4 ms·

At least for us, the promise was not a lower bill, but faster time to market. The requests to on-prem engineers are just _not a thing_, which is much faster for

At least for us, the promise was not a lower bill, but faster time to market. The requests to on-prem engineers are just _not a thing_, which is much faster for our developers.

this_user 2y ago
That that sounds like you are solving your internal organisational dysfunctions by outsourcing the function rather than trying to fix the organisation.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Rightly so. Unless you're the CEO/CTO you're not going to be able to fix something like this.
- hyperpape 2y ago
  They are, and it is by far the most effective approach for most organizations.
- Normal_gaussian 2y ago
  Not managing your own physical infrastructure is not a dysfunction; unless you have a very specific hardware requirement, or are very large, on-prem is just never going to be cost effective. Where it is cost-effective, it can still be incredibly strategically limiting.
- gorjusborg 2y ago
  I understand your point of view, but the BigOrgs are strange. They say they want to move fast and succeed, but they are also magnets for people who would much rather accumulate money/power through politics than work. This often sets up perverse incentives to do the opposite of what would make sense. For instance, the IT department manager claims to need more headcount and money to fund it, because they believe that having more budget and employees shows how important their function is. Engineering requests a new VM, and the request sits and sits and sits, so long that you start believing that they are overloaded. Engineering complains that it is taking too long to provision machines, and IT (for the 100th time) says they need more headcount to keep up with internal demand. To fix the problem, management grants one or two hires, things get marginally better for a while, until the cycle repeats. In this scenario, Engineering is trying to get their product completed, and looks bad because the schedule is slipping. If you are the Engineering manager, do you care more about fixing the organization, or sidestepping the issue by swiping a credit card? Fixing things gets political fast, spending money less so.
- flerchin 2y ago
  Yes.
croes 2y ago
Sometimes slower is faster.
manishsharan 2y ago
Not having to wait for procurement to approve to buy a few terabytes of NAS is nice. Not dealing with procurement cycle for h/w purchase is priceless.
- duxup 2y ago
  Or find out your NAS or network ... isn't the best and you spend time troubleshooting that.
deelowe 2y ago
Yep. The business case for cloud solutions is TTM, availability and capacity. The argument that on prem never delivered on its promise to be cheaper is a lie by omission. It CAN be cheaper, but that was never the main reason.
tracker1 2y ago
That's my main understanding as well. You're effectively outsourcing the hardware and a lot of software infrastructure and it will vary a lot based on what SaaS offerings you're using with the cloud provider. Personally, I tend to push for PostgreSQL primarily with near self-service containerized services for the applications and mostly will just leverage the cloud's queues and blob/s3 storage, which are easy enough to replace in a software stack. I'm not big on lock-in.

At least for us, the promise was not a lower bill, but faster time to market. The requests to on-prem engineers are just _not a thing_, which is much faster for our developers.

this_user 2y ago

That that sounds like you are solving your internal organisational dysfunctions by outsourcing the function rather than trying to fix the organisation.

AlexandrB 2y ago
Rightly so. Unless you're the CEO/CTO you're not going to be able to fix something like this.
hyperpape 2y ago
They are, and it is by far the most effective approach for most organizations.
Normal_gaussian 2y ago
Not managing your own physical infrastructure is not a dysfunction; unless you have a very specific hardware requirement, or are very large, on-prem is just never going to be cost effective. Where it is cost-effective, it can still be incredibly strategically limiting.
gorjusborg 2y ago
I understand your point of view, but the BigOrgs are strange. They say they want to move fast and succeed, but they are also magnets for people who would much rather accumulate money/power through politics than work. This often sets up perverse incentives to do the opposite of what would make sense. For instance, the IT department manager claims to need more headcount and money to fund it, because they believe that having more budget and employees shows how important their function is. Engineering requests a new VM, and the request sits and sits and sits, so long that you start believing that they are overloaded. Engineering complains that it is taking too long to provision machines, and IT (for the 100th time) says they need more headcount to keep up with internal demand. To fix the problem, management grants one or two hires, things get marginally better for a while, until the cycle repeats. In this scenario, Engineering is trying to get their product completed, and looks bad because the schedule is slipping. If you are the Engineering manager, do you care more about fixing the organization, or sidestepping the issue by swiping a credit card? Fixing things gets political fast, spending money less so.
flerchin 2y ago
Yes.

croes 2y ago

Sometimes slower is faster.

manishsharan 2y ago

Not having to wait for procurement to approve to buy a few terabytes of NAS is nice. Not dealing with procurement cycle for h/w purchase is priceless.

duxup 2y ago
Or find out your NAS or network ... isn't the best and you spend time troubleshooting that.

deelowe 2y ago

Yep. The business case for cloud solutions is TTM, availability and capacity. The argument that on prem never delivered on its promise to be cheaper is a lie by omission. It CAN be cheaper, but that was never the main reason.

tracker1 2y ago

That's my main understanding as well. You're effectively outsourcing the hardware and a lot of software infrastructure and it will vary a lot based on what SaaS offerings you're using with the cloud provider. Personally, I tend to push for PostgreSQL primarily with near self-service containerized services for the applications and mostly will just leverage the cloud's queues and blob/s3 storage, which are easy enough to replace in a software stack. I'm not big on lock-in.