AWS=electricity for startups. For restaurants the power does sometimes go out too. If it's life critical, like a hospital, I'm sure you'll be fully redundant.