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I've built many projects where "the cloud" is less expensive than the alternatives The last big one: replacing a backbone country-wide network in France with A

I've built many projects where "the cloud" is less expensive than the alternatives The last big one: replacing a backbone country-wide network in France with AWS It is far less expensive due to the low bandwidth requirements (and also the ability to go full managed services)

doctorpangloss 2y ago
What stops AWS from "increasing the price" until it is very close to what you were paying before, if not more?
- JackSlateur 2y ago
  Nothing, and they do that regurarly What stops dark fibers or hardware providers from "increasing the price" ? Nothing, and they do that too
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    So you're proving my point. The tool cannot tell you the single most important factor in pricing.
    - Spivak 2y ago
      The single most important factor in pricing is accurately predicting the future, as we haven't invented time travel yet we're gonna call that a wash. Here's a tool that measures everything else.
      - doctorpangloss 2y ago
        Yep! You are agreeing with me. The tool measures a bunch of noise, essentially, since it cannot predict Amazon’s pricing roadmap. Whereas the Kubernetes ecosystem has plenty of valid forecasting tools, such as one which forecasts compute usage, that are valuable.
        SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
        To that point, I believe it's possible to buy spend futures now in cloud costs and if you're doing that then technically it is possible to predict Amazon's pricing roadmap. I know for sure if Amazon themselves didn't (they do) third parties would (they do, DoIT is an example of one I know that does this but there are quite a few of these compute resellers out there). But sometimes people are not near enough the spend or product support level where it makes sense to do that. I would gander, though, if you're running cloud cost tooling you probably are one of those people.
- akira2501 2y ago
  Competition? I've never had AWS "increase the price." Is there some reason to suspect this is a thing to actually worry about?
  - klingoff 2y ago
    Price is supposed to cut in half every 3-4 years, if it isn't it is largely because cloud vendors can't bear to take less and hope there really is that much more volume of half as valuable computing to do. The things they sell as an average CPU performance, etc are basically the average when their cloud began.
    - MrDarcy 2y ago
      Moore’s law came to an end about a decade ago. Since the clouds began a vcpu then is largely the same as a vcpu today.
      - klingoff 2y ago
        No, Moore's law is fine. If the CPU takes half the real estate and uses half the power but costs the same it is the same perversion of the market expectations of Moore's law as if you don't deliver twice as much in the same price. From Wikipedia: Some forecasters, including Gordon Moore,[122] predict that Moore's law will end by around 2025.[123][120][124] Although Moore's Law will reach a physical limit, some forecasters are optimistic about the continuation of technological progress in a variety of other areas, including new chip architectures, quantum computing, and AI and machine learning.[125][126] Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared Moore's law dead in 2022;[2] several days later, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger countered with the opposite claim.[3]
        lyu07282 2y ago
        I think it's just because if you believe in economics it would suggest AWS must've lowered the price per vCPU since CPUs have become significantly more efficient in the last decade. Obviously that didn't happen...
- unethical_ban 2y ago
  You moved the goalpost from "cloud is definitely more expensive" to "well it isn't but maybe it will be for you someday" and alluding to vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in is a concern with cloud platforms but doesn't relate to the app in the submission.
  - doctorpangloss 2y ago
    It is always more expensive. I haven’t moved any goalposts. What I am trying to show is that you don’t need a tool - indeed you don’t need to look at a single price of anything - to know why. It can be both more expensive and a better value though! If you can’t recruit people or what you do is boring or if you want to operate a business that loses money in the long run: those are some common reasons it can look cheaper when it’s not.
    - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
      > It can be both more expensive and a better value though! No, it can't be. Stop with the pseudo intellectual linkedin lingo please.
      - willthames 2y ago
        RDS is an example of something that is more expensive but can be better value - because a lot of the managed service stuff saves the time of those looking after it. 15 years ago I worked an infrastructure department with 50+ employees - these days a lot of that work that we used to do back then is taken care of by AWS. Scaling the infra to meet peak capacity (which might be two days in a year) because you can only run on hardware you have, having data centres and data centre engineers, are all costs that go away with cloud, even though you are paying more for the compute you do use.
  - JackSlateur 2y ago
    Haa, yes, the scary "vendor lock-in" ! I challenge you : give me a single product that cannot be moved away, given some (cost or time). At the same time, I again challenge you : give me a single product that you can move between providers with no cost nor time. To that last one, you can actually find stuff. For instance, you could setup your nginx in instances, without any kind of interactions with the hosting provider. In which case, you limit yourself with what everybody can do, leaving all opportunities to only use the base minimal. But wait .. are you not locked-in with nginx (or to use a better example: with redis) ? Vendor lock-in is a scam to increase your bills. Because, in itself, everything is vendor locking. And it does not matter. Think your architecture, design your code, and act when necessary.

doctorpangloss 2y ago

What stops AWS from "increasing the price" until it is very close to what you were paying before, if not more?

