4 ms·

Aren't storage drives and networking costs getting cheaper? Are rising prices like this a result of the market being an oligopoly?

by acchow 4y ago

acdha 4y ago
My guess is that it's more along the lines of GCP being expected to be profitable. They're a distant #3, possibly #4 in the market so it seems unlikely that they're trying to exploit market position when that'll just give customers another reason to switch to AWS.
- ohashi 4y ago
  Who/what order do you have? I have to imagine AWS is first. Azure? Who is maybe third above them? Oracle? Alicloud?
  - makestuff 4y ago
    AWS 34%, Azure 21%, GCP 11%, Alibaba 5% https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-of-leading-cloud-infrastructure-service-providers/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-...
  - acdha 4y ago
    https://canalys.com/newsroom/global-cloud-services-Q1-2022 https://canalys.com/newsroom/global-cloud-services-Q1-2022 has it has AWS at 33%, Azure at 21%, and GCP at 8%. Oracle and AliCloud are the two I'd expect to try for that #3 spot, especially since that could be a single acquisition if e.g. IBM is interested in selling. The potential confound here is how you measure it, of course: Microsoft gets a big jump from all of the people using Office 365, Google has G-Suite, etc. but I don't think there's any world in which Google has enough leverage to increase pricing if they don't have to.
    - simfree 4y ago
      G-Suite is not a Microsoft 365 competitor. Only businesses with limited needs seem to use G-Suite, and theu supplement it with Microsoft software a fair bit to make using G-Suite palatable. I say this as a wholly anti-Microsoft person. Even Nextcloud is doing better at delivering features to small and medium businesses than G-Suite.
      - acdha 4y ago
        You might not consider it a competitor but plenty of places do. My point was simply that it’s a separate class of product which is often bundled which makes market share numbers harder to compare.
    - fnordpiglet 4y ago
      Doesn’t like Xbox subscriptions and other unrelated malarkey factor into azure too? If you took out all the income statement stuffing I’ll bet you aws is in the 80% range.
      - acdha 4y ago
        I just looked it up because someone else called me on it. They include things like GitHub but not Xbox. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/segment-information.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/segment-information...
        simfree 4y ago
        GitHub, Teams, Office 365. Compare that to Google Chat, Google Docs and nothing for code sharing, plus Microsoft has every darn Managed Service Provider and IT guy shoving their product down businesses throats. Google has an inferior product with no sales infrastructure, its impressive they have gotten as many clients as they currently have.
    - Analemma_ 4y ago
      I have to keep saying this because somehow this myth just will not die: Microsoft does not report O365 revenue as Azure revenue. They broke those out separately many, many years ago.
      - acdha 4y ago
        I was going on the various media reports which lump them together. You’re right that they report the two separately: https://news.microsoft.com/2022/10/25/microsoft-cloud-strength-drives-first-quarter-results-5/ https://news.microsoft.com/2022/10/25/microsoft-cloud-streng... They appear to define “Intelligent Cloud” like this: > • Server products and cloud services, including Azure and other cloud services; SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (“CALs”); and Nuance and GitHub. > • Enterprise Services, including Enterprise Support Services, Microsoft Consulting Services, and Nuance professional services https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/segment-information.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/segment-information...
chrismeller 4y ago
I was thinking it’s just relative to energy prices keeping all this infrastructure plugged in, but that only makes sense (kinda) for storage.
idunno246 4y ago
in the last round of storage price increases, the biggest change for us was reading multi-region storage, like five or six figures a month increase. 'just rearchitect your application.' it seemed to really be a punishment(sin tax if you will) on a behavior they want people not to do. or align revenue with costs i guess. it really sucks working with a partner that thinks punitive actions are ok. the whole but youre on a contract so it doesnt apply yet is such bs, it just delays the pain, and we lost track of the many places we saw price increases.
- simfree 4y ago
  It feels like they are trying to push clients to use 3rd party storage platforms like Backblaze and Wasabi.
ilyt 4y ago
Yes, yes, and storage in cloud was always much more expensive than just "amount of hardware for that amount of redundancy". Bandwidth price to datacenter is below $1/Mbit at bulk rate. That is either sold in form of whole link (say 10Gbit) or per 95th percentile (essentially "peak transfer rate") not "per MB sent"

Aren't storage drives and networking costs getting cheaper? Are rising prices like this a result of the market being an oligopoly?

