4 ms·

The only companies that have justifiable merit of saying they have launched a rival to AWS are either government backed entities, Snowflake or IBM and/or a joi

The only companies that have justifiable merit of saying they have launched a rival to AWS are either government backed entities, Snowflake or IBM and/or a joint venture of server manufacturers. I have no clue why IBM cloud has such a poor market position considering how dominant of a business it was. But there is still hope. A combined forces attempt could be a viable strategy. Snowflake has changed cloud service providers several times to my knowledge. In my opinion their offering and business philosophy is unique to allow themselves to venture into this business. For government backed cloud you have Alibaba cloud as an example. Regional cloud service peovider with government funding or active monitoring is an evetuality in my opinion. The Ukraine situation proves my point. Keep an eye out on India for this. I feel like the govt is gonna give it a shot before 2030. The reason behind this deserves its own article.

ShroudedNight 5y ago
I don't know what the status is now, but back when I was working for IBM, their Bluemix offering demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to operational excellence with seemingly routine downtime, with an undercurrent of "It's 1700, time to sod off for the day" regardless of the state of their service. It also didn't help that they seemed intent on paying 35+% less than other competing tech companies.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  I am big on B2B businesses. I think the higher bureaucracy the better moat! But I think, IBM really tested this philosophy to its breaking point. My sentiment is that IBM Cloud should be broken down to smaller distinct ventures and hiring visionary leaders at each ventures. Like government, enterprise, Small Business+Startup+Open Source etc. They got incredibly lazy.
jeroenhd 5y ago
Most of these AWS alternatives seem to be based on OpenStack, and there are many hosters around the world who offer the AWS services most people use. EC2+S3+EBS+load balancing is all most businesses probably need. Add some mid-2000s style hosted databases and you're probably set up. Truthfully, most businesses don't even need all that, but modern development practices tend not to care too much about efficiency. All you really need to start competing with AWS is a data center and a shiny dashboard. They already had the data center for their own use, so extending it to provide IT services is quite a logical next step. Granted, STACKIT isn't as complete an offering like Open Telekom Cloud, but it's close enough to matter.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  That is a very good point. After I made that comment I kept wondering what is the real difference of traditional private data centers and big cloud. Like they do 99% of what the cloud companies provide. It is all about the buzzword. I tell interviewers that I don't use AWS or GCP because I don't need to use it. I use my RPI where I can use docker/virtual environment, SSH/SFTP, use it as a NAS but it is always a hard sell. In the last 5 years the term "Linux Experience" has been switched to "AWS Experience" yet they require exact same skill set! The only issue is that billing dashboard. But beyond that I wonder, has things really changed.

ShroudedNight 5y ago

I don't know what the status is now, but back when I was working for IBM, their Bluemix offering demonstrated a complete lack of commitment to operational excellence with seemingly routine downtime, with an undercurrent of "It's 1700, time to sod off for the day" regardless of the state of their service. It also didn't help that they seemed intent on paying 35+% less than other competing tech companies.

anyfactor 5y ago
I am big on B2B businesses. I think the higher bureaucracy the better moat! But I think, IBM really tested this philosophy to its breaking point. My sentiment is that IBM Cloud should be broken down to smaller distinct ventures and hiring visionary leaders at each ventures. Like government, enterprise, Small Business+Startup+Open Source etc. They got incredibly lazy.

jeroenhd 5y ago

Most of these AWS alternatives seem to be based on OpenStack, and there are many hosters around the world who offer the AWS services most people use. EC2+S3+EBS+load balancing is all most businesses probably need. Add some mid-2000s style hosted databases and you're probably set up. Truthfully, most businesses don't even need all that, but modern development practices tend not to care too much about efficiency. All you really need to start competing with AWS is a data center and a shiny dashboard. They already had the data center for their own use, so extending it to provide IT services is quite a logical next step. Granted, STACKIT isn't as complete an offering like Open Telekom Cloud, but it's close enough to matter.

anyfactor 5y ago
That is a very good point. After I made that comment I kept wondering what is the real difference of traditional private data centers and big cloud. Like they do 99% of what the cloud companies provide. It is all about the buzzword. I tell interviewers that I don't use AWS or GCP because I don't need to use it. I use my RPI where I can use docker/virtual environment, SSH/SFTP, use it as a NAS but it is always a hard sell. In the last 5 years the term "Linux Experience" has been switched to "AWS Experience" yet they require exact same skill set! The only issue is that billing dashboard. But beyond that I wonder, has things really changed.