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> I had a conversation with a traditional retailer who was afraid of using Heap for analytics because we used AWS for hosting, which is owned by Amazon, their b

> I had a conversation with a traditional retailer who was afraid of using Heap for analytics because we used AWS for hosting, which is owned by Amazon, their biggest competitor. It sounds foreign now, but when AWS was new this happened all of the time: Companies who saw Amazon as a competitor in some way usually had someone, somewhere in management who was afraid of using anything hosted on AWS. It sounds silly now, but I remember having a lot of these conversations back when AWS was new. Typically, the older the company's management, the more likely they were to be afraid of using AWS for anything related to their business.

jcims 5y ago
I wouldn’t call it silly at all, it just depends on how strategic your failure is to Amazon’s success. At some point you become materially exposed to their decision making.
fidesomnes 5y ago
giving your customers to a 3rd party is never a wise choice.
lostcolony 5y ago
Anyone in the traditional retail space is trying to avoid Amazon. A. Because anyone in the retail space likely DOES have older management, and B. They're not entirely wrong; even if Amazon doesn't pull the rug out from under them, they're still indirectly writing checks to help fund their largest competitor.
qaq 5y ago
Why is it silly? you van use other clouds and not prop up your direct competitor
- raviparikh 5y ago
  Agree that you can choose not to use AWS yourself if you see them as a competitor. But to refuse to use any service that itself uses AWS would severely limit who you can work with.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    Most aren't in a position to insist but companies like Walmart do lean on vendors to provide a non-AWS version.
- Aeolun 5y ago
  It’s like not buying a candy bar from the closest supermarket because you own one yourself (no matter how distant).
  - htrp 5y ago
    I think it's more like not buying Starbucks when you own your own coffeeshop...
danjac 5y ago
AWS' byzantine billing is also good grounds for reasonable caution, especially for a new startup.
option_greek 5y ago
Not silly at all. Premise is pretty simple: why would you fund your competitor's cash flow (either directly or indirectly). GCP and Azure successfully acquired a lot of retailers and ecommerce providers for this reason. This happens even today with medium to large size competitors of Amazon.
asdff 5y ago
It's not like AWS controls the sole source of fire. Companies these days have wised up and know they can roll their own 'good enough' solution and customers won't have much choice to do much about it but keep feeding the beast. I remember when I genuinely believed the netflix creation myth, of this fabled streaming service that would swallow up the world and have all movies and TV in one place. Companies who ultimately hold all this IP and have these heaps of cash wised up, wait on the sidelines, poach people, and come out with stuff like Peacock thats good enough, and customers have no alternative if they want to watch stuff that only comes to that particular platform. Streaming services are the most visible examples of companies rolling their own solutions to not be beholden to other companies, but its extending to all sectors of tech.
- danrocks 5y ago
  On the streaming topic: piracy is becoming rampant again due to subscription fatigue and player fragmentation. So there is an alternative if people don't want to pay up.
  - asdff 5y ago
    No clue why MPAA couldn't pull an RIAA and have everything in one place like you see on apple music or spotify. 99 million legitimate music streaming accounts in the U.S. today, what a number. The only service offering something similar for video is piracy software that manages to outclass every streaming service from all these multi billion dollar companies in ux.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Music is sufficiently low cost that the owners of music do not mind giving it up for less money. Owners of video media apparently want more money, and are betting they can earn more by not giving up control to others and selling for cheap. I am inclined to agree with the owners of video. If people wanted easy access to all the video/tv shows, they could right now pay the various services. It is not that time consuming or laborious, it just costs a hundred or two hundred dollars per month. The fact that people do not, means that people are not willing to pay that much per month (on top of tv service subscriptions, which come with live sports).
onion2k 5y ago
AWS promise they don't look at their customers data, but if it turns out they actually are then putting your Amazon-competitor-business analytics data in AWS would be incredibly bad for you. Would you really trust Amazon enough to take that risk? There would need to be an massively good reason to do that, and "incrementally better analytics" isn't it.
- oxfordmale 5y ago
  AWS are not looking at customers data as it would be professional suicide. It would only require one disgruntled employee to leak this. Realistically they don't even have to as a proxies version of this data can be bought.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    AWS are not looking at customers data as it would be professional suicide. This is why it comes down to trusting Amazon. Essentially the question is "Do you trust Amazon not to do something that would be 'professional suicide', like accessing a rival company's AWS data, enough to risk giving them your data?" If you're running an online retailer that's a competitor to Amazon you should probably fall on the side of caution because companies do stupid shit all the time.
    - noiwillnot 5y ago
      There are plenty of reports of: - Amazon predatory pricing - Amazon trying to mistreat their workers (including AWS) as much as they can - Amazon/AWS copying products, FOSS software, and messing up with companies that they invest into. - Their complicity with all the scams going on their store. - And a big, big etc But, but, Amazon is not AWS! Amazon is retail and is a different environment! Yes, but it is under the same people.
      - handrous 5y ago
        Amazon's the scary-looking flea market on the wrong side of town with the barbed wire on the roof and a couple tough-looking guys conspicuously hanging out out front, with half the stalls full of stuff that definitely "fell off the back of the truck" and the rest selling fake Rolexes and shit. Doing that at scale doesn't make them more trustworthy. Or it shouldn't. Then again I guess if you're a super-creepy stalker at large enough scale then you're Facebook or Google and instead of getting probation and a restraining order you get billions of dollars, so maybe it does work that way.
bserge 5y ago
It sounded silly 5 years ago, now it sounds very smart.
handrous 5y ago
This still happens. Same for GitHub/Microsoft and Azure. Probably Google, too, though I've not seen that personally. Haven't seen it for CloudFlare but there definitely should be companies close enough to the spaces they're growing into that they'd be well-advised not to send traffic through them if they can avoid it. There's probably room for niche services selling "we're not hosted on 'the cloud', aren't owned by anyone likely to be in competition with you, and control our hardware" but there's a lot of overlap there with companies/owners/managers who take this to the point of not trusting anything that isn't self-hosted (because there might be security problems, nevermind that DIYing is at least as likely to have such problems, or because they fear vendor lock-in to a perhaps unhealthy degree), so it might be a hard market to sell to.

