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UK govt office admits ability to negotiate billions curbed by vendor lock-in

47 points by LinuxBender 3y ago

TehCorwiz 3y ago
This feels like it should be a Rorschach moment (from Watchmen): "None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME!" where basically because the vendor can't back out either, and the government likely makes up a huge part of their revenue, then the government just starts swinging the negotiation stick.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- creer 3y ago
  Anything's possible. But the vendor can increase price or refuse a discount instantly. While that government client would require a years-long large and costly project to migrate - and their track record on completing such projects is terrible. They might be able to run new projects on different vendors but it's not likely they will ever completely migrate existing applications.
tennis_80 3y ago
Pretty standard for most cloud services, especially as you get more "cloud-native." If you adopt DynamoDB as your DB of choice - you'll struggle to get off AWS should the need arise, without rewriting parts of your app. But in practice - is this important? The hyperscaler clouds are similarly priced, and if you're able to leverage the proprietary tech in one to speed up development, or simplify operations, maybe it's worth being locked in.
- jonfw 3y ago
  > But in practice - is this important? The hyperscaler clouds are similarly priced Similar prices as advertised maybe, but big companies and governments do enough volume that they can negotiate discounts. If they're locked in they lose leverage though
  - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    They're only similarly priced in some kind of complex, eventually-consistent, weighted-for-feature-parity way.
- bennyhill 3y ago
  The hyperscale clouds double in cost every 3 years compared to the prices dictated by Moore's law for hardware sold or rented in competitive markets.
ape4 3y ago
Isn't there a point where its more economical for a large organization to run its own cloud servers?
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Certainly, but you need stakeholders who are willing to make the investment, do the hard work over years, decades even, and not use it as resume building who are going to bounce to something else and leave a pile of garbage behind. Are governments willing to keep technologists happy to run sovereign clouds with comp and working arrangements? Or are they going to treat them poorly and pay them poorly? This is why mainframes still run while other workloads churns back and forth between on prem and cloud: hype cycle peaks, folks moved to cloud, found out it was super expensive and they didn't need the agility it provides, and now they have sticker shock and are trying to figure out how to come back on prem. But come back on prem to what? VMware gonna rake you over the coals, and there isn't a great on prem story besides say, OpenShift after Mesos.
  - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    >Are governments willing to keep technologists happy to run sovereign clouds with comp and working arrangements? Signs point to "no". You really have to be in it for the mission to want to work in .gov
    - permo-w 3y ago
      it depends on the country and the department. if you're maintaining the Saudi defence dept's db, you can be sure to be well-remunerated. if you're maintaining the db for the ministery for fisheries in some country still in the grip of Friedmanomics, then good luck
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > But come back on prem to what? Proxmox seems ok. Does HA too. :) https://proxmox.com https://proxmox.com

47 points by LinuxBender 3y ago

This feels like it should be a Rorschach moment (from Watchmen): "None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME!" where basically because the vendor can't back out either, and the government likely makes up a huge part of their revenue, then the government just starts swinging the negotiation stick.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
creer 3y ago
Anything's possible. But the vendor can increase price or refuse a discount instantly. While that government client would require a years-long large and costly project to migrate - and their track record on completing such projects is terrible. They might be able to run new projects on different vendors but it's not likely they will ever completely migrate existing applications.

tennis_80 3y ago

Pretty standard for most cloud services, especially as you get more "cloud-native." If you adopt DynamoDB as your DB of choice - you'll struggle to get off AWS should the need arise, without rewriting parts of your app. But in practice - is this important? The hyperscaler clouds are similarly priced, and if you're able to leverage the proprietary tech in one to speed up development, or simplify operations, maybe it's worth being locked in.

jonfw 3y ago
> But in practice - is this important? The hyperscaler clouds are similarly priced Similar prices as advertised maybe, but big companies and governments do enough volume that they can negotiate discounts. If they're locked in they lose leverage though
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  They're only similarly priced in some kind of complex, eventually-consistent, weighted-for-feature-parity way.
bennyhill 3y ago
The hyperscale clouds double in cost every 3 years compared to the prices dictated by Moore's law for hardware sold or rented in competitive markets.

ape4 3y ago

Isn't there a point where its more economical for a large organization to run its own cloud servers?

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Certainly, but you need stakeholders who are willing to make the investment, do the hard work over years, decades even, and not use it as resume building who are going to bounce to something else and leave a pile of garbage behind. Are governments willing to keep technologists happy to run sovereign clouds with comp and working arrangements? Or are they going to treat them poorly and pay them poorly? This is why mainframes still run while other workloads churns back and forth between on prem and cloud: hype cycle peaks, folks moved to cloud, found out it was super expensive and they didn't need the agility it provides, and now they have sticker shock and are trying to figure out how to come back on prem. But come back on prem to what? VMware gonna rake you over the coals, and there isn't a great on prem story besides say, OpenShift after Mesos.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  >Are governments willing to keep technologists happy to run sovereign clouds with comp and working arrangements? Signs point to "no". You really have to be in it for the mission to want to work in .gov
  - permo-w 3y ago
    it depends on the country and the department. if you're maintaining the Saudi defence dept's db, you can be sure to be well-remunerated. if you're maintaining the db for the ministery for fisheries in some country still in the grip of Friedmanomics, then good luck
- justinclift 3y ago
  > But come back on prem to what? Proxmox seems ok. Does HA too. :) https://proxmox.com https://proxmox.com