JackSlateur 2y ago
Nothing, and they do that regurarly What stops dark fibers or hardware providers from "increasing the price" ? Nothing, and they do that too
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  So you're proving my point. The tool cannot tell you the single most important factor in pricing.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    The single most important factor in pricing is accurately predicting the future, as we haven't invented time travel yet we're gonna call that a wash. Here's a tool that measures everything else.
    - doctorpangloss 2y ago
      Yep! You are agreeing with me. The tool measures a bunch of noise, essentially, since it cannot predict Amazon’s pricing roadmap. Whereas the Kubernetes ecosystem has plenty of valid forecasting tools, such as one which forecasts compute usage, that are valuable.
      - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
        To that point, I believe it's possible to buy spend futures now in cloud costs and if you're doing that then technically it is possible to predict Amazon's pricing roadmap. I know for sure if Amazon themselves didn't (they do) third parties would (they do, DoIT is an example of one I know that does this but there are quite a few of these compute resellers out there). But sometimes people are not near enough the spend or product support level where it makes sense to do that. I would gander, though, if you're running cloud cost tooling you probably are one of those people.
akira2501 2y ago
Competition? I've never had AWS "increase the price." Is there some reason to suspect this is a thing to actually worry about?
- klingoff 2y ago
  Price is supposed to cut in half every 3-4 years, if it isn't it is largely because cloud vendors can't bear to take less and hope there really is that much more volume of half as valuable computing to do. The things they sell as an average CPU performance, etc are basically the average when their cloud began.
  - MrDarcy 2y ago
    Moore’s law came to an end about a decade ago. Since the clouds began a vcpu then is largely the same as a vcpu today.
    - klingoff 2y ago
      No, Moore's law is fine. If the CPU takes half the real estate and uses half the power but costs the same it is the same perversion of the market expectations of Moore's law as if you don't deliver twice as much in the same price. From Wikipedia: Some forecasters, including Gordon Moore,[122] predict that Moore's law will end by around 2025.[123][120][124] Although Moore's Law will reach a physical limit, some forecasters are optimistic about the continuation of technological progress in a variety of other areas, including new chip architectures, quantum computing, and AI and machine learning.[125][126] Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared Moore's law dead in 2022;[2] several days later, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger countered with the opposite claim.[3]
      - lyu07282 2y ago
        I think it's just because if you believe in economics it would suggest AWS must've lowered the price per vCPU since CPUs have become significantly more efficient in the last decade. Obviously that didn't happen...
unethical_ban 2y ago
You moved the goalpost from "cloud is definitely more expensive" to "well it isn't but maybe it will be for you someday" and alluding to vendor lock-in. Vendor lock-in is a concern with cloud platforms but doesn't relate to the app in the submission.
- doctorpangloss 2y ago
  It is always more expensive. I haven’t moved any goalposts. What I am trying to show is that you don’t need a tool - indeed you don’t need to look at a single price of anything - to know why. It can be both more expensive and a better value though! If you can’t recruit people or what you do is boring or if you want to operate a business that loses money in the long run: those are some common reasons it can look cheaper when it’s not.
  - YetAnotherNick 2y ago
    > It can be both more expensive and a better value though! No, it can't be. Stop with the pseudo intellectual linkedin lingo please.
    - willthames 2y ago
      RDS is an example of something that is more expensive but can be better value - because a lot of the managed service stuff saves the time of those looking after it. 15 years ago I worked an infrastructure department with 50+ employees - these days a lot of that work that we used to do back then is taken care of by AWS. Scaling the infra to meet peak capacity (which might be two days in a year) because you can only run on hardware you have, having data centres and data centre engineers, are all costs that go away with cloud, even though you are paying more for the compute you do use.
- JackSlateur 2y ago
  Haa, yes, the scary "vendor lock-in" ! I challenge you : give me a single product that cannot be moved away, given some (cost or time). At the same time, I again challenge you : give me a single product that you can move between providers with no cost nor time. To that last one, you can actually find stuff. For instance, you could setup your nginx in instances, without any kind of interactions with the hosting provider. In which case, you limit yourself with what everybody can do, leaving all opportunities to only use the base minimal. But wait .. are you not locked-in with nginx (or to use a better example: with redis) ? Vendor lock-in is a scam to increase your bills. Because, in itself, everything is vendor locking. And it does not matter. Think your architecture, design your code, and act when necessary.