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The business benefits of the cloud are ability to scale, an API for everything, cheap automation, cheap managed services for everything, and good customer suppo

The business benefits of the cloud are ability to scale, an API for everything, cheap automation, cheap managed services for everything, and good customer support. Like you say for your model none of those things may be important, but they're killer features for others

FpUser 5y ago
>"ability to scale" I write C++ business API servers. On the type of hardware I rent from Hetzner /OVH they're capable of processing thousands of requests per second. This would cover probably 90+ percent of real world businesses. >"an API for everything" Not sure what you mean here. API for what in particular? My servers talk to partner systems of real businesses. We consume their APIs and they consume ours. Integration is done by little plugins that translate requests should it be needed. I am not sure how Amazon will help in this department. The only generic API that everyone uses is email but you do not need Amazon for that. As for database - I always deploy one local to my business server. >"good customer support" Frankly in many years there was like 2-3 times when I needed something resembling support from Hetzner / OVH. In either case the response was prompt and satisfactory.
- dspillett 5y ago
  > > "an API for everything" > Not sure what you mean here. I assume referring to APIs for controlling and monitoring the infrastructure, not anything about APIs you may provide in your application or consume from external sources.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    What infrastructure? Thanks to my primitive approach I hardly have any.
    - easton 5y ago
      If you want to dynamically provision storage or grab an extra instance when you’re under load or something. It’s handy to not have to sit on a bunch of storage you’re not using just in case there’s a rush.
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        Unless the storage (or compute) is so cheap that it's cheaper to just always have enough on hand than bother with autoscaling and the added complexity and potential point of failure. Old-school dedicated servers are so cheap that you can match a startups' peak autoscaled load and still pay less than their "idle" load.
        FpUser 5y ago
        Exactly my case. My peak load costs are way less than their "idle". Storage expansion if needed is even simpler to handle. Those cloudy people like to create problems where none exists.
- forty 5y ago
  Of course there are use cases where not using cloud facilities is cheaper, but unless your business is low margin the difference might still be irrelevant and having the managed services available easily can be handy if you ever need them. There are many use cases where hosting fee is not the right thing to optimize for.
  - funcDropShadow 5y ago
    The last time I compared hosting prices of AWS with self-hosting. AWS based hosting would have cost us every three month the cost of buying over the top speced server hardware. These numbers are not directly comparable, but they are a large difference to account for colocation and maintenance. And we never managed to get a similar performance of postgres on AWS compared to the self-hosted version we use now. But the main advantage is the simplification you get. It is certainly not easier to use you own hardware, but it is far simpler.

FpUser 5y ago

>"ability to scale" I write C++ business API servers. On the type of hardware I rent from Hetzner /OVH they're capable of processing thousands of requests per second. This would cover probably 90+ percent of real world businesses. >"an API for everything" Not sure what you mean here. API for what in particular? My servers talk to partner systems of real businesses. We consume their APIs and they consume ours. Integration is done by little plugins that translate requests should it be needed. I am not sure how Amazon will help in this department. The only generic API that everyone uses is email but you do not need Amazon for that. As for database - I always deploy one local to my business server. >"good customer support" Frankly in many years there was like 2-3 times when I needed something resembling support from Hetzner / OVH. In either case the response was prompt and satisfactory.

dspillett 5y ago
> > "an API for everything" > Not sure what you mean here. I assume referring to APIs for controlling and monitoring the infrastructure, not anything about APIs you may provide in your application or consume from external sources.
- FpUser 5y ago
  What infrastructure? Thanks to my primitive approach I hardly have any.
  - easton 5y ago
    If you want to dynamically provision storage or grab an extra instance when you’re under load or something. It’s handy to not have to sit on a bunch of storage you’re not using just in case there’s a rush.
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Unless the storage (or compute) is so cheap that it's cheaper to just always have enough on hand than bother with autoscaling and the added complexity and potential point of failure. Old-school dedicated servers are so cheap that you can match a startups' peak autoscaled load and still pay less than their "idle" load.
      - FpUser 5y ago
        Exactly my case. My peak load costs are way less than their "idle". Storage expansion if needed is even simpler to handle. Those cloudy people like to create problems where none exists.
forty 5y ago
Of course there are use cases where not using cloud facilities is cheaper, but unless your business is low margin the difference might still be irrelevant and having the managed services available easily can be handy if you ever need them. There are many use cases where hosting fee is not the right thing to optimize for.
- funcDropShadow 5y ago
  The last time I compared hosting prices of AWS with self-hosting. AWS based hosting would have cost us every three month the cost of buying over the top speced server hardware. These numbers are not directly comparable, but they are a large difference to account for colocation and maintenance. And we never managed to get a similar performance of postgres on AWS compared to the self-hosted version we use now. But the main advantage is the simplification you get. It is certainly not easier to use you own hardware, but it is far simpler.