jcims 5y ago

I wouldn’t call it silly at all, it just depends on how strategic your failure is to Amazon’s success. At some point you become materially exposed to their decision making.

fidesomnes 5y ago

giving your customers to a 3rd party is never a wise choice.

lostcolony 5y ago

Anyone in the traditional retail space is trying to avoid Amazon. A. Because anyone in the retail space likely DOES have older management, and B. They're not entirely wrong; even if Amazon doesn't pull the rug out from under them, they're still indirectly writing checks to help fund their largest competitor.

qaq 5y ago

Why is it silly? you van use other clouds and not prop up your direct competitor

raviparikh 5y ago
Agree that you can choose not to use AWS yourself if you see them as a competitor. But to refuse to use any service that itself uses AWS would severely limit who you can work with.
- emodendroket 5y ago
  Most aren't in a position to insist but companies like Walmart do lean on vendors to provide a non-AWS version.
Aeolun 5y ago
It’s like not buying a candy bar from the closest supermarket because you own one yourself (no matter how distant).
- htrp 5y ago
  I think it's more like not buying Starbucks when you own your own coffeeshop...

danjac 5y ago

AWS' byzantine billing is also good grounds for reasonable caution, especially for a new startup.

option_greek 5y ago

Not silly at all. Premise is pretty simple: why would you fund your competitor's cash flow (either directly or indirectly). GCP and Azure successfully acquired a lot of retailers and ecommerce providers for this reason. This happens even today with medium to large size competitors of Amazon.

