3 ms·

Compute is at a premium, but you can shift opex/capex around which might be more suitable. It can also be cheaper in headcount since you need fewer operators an

Compute is at a premium, but you can shift opex/capex around which might be more suitable. It can also be cheaper in headcount since you need fewer operators and less expertise in datacenter operations.

adolph 3y ago
> you need fewer operators and less expertise in datacenter operations Because you are paying someone else for them. This is considered rational because those operators are presumably more productive in a pool of people using similar skills to support many customers rather than just one. It is similar to hiring a cleaning service rather than employing individual cleaners in a department of cleaning because cleaning things is not a core competency of business. It might be less irrational if some amount of compute is part of the core competency of the business. Since "software is eating the world," compute is a core competency of all businesses except for the ones that don't realize it yet.
- campbel 3y ago
  I think there is a difference in competency between using Cloud Compute and running your own Datacenter. Perhaps some companies have the overlap, but I suspect this is an additional skillset they need to cultivate to achieve the savings.
wharvle 3y ago
> It can also be cheaper in headcount since you need fewer operators and less expertise in datacenter operations. I've not really seen this work out well. I think it might be true for simple set-ups, letting a tiny developer team also handle infra and support without going nuts doing it, if they set it up that way from the beginning, but more-complex setups always seem to have so damn many sharp edges and moving pieces that support ends up looking similar to what a far more DIY approach (short of building one's own datacenter outright) would, in terms of time lost to it. ... and so does downtime, for that matter.
vidarh 3y ago
When I've done devops consulting, clients with cloud deployments invariably spent more money on devops because of the often significantly more complex environments.

adolph 3y ago

> you need fewer operators and less expertise in datacenter operations Because you are paying someone else for them. This is considered rational because those operators are presumably more productive in a pool of people using similar skills to support many customers rather than just one. It is similar to hiring a cleaning service rather than employing individual cleaners in a department of cleaning because cleaning things is not a core competency of business. It might be less irrational if some amount of compute is part of the core competency of the business. Since "software is eating the world," compute is a core competency of all businesses except for the ones that don't realize it yet.

campbel 3y ago
I think there is a difference in competency between using Cloud Compute and running your own Datacenter. Perhaps some companies have the overlap, but I suspect this is an additional skillset they need to cultivate to achieve the savings.

wharvle 3y ago

> It can also be cheaper in headcount since you need fewer operators and less expertise in datacenter operations. I've not really seen this work out well. I think it might be true for simple set-ups, letting a tiny developer team also handle infra and support without going nuts doing it, if they set it up that way from the beginning, but more-complex setups always seem to have so damn many sharp edges and moving pieces that support ends up looking similar to what a far more DIY approach (short of building one's own datacenter outright) would, in terms of time lost to it. ... and so does downtime, for that matter.

vidarh 3y ago

When I've done devops consulting, clients with cloud deployments invariably spent more money on devops because of the often significantly more complex environments.