4 ms·

Isn't the mid/late game of all of these alternative clouds going to be the same as the big cloud players...get customer lock in and then prices slowly creep up

by mym1990 2y ago

Isn't the mid/late game of all of these alternative clouds going to be the same as the big cloud players...get customer lock in and then prices slowly creep up until its kind of a wash?

lelanthran 2y ago
> Isn't the mid/late game of all of these alternative clouds going to be the same as the big cloud players...get customer lock in and then prices slowly creep up until its kind of a wash? That might be the plan, but I doubt it's going to work for GPUs like it did for AWS. There's no moat here, other than the hardware. There's no value-add that the provider can add for free and lock you in.
- swores 2y ago
  > There's no value-add that the provider can add for free and lock you in. Couldn't you have said that about cloud services like AWS before they existed, that they can rent servers to people but there won't be any lock in? And equally, just because that's the case with GPU providers right now, is there a reason one or more of them wouldn't be able to develop software which runs on the GPUs to do some of the things people are currently renting GPUs for, or middle-ground software which make it easier to do other stuff on them than just renting plain GPU access, and turning it into optional services (with lock in) on top of the raw hardware rental? As an example idea: it's good that NVIDIA decided to let as many people use CUDA as possible (and I suspect if they hadn't then they wouldn't have seen nearly as much success), but if they or anyone else releases an equivalent to "CUDA v2" tomorrow, but instead of allowing anyone to download it instead put it behind a billing page with AWS-style pricing that covers both software and GPU, would it not succeed if the software did make thinks easier for people just like AWS does (in some ways)? edit: I just realised I ignored the "for free" bit of your comment - but it wasn't free for Amazon or Google to build their cloud software either.
Gormo 2y ago
That doesn't seem to be the case for long-tail VPS providers. It doesn't seem to really be the case for the big cloud providers, either, as most of what they offer is fairly commoditized -- I've been using GCP for years to host Kubernetes clusters, Postgres databases, Redis instances, standard Linux VMs, etc., and while there'd be a cost associated with migrating out of GCP, I don't feel locked into it in any way, as the tools I'm using there are the same tools I'd be using regardless of where they were hosted. The market for IaaS and for SaaS are very different from each other, and the walled-garden approach doesn't seem to have significant traction in the IaaS world, thankfully.
tw04 2y ago
Not every vendor needs Amazon’s eye watering margins to justify their existence. Plenty of people more than happy to make their 12% and call it a day. The difficulty and cost of owning a data center has been grossly exaggerated. It’s just that bean counters would rather lease because it’s easier to massage the numbers than dealing with a depreciating asset.
- more_corn 2y ago
  Amazon has also spent decades and tons of money building out the ecosystem of AWS: Ebs, alb, rds, etc. You don’t need any of that stuff for training. You just need gpus. If you don’t need it don’t pay for it.
1123581321 2y ago
Not without some distinctive advantage to the provider's infrastructure beyond raw GPU access. Plus, as more options exist, more SDKs will facilitate switching or distributing workloads to multiple providers as de facto connection standards emerge (like what's happened to S3-compatible storage, as a simple example.)
TheGRS 2y ago
I would think the late game would be getting bought out by AWS/G Cloud/Azure.
Havoc 2y ago
Most are still quite far away from big cloud lock in levels.

Isn't the mid/late game of all of these alternative clouds going to be the same as the big cloud players...get customer lock in and then prices slowly creep up until its kind of a wash?

lelanthran 2y ago

> Isn't the mid/late game of all of these alternative clouds going to be the same as the big cloud players...get customer lock in and then prices slowly creep up until its kind of a wash? That might be the plan, but I doubt it's going to work for GPUs like it did for AWS. There's no moat here, other than the hardware. There's no value-add that the provider can add for free and lock you in.

swores 2y ago
> There's no value-add that the provider can add for free and lock you in. Couldn't you have said that about cloud services like AWS before they existed, that they can rent servers to people but there won't be any lock in? And equally, just because that's the case with GPU providers right now, is there a reason one or more of them wouldn't be able to develop software which runs on the GPUs to do some of the things people are currently renting GPUs for, or middle-ground software which make it easier to do other stuff on them than just renting plain GPU access, and turning it into optional services (with lock in) on top of the raw hardware rental? As an example idea: it's good that NVIDIA decided to let as many people use CUDA as possible (and I suspect if they hadn't then they wouldn't have seen nearly as much success), but if they or anyone else releases an equivalent to "CUDA v2" tomorrow, but instead of allowing anyone to download it instead put it behind a billing page with AWS-style pricing that covers both software and GPU, would it not succeed if the software did make thinks easier for people just like AWS does (in some ways)? edit: I just realised I ignored the "for free" bit of your comment - but it wasn't free for Amazon or Google to build their cloud software either.

Gormo 2y ago

That doesn't seem to be the case for long-tail VPS providers. It doesn't seem to really be the case for the big cloud providers, either, as most of what they offer is fairly commoditized -- I've been using GCP for years to host Kubernetes clusters, Postgres databases, Redis instances, standard Linux VMs, etc., and while there'd be a cost associated with migrating out of GCP, I don't feel locked into it in any way, as the tools I'm using there are the same tools I'd be using regardless of where they were hosted. The market for IaaS and for SaaS are very different from each other, and the walled-garden approach doesn't seem to have significant traction in the IaaS world, thankfully.

tw04 2y ago

Not every vendor needs Amazon’s eye watering margins to justify their existence. Plenty of people more than happy to make their 12% and call it a day. The difficulty and cost of owning a data center has been grossly exaggerated. It’s just that bean counters would rather lease because it’s easier to massage the numbers than dealing with a depreciating asset.

more_corn 2y ago
Amazon has also spent decades and tons of money building out the ecosystem of AWS: Ebs, alb, rds, etc. You don’t need any of that stuff for training. You just need gpus. If you don’t need it don’t pay for it.

1123581321 2y ago

Not without some distinctive advantage to the provider's infrastructure beyond raw GPU access. Plus, as more options exist, more SDKs will facilitate switching or distributing workloads to multiple providers as de facto connection standards emerge (like what's happened to S3-compatible storage, as a simple example.)

TheGRS 2y ago

I would think the late game would be getting bought out by AWS/G Cloud/Azure.

Havoc 2y ago

Most are still quite far away from big cloud lock in levels.