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Problem: Managing server hardware takes money and people. Solution: Subscribe to a middle-man that manages it for you. Problem: The middle-man is slowly turni

Problem: Managing server hardware takes money and people. Solution: Subscribe to a middle-man that manages it for you. Problem: The middle-man is slowly turning the screws to increase its profits. Solution: Subscribe to another middle-man to figure out how to decrease the first middle-man's profits. It seems to be a universal truth that computing people try to solve all problems with another level of indirection.

yobbo 5y ago
> Problem: Managing server hardware takes money and people. For most, this was never the effective reason. Most rationales behind cloud migrations are likely based on quick scaling, which is meaningless in most cases - except for the signalling of committing to a future where demand hockey-sticks upwards. It's valid if you are netflix, but how many netflixes exist in the world?
- jatone 5y ago
  its not even valid for netflix anymore most likely.
pm90 5y ago
> It seems to be a universal truth that computing people try to solve all problems with another level of indirection. This isn’t about computing but about specialization. Should McDonalds be in the business of operating Data Centers? Or should they just buy it from those who do it best and focus on selling food?
- baq 5y ago
  i don't know. should a book store be?
  - pm90 5y ago
    It should not.
- username223 5y ago
  > Should McDonalds be in the business of operating Data Centers? Or should they just buy it from those who do it best and focus on selling food? Should they be in the business of cleaning bathrooms, or should they just outsource that to a temp agency? Sometimes specialization pays, and sometimes it doesn't. Perhaps it doesn't make sense for McDonalds to run its own web and corporate servers, but doing so might make a lot of sense for more tech-centered companies. And I'd guess a server farm is miniscule compared to the size and complexity of their ingredient supply chains.
  - pm90 5y ago
    Cleaning bathrooms is not the same level of complexity as operating datacenters… you can train a janitor pretty quickly; training a software engineer is much more involved. And even with trained software engineers, operating a reliable data center is just hard.

yobbo 5y ago

> Problem: Managing server hardware takes money and people. For most, this was never the effective reason. Most rationales behind cloud migrations are likely based on quick scaling, which is meaningless in most cases - except for the signalling of committing to a future where demand hockey-sticks upwards. It's valid if you are netflix, but how many netflixes exist in the world?

jatone 5y ago
its not even valid for netflix anymore most likely.

pm90 5y ago

> It seems to be a universal truth that computing people try to solve all problems with another level of indirection. This isn’t about computing but about specialization. Should McDonalds be in the business of operating Data Centers? Or should they just buy it from those who do it best and focus on selling food?

baq 5y ago
i don't know. should a book store be?
- pm90 5y ago
  It should not.
username223 5y ago
> Should McDonalds be in the business of operating Data Centers? Or should they just buy it from those who do it best and focus on selling food? Should they be in the business of cleaning bathrooms, or should they just outsource that to a temp agency? Sometimes specialization pays, and sometimes it doesn't. Perhaps it doesn't make sense for McDonalds to run its own web and corporate servers, but doing so might make a lot of sense for more tech-centered companies. And I'd guess a server farm is miniscule compared to the size and complexity of their ingredient supply chains.
- pm90 5y ago
  Cleaning bathrooms is not the same level of complexity as operating datacenters… you can train a janitor pretty quickly; training a software engineer is much more involved. And even with trained software engineers, operating a reliable data center is just hard.