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"We launched our Web services two years ago; it's the equivalent of creating an electric grid, but for computing. Recently, I went to Luxembourg and visited a 3

by mrtron 18y ago

"We launched our Web services two years ago; it's the equivalent of creating an electric grid, but for computing. Recently, I went to Luxembourg and visited a 300-year-old brewery. It had this gigantic relic of a generator from when it had to make its own electricity. As soon as they could buy off-grid, they did. Making their own electricity didn't make their beer taste better. It's the same for running your own data center." Awesome analogy. I don't understand why so many people want to host their own services. Stick to your core business.

kragen 18y ago
Many businesses have their own photocopiers, fax machines, and PBXs, do their own accounting, maintain their own supplier lists, provide support to their own customers when they have problems, and pay their own employees, even though you can outsource each of these services. Sometimes the problems of outsourcing a business function are greater than the benefits of the enhanced specialization. For several years now, the vast majority of companies that have an internet connection have had some of their internet-connected computers inside their own companies, and others somewhere else, like a colocation center. Even though AWS is pretty awesome, I don't expect that to change anytime soon; the balance will shift back and forth according to things like available technology, legal liability, experienced quality of service, and so on.
strlen 18y ago
Depends on when providing a web service with an SLA is your core competency. I'd readily use S3/EC2 for running Hadoop/doing backups/rapid prototyping (and use a CDN for static hosting) -- but if your core competency is providing a web service with an SLA* you want to control as much of the stack involved in that process as possible. Of courses in these cases you'd want to outsource as much of the lower-level work as possible (e.g. having a third party company rack and stack and provide you with a serial console). * Not all web applications require an SLA, early adopter consumer applications, e.g. Twitter would be an obvious example.

by mrtron 18y ago

kragen 18y ago

Many businesses have their own photocopiers, fax machines, and PBXs, do their own accounting, maintain their own supplier lists, provide support to their own customers when they have problems, and pay their own employees, even though you can outsource each of these services. Sometimes the problems of outsourcing a business function are greater than the benefits of the enhanced specialization. For several years now, the vast majority of companies that have an internet connection have had some of their internet-connected computers inside their own companies, and others somewhere else, like a colocation center. Even though AWS is pretty awesome, I don't expect that to change anytime soon; the balance will shift back and forth according to things like available technology, legal liability, experienced quality of service, and so on.

strlen 18y ago

Depends on when providing a web service with an SLA is your core competency. I'd readily use S3/EC2 for running Hadoop/doing backups/rapid prototyping (and use a CDN for static hosting) -- but if your core competency is providing a web service with an SLA* you want to control as much of the stack involved in that process as possible. Of courses in these cases you'd want to outsource as much of the lower-level work as possible (e.g. having a third party company rack and stack and provide you with a serial console). * Not all web applications require an SLA, early adopter consumer applications, e.g. Twitter would be an obvious example.