asdff 5y ago

It's not like AWS controls the sole source of fire. Companies these days have wised up and know they can roll their own 'good enough' solution and customers won't have much choice to do much about it but keep feeding the beast. I remember when I genuinely believed the netflix creation myth, of this fabled streaming service that would swallow up the world and have all movies and TV in one place. Companies who ultimately hold all this IP and have these heaps of cash wised up, wait on the sidelines, poach people, and come out with stuff like Peacock thats good enough, and customers have no alternative if they want to watch stuff that only comes to that particular platform. Streaming services are the most visible examples of companies rolling their own solutions to not be beholden to other companies, but its extending to all sectors of tech.

danrocks 5y ago
On the streaming topic: piracy is becoming rampant again due to subscription fatigue and player fragmentation. So there is an alternative if people don't want to pay up.
- asdff 5y ago
  No clue why MPAA couldn't pull an RIAA and have everything in one place like you see on apple music or spotify. 99 million legitimate music streaming accounts in the U.S. today, what a number. The only service offering something similar for video is piracy software that manages to outclass every streaming service from all these multi billion dollar companies in ux.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Music is sufficiently low cost that the owners of music do not mind giving it up for less money. Owners of video media apparently want more money, and are betting they can earn more by not giving up control to others and selling for cheap. I am inclined to agree with the owners of video. If people wanted easy access to all the video/tv shows, they could right now pay the various services. It is not that time consuming or laborious, it just costs a hundred or two hundred dollars per month. The fact that people do not, means that people are not willing to pay that much per month (on top of tv service subscriptions, which come with live sports).

onion2k 5y ago

AWS promise they don't look at their customers data, but if it turns out they actually are then putting your Amazon-competitor-business analytics data in AWS would be incredibly bad for you. Would you really trust Amazon enough to take that risk? There would need to be an massively good reason to do that, and "incrementally better analytics" isn't it.

oxfordmale 5y ago
AWS are not looking at customers data as it would be professional suicide. It would only require one disgruntled employee to leak this. Realistically they don't even have to as a proxies version of this data can be bought.
- onion2k 5y ago
  AWS are not looking at customers data as it would be professional suicide. This is why it comes down to trusting Amazon. Essentially the question is "Do you trust Amazon not to do something that would be 'professional suicide', like accessing a rival company's AWS data, enough to risk giving them your data?" If you're running an online retailer that's a competitor to Amazon you should probably fall on the side of caution because companies do stupid shit all the time.
  - noiwillnot 5y ago
    There are plenty of reports of: - Amazon predatory pricing - Amazon trying to mistreat their workers (including AWS) as much as they can - Amazon/AWS copying products, FOSS software, and messing up with companies that they invest into. - Their complicity with all the scams going on their store. - And a big, big etc But, but, Amazon is not AWS! Amazon is retail and is a different environment! Yes, but it is under the same people.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Amazon's the scary-looking flea market on the wrong side of town with the barbed wire on the roof and a couple tough-looking guys conspicuously hanging out out front, with half the stalls full of stuff that definitely "fell off the back of the truck" and the rest selling fake Rolexes and shit. Doing that at scale doesn't make them more trustworthy. Or it shouldn't. Then again I guess if you're a super-creepy stalker at large enough scale then you're Facebook or Google and instead of getting probation and a restraining order you get billions of dollars, so maybe it does work that way.

bserge 5y ago

It sounded silly 5 years ago, now it sounds very smart.

handrous 5y ago

This still happens. Same for GitHub/Microsoft and Azure. Probably Google, too, though I've not seen that personally. Haven't seen it for CloudFlare but there definitely should be companies close enough to the spaces they're growing into that they'd be well-advised not to send traffic through them if they can avoid it. There's probably room for niche services selling "we're not hosted on 'the cloud', aren't owned by anyone likely to be in competition with you, and control our hardware" but there's a lot of overlap there with companies/owners/managers who take this to the point of not trusting anything that isn't self-hosted (because there might be security problems, nevermind that DIYing is at least as likely to have such problems, or because they fear vendor lock-in to a perhaps unhealthy degree), so it might be a hard market to sell to.