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> Vast majority of applications have no users outside home country Any evidence to back this up. Because on the surface seems like a ridiculous statement.

alphager 3y ago
Most software is internal software used by a handful of people in a certain department of a company. Even in large multinational conglomerates the applications used by every single country subsidiary can be counted using your fingers.
noodlesUK 3y ago
I would say that a large portion of b2b or internal software tends to come into this category. If you are building something for a single business that only operates in one jurisdiction, and you don't do i18n, why bother with global distribution? A lot of b2b stuff covers process that have legal stuff baked in, like tax handling or other assumptions.
willdr 3y ago
Why does this seem ridiculous? There are more national companies than international companies, by a large factor.
- DinaCoder99 3y ago
  Are the majority of applications even developed by "companies"? I'm honestly not sure at all, or even how to go about measuring that. By the numbers, most games on steam are developed by individuals or small teams, even if the bulk of sales are driven by games produced by larger companies. I'd imagine the same is true of app stores, too.
kortilla 3y ago
Do you know how many businesses software is used for? Look at every local business you go to and enumerate the things they use software to accomplish. When they pay their local utility bills, is that international? How about paying their rent? How about filing their state taxes? How about ordering from local suppliers? Very little of the world is international business. That tiny slice that is just dominates the zeitgeist because it’s international. For some examples of things well known that absolutely don’t need global data centers: - airbus and Boeing - Coca-Cola - Marriott and Hilton - the entire US federal government (apart from some maybe military applications) - McDonald’s The list goes on forever because it’s literally nearly every business. Unless you’re in real time markets or operating store fronts globally where latency hurts sales, putting up regions all over the world is a complete and utter waste of money. Making global regions as easy as a click of a button was one of the greatest marketing ploys of cloud providers to date. “Of course Good Will needs a Singapore data center!? How will we meet our P99 goals otherwise?”
- throwaway11460 3y ago
  McDonald's absolutely does need global data centers. Even now the kiosks are frustratingly slow here in Europe, can't imagine what a round-trip to US servers would do. My siblings work there and their work information system is not so bad but definitely it'd be totally frustrating if it didn't run on AWS in EU.
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    If McD do need a global data centers to show the menu in the kiosks then they should fire their whole IT dept and start from scratch. There is absolutely zero reason for a kiosk to touch 'a global data center'. No, not even for a payment, because it's just asks the payment terminal if the payment succeeded or not.
    - throwaway11460 3y ago
      I absolutely disagree. The restaurant managers really shouldn't need to manage servers too. They get the kiosk as a service that they don't need to care about and that is correct. So McDonald's should be dispatching kiosk admins all around the world? That's very much not eco friendly. And of course, expensive... And a total nightmare to manage. K8s and AWS is a night walk through the rose garden compared to that. > No, not even for a payment, because it's just asks the payment terminal if the payment succeeded or not. Yeah sure, works great as long as the kiosk doesn't crash during the payment.
      - justsomehnguy 3y ago
        > The restaurant managers really shouldn't need to manage servers too. And they don't. Why the hell do you pull this nonsense? In case you don't know (looks like you don't) these are Windows machines[0]. Any Windows machine is capable running IIS or even Apache on it. No need for the servers for managers to manage. Just effing serve it locally, if you can't provide each McD with a mini box what is managed by the central IT. > should be dispatching kiosk admins all around the world LOL > K8s and AWS is a night walk through the rose garden compared to that. You need a sysadmin to teach you how to build robust and resilient local applications and services without being Eco-unfriendly and without racking billions in AWS bills. > Yeah sure, works great as long as the kiosk doesn't crash during the payment. Do you understand what it is the payment terminal which is processing the payment and you can't offload reading CC/NFC to the 'cloud'? And finally, there is already 'IT' infrastructure in each McD: Ethernet switches, UPSes, wireless AP and maybe a controller, menu and order screens at the counter, networked PoS and whatever else. If you claim what restaurant managers manage all these then you don't really know anything about nor retail nor IT. Or just bickering in a bad faith. [0] and if in your case they are Linux ones... do I even need to continue?

