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How does this business model survive Amazon AWS making a blog post, "Here's a template to run your deno code on Lambda!"? They'll never beat AWS on costs in th
by qbasic_forever 6y ago
How does this business model survive Amazon AWS making a blog post, "Here's a template to run your deno code on Lambda!"? They'll never beat AWS on costs in the long term. They can burn VC cash to stay afloat and try I guess.
- minxomat 6y agoThey compete much more with Cloudflare Workers, not Lambda. So much so that Deno Deploy is worker API compatible
- ignoramous 6y agoWorkers is now a much capable platform. It supports eventual KV storage, caching large files, longer runtimes (30m+), WebSockets, WASM-executables, and distributed mail-boxes àla Erlang. Lambda integrates with existing AWS services, whilst Cloudflare invents newer services to go along with the serverless-first paradigm. Different strategies but they do compete with each other.
- tnolet 6y agoThere are many, many companies competing with AWS on products that strictly speaking AWS also has. I mean Zoom has no right to exist because you can use Chime? There is always room for better UX, better support, different approach etc.
- whimsicalism 6y agoI find the idea that AWS will just eat the competition always a little silly as well. I've used AWS managed offerings that were far inferior to the alternatives.
- qbasic_forever 6y agoAnd yet we've never seen anyone beat Amazon yet. Look at how much the PaaS area has churned over the last 10 years. Giants that stuck around like Docker are completely deflated and near worthless compared to their initial values and expectations. The smart ones like Heroku got out when the getting was good.
- musingsole 6y ago> And yet we've never seen anyone beat Amazon yet. That largely depends on your definitions of "beat" and "win". There are plenty of software infrastructure firms out there that Amazon has yet to smash into the ground. Nature seems to think (and I agree) simply existing is winning.
- kyawzazaw 6y agoPlease give examples. I would like to learn more about it (even if subjective)
- musingsole 6y agoDigitalOcean is a competitor of comparable size (even if its like a pebble to a boulder): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blavatnik-backed-digitalocean-sinks-775-170108292.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blavatnik-backed-digitalocean...
- mewpmewp2 6y agoI use Digital Ocean and definitely vouch for them. They are way cheaper compared to AWS too. Nice, slick UI too.
- azinman2 6y agoSo why were you using the AWS managed offering then instead of the alternative?
- natevancouver 6y agoUsually because the company already pays an AWS bill. No one will care if you add another Lambda function, but to use an alternative you’ll have to get past some gatekeepers.
- azinman2 6y agoSo there you go. Lots of friction for competitors.
- carlosf 6y agoLambda has a ton of caveats and limitations... but it seems their platform is full of limits as well: https://deno.com/deploy/docs/pricing-and-limits https://deno.com/deploy/docs/pricing-and-limits AWS sucks hairy balls at providing things that are simple for developers to use, so that could be their competitive advantage, but I'm just guessing here.
- toredash 6y agoAnd deno will also have a lot of limitations
- jppope 6y agoLambda uses containers vs. cloudflare workers use v8 isolates. v8 Isolates are much much faster and more secure for serverless functions. Deno seems to be targeting cloudflare as a competitor for their service... But it's probable that AWS will release a cloudflare worker competitor themselves if deno continues with the MIT license.
- ignoramous 6y ago> Lambda uses containers vs. cloudflare workers use v8 isolates. v8 Isolates are much much faster and more secure for serverless functions. You're right that v8 Isolates are blazing fast, but Lambda runs functions in a microvm spawn by Firecracker [0], which is likely to be more, not less, secure than Isolates [1]. [0] https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/ https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/ [1] https://fly.io/blog/sandboxing-and-workload-isolation/ https://fly.io/blog/sandboxing-and-workload-isolation/
- kentonv 6y ago> Firecracker [0], likely to be more, not less, secure than Isolates [1] This is debatable. It's true that V8 is a much larger attack surface than Firecracker, therefore likely to have more security bugs than Firecracker itself. However, Firecracker runs attacker-provided native code directly on hardware, which means that hardware itself becomes an attack surface, one that is quite wide, not fully documented, and very hard to patch if problems arise. It's much easier to work around hardware bugs when you're working from JS / Wasm and can control the code generation. Ultimately I don't think you can really say one or the other model is more or less secure. (Disclosure: I'm the tech lead for Cloudflare Workers so I am obviously biased here.)
- ignoramous 6y agoThanks Kenton. > Firecracker runs attacker-provided native code directly on hardware, which means that hardware itself becomes an attack surface, one that is quite wide, not fully documented, and very hard to patch if problems arise. It's much easier to work around hardware bugs... I see your point. I mean, Google wouldn't put as much effort as they are on gVisor if KVMs were the best possible answer.
- IgorPartola 6y agoThey can always get acquired by Amazon first.
- qbasic_forever 6y agoIt wouldn't surprise me if that's the eventual end goal. Amazon is looking for good Rust talent too from what I've read.
- IgorPartola 6y agoThat’s the goal of almost all startups. Your chances of being acquired by a FAANG company are millions of times greater than going IPO. It is almost always the exit strategy.