by acchow 4y ago

Aren't storage drives and networking costs getting cheaper? Are rising prices like this a result of the market being an oligopoly?

acdha 4y ago

My guess is that it's more along the lines of GCP being expected to be profitable. They're a distant #3, possibly #4 in the market so it seems unlikely that they're trying to exploit market position when that'll just give customers another reason to switch to AWS.

ohashi 4y ago
Who/what order do you have? I have to imagine AWS is first. Azure? Who is maybe third above them? Oracle? Alicloud?
- makestuff 4y ago
  AWS 34%, Azure 21%, GCP 11%, Alibaba 5% https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-of-leading-cloud-infrastructure-service-providers/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-...
- acdha 4y ago
  https://canalys.com/newsroom/global-cloud-services-Q1-2022 https://canalys.com/newsroom/global-cloud-services-Q1-2022 has it has AWS at 33%, Azure at 21%, and GCP at 8%. Oracle and AliCloud are the two I'd expect to try for that #3 spot, especially since that could be a single acquisition if e.g. IBM is interested in selling. The potential confound here is how you measure it, of course: Microsoft gets a big jump from all of the people using Office 365, Google has G-Suite, etc. but I don't think there's any world in which Google has enough leverage to increase pricing if they don't have to.
  - simfree 4y ago
    G-Suite is not a Microsoft 365 competitor. Only businesses with limited needs seem to use G-Suite, and theu supplement it with Microsoft software a fair bit to make using G-Suite palatable. I say this as a wholly anti-Microsoft person. Even Nextcloud is doing better at delivering features to small and medium businesses than G-Suite.
    - acdha 4y ago
      You might not consider it a competitor but plenty of places do. My point was simply that it’s a separate class of product which is often bundled which makes market share numbers harder to compare.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    Doesn’t like Xbox subscriptions and other unrelated malarkey factor into azure too? If you took out all the income statement stuffing I’ll bet you aws is in the 80% range.
    - acdha 4y ago
      I just looked it up because someone else called me on it. They include things like GitHub but not Xbox. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/segment-information.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/segment-information...
      - simfree 4y ago
        GitHub, Teams, Office 365. Compare that to Google Chat, Google Docs and nothing for code sharing, plus Microsoft has every darn Managed Service Provider and IT guy shoving their product down businesses throats. Google has an inferior product with no sales infrastructure, its impressive they have gotten as many clients as they currently have.
  - Analemma_ 4y ago
    I have to keep saying this because somehow this myth just will not die: Microsoft does not report O365 revenue as Azure revenue. They broke those out separately many, many years ago.
    - acdha 4y ago
      I was going on the various media reports which lump them together. You’re right that they report the two separately: https://news.microsoft.com/2022/10/25/microsoft-cloud-strength-drives-first-quarter-results-5/ https://news.microsoft.com/2022/10/25/microsoft-cloud-streng... They appear to define “Intelligent Cloud” like this: > • Server products and cloud services, including Azure and other cloud services; SQL Server, Windows Server, Visual Studio, System Center, and related Client Access Licenses (“CALs”); and Nuance and GitHub. > • Enterprise Services, including Enterprise Support Services, Microsoft Consulting Services, and Nuance professional services https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/segment-information.aspx https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/segment-information...

chrismeller 4y ago

I was thinking it’s just relative to energy prices keeping all this infrastructure plugged in, but that only makes sense (kinda) for storage.

idunno246 4y ago

in the last round of storage price increases, the biggest change for us was reading multi-region storage, like five or six figures a month increase. 'just rearchitect your application.' it seemed to really be a punishment(sin tax if you will) on a behavior they want people not to do. or align revenue with costs i guess. it really sucks working with a partner that thinks punitive actions are ok. the whole but youre on a contract so it doesnt apply yet is such bs, it just delays the pain, and we lost track of the many places we saw price increases.

simfree 4y ago
It feels like they are trying to push clients to use 3rd party storage platforms like Backblaze and Wasabi.

ilyt 4y ago

Yes, yes, and storage in cloud was always much more expensive than just "amount of hardware for that amount of redundancy". Bandwidth price to datacenter is below $1/Mbit at bulk rate. That is either sold in form of whole link (say 10Gbit) or per 95th percentile (essentially "peak transfer rate") not "per MB sent"