3 ms·

> In addition: long before AWS you could easily rent virtualized or dedicated servers. I disagree with this statement. Yes, you could rent, but not by the hour

> In addition: long before AWS you could easily rent virtualized or dedicated servers. I disagree with this statement. Yes, you could rent, but not by the hour and based on compute power, and couldn't rent extra storage again by the hour and by the GB. Plus, you couldn't interact with these "virtual servers" through APIs. I was at AWS 2008-2014 (early days!), and I think you should consider the impact of the "on-demand", API-by-default, nature of the AWS offering. Oh, and don't forget that with a valid credit card you could be up and running in literally minutes, not weeks. Back then AWS had decent performance, but it was pretty bad when compared to more traditional Colo offerings; but in regards to the above aspects it dominated the scene, undisputed. IMHO, that's what gave AWS most of the initial traction.

lsaferite 5y ago
>> In addition: long before AWS you could easily rent virtualized or dedicated servers. > I disagree with this statement. Your disagreement here is without merit. You are talking about facets that were never even mentioned by the GP. If you wanted to list those things off as why the previous situation was suboptimal, fine, do that. But how can you disagree with a (presumably) completely factual statement?
GordonS 5y ago
> Yes, you could rent, but not by the hour and based on compute power, and couldn't rent extra storage again by the hour and by the GB Right - because it's so cheap you don't need to rent by the hour.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Think of the case we might have at my company: we occasionally need a load of GPUs to train a new ML model. We spin up some beefy VMs with stonking great GPUs, churn away for a while, and then spin them down with our new ML model ready to go.