alphager 3y ago

Most software is internal software used by a handful of people in a certain department of a company. Even in large multinational conglomerates the applications used by every single country subsidiary can be counted using your fingers.

noodlesUK 3y ago

I would say that a large portion of b2b or internal software tends to come into this category. If you are building something for a single business that only operates in one jurisdiction, and you don't do i18n, why bother with global distribution? A lot of b2b stuff covers process that have legal stuff baked in, like tax handling or other assumptions.

willdr 3y ago

Why does this seem ridiculous? There are more national companies than international companies, by a large factor.

DinaCoder99 3y ago
Are the majority of applications even developed by "companies"? I'm honestly not sure at all, or even how to go about measuring that. By the numbers, most games on steam are developed by individuals or small teams, even if the bulk of sales are driven by games produced by larger companies. I'd imagine the same is true of app stores, too.

kortilla 3y ago

Do you know how many businesses software is used for? Look at every local business you go to and enumerate the things they use software to accomplish. When they pay their local utility bills, is that international? How about paying their rent? How about filing their state taxes? How about ordering from local suppliers? Very little of the world is international business. That tiny slice that is just dominates the zeitgeist because it’s international. For some examples of things well known that absolutely don’t need global data centers: - airbus and Boeing - Coca-Cola - Marriott and Hilton - the entire US federal government (apart from some maybe military applications) - McDonald’s The list goes on forever because it’s literally nearly every business. Unless you’re in real time markets or operating store fronts globally where latency hurts sales, putting up regions all over the world is a complete and utter waste of money. Making global regions as easy as a click of a button was one of the greatest marketing ploys of cloud providers to date. “Of course Good Will needs a Singapore data center!? How will we meet our P99 goals otherwise?”

throwaway11460 3y ago
McDonald's absolutely does need global data centers. Even now the kiosks are frustratingly slow here in Europe, can't imagine what a round-trip to US servers would do. My siblings work there and their work information system is not so bad but definitely it'd be totally frustrating if it didn't run on AWS in EU.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  If McD do need a global data centers to show the menu in the kiosks then they should fire their whole IT dept and start from scratch. There is absolutely zero reason for a kiosk to touch 'a global data center'. No, not even for a payment, because it's just asks the payment terminal if the payment succeeded or not.
  - throwaway11460 3y ago
    I absolutely disagree. The restaurant managers really shouldn't need to manage servers too. They get the kiosk as a service that they don't need to care about and that is correct. So McDonald's should be dispatching kiosk admins all around the world? That's very much not eco friendly. And of course, expensive... And a total nightmare to manage. K8s and AWS is a night walk through the rose garden compared to that. > No, not even for a payment, because it's just asks the payment terminal if the payment succeeded or not. Yeah sure, works great as long as the kiosk doesn't crash during the payment.
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      > The restaurant managers really shouldn't need to manage servers too. And they don't. Why the hell do you pull this nonsense? In case you don't know (looks like you don't) these are Windows machines[0]. Any Windows machine is capable running IIS or even Apache on it. No need for the servers for managers to manage. Just effing serve it locally, if you can't provide each McD with a mini box what is managed by the central IT. > should be dispatching kiosk admins all around the world LOL > K8s and AWS is a night walk through the rose garden compared to that. You need a sysadmin to teach you how to build robust and resilient local applications and services without being Eco-unfriendly and without racking billions in AWS bills. > Yeah sure, works great as long as the kiosk doesn't crash during the payment. Do you understand what it is the payment terminal which is processing the payment and you can't offload reading CC/NFC to the 'cloud'? And finally, there is already 'IT' infrastructure in each McD: Ethernet switches, UPSes, wireless AP and maybe a controller, menu and order screens at the counter, networked PoS and whatever else. If you claim what restaurant managers manage all these then you don't really know anything about nor retail nor IT. Or just bickering in a bad faith. [0] and if in your case they are Linux ones... do I even need to continue?