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That's a really easy decision for you to make when it's not your business that's being held hostage. Personally, If I can't run something on my LAN, I don't wa

by WayneDB 14y ago

That's a really easy decision for you to make when it's not your business that's being held hostage. Personally, If I can't run something on my LAN, I don't want it. So, I love hearing about these issues; I'd like to someday see developers moving away from SAAS for every little function.

JPKab 14y ago
"That's a really easy decision for you to make when it's not your business that's being held hostage. Personally, If I can't run something on my LAN, I don't want it. So, I love hearing about these issues; I'd like to someday see developers moving away from SAAS for every little function." My former employer at a small business used to say the same thing, and gleefully pointed out when gmail went down for 3 hours 2 years ago, screaming about how dangerous it is to rely on an external entity for these services. The outcome: we had our own servers for our email, and experienced DAYS of unplanned outages a year, not counting the planned outages due to migrations. On top of that, he had to pay the salaries of sys admins who could have been devoting their skills to stuff that our business actually got paid for. The justifications for insourcing IT vs. using a SaaS pretty much align with the justifications for keeping cash in a safe in your house vs. using a bank. Sure, they are there, but they all are much, much less likely than the scenarios which will make you wish you weren't handling it yourself (local server failures, local internet failure due to ice storm, hurricane, software update, idiot sys admin) or in the case of money in a safe(house fire, robbery, flood). My company had very competent sys admins, but I'll never forget losing email for 3 business days due to an ice storm 3 states away where the other office was hosting the servers. Then we decided to purchase servers in our other office to prevent this, and then we hired more people to run them. It was fucking stupid, and all due to a stupid mental paradigm of "If i'm not in direct control then it's not being done right." We had less uptime, less security, and a much higher operating cost. That's a high price to pay for illogical, emotionally based paranoia.
- WayneDB 14y ago
  I'm not saying that running your own servers is always easier, nor is my stance one of emotional based paranoia. I'm saying that "private cloud" products that you host yourself could be just as easy to setup and use as cloud-based products if developers wanted to build those products. Instead they want to nickel-and-dime everyone for every business function while retaining absolute control over access to the product. SAAS can absolutely be more expensive in the long run. (EDIT: Coincidentally, gmail is down again today.)

by WayneDB 14y ago

JPKab 14y ago

"That's a really easy decision for you to make when it's not your business that's being held hostage. Personally, If I can't run something on my LAN, I don't want it. So, I love hearing about these issues; I'd like to someday see developers moving away from SAAS for every little function." My former employer at a small business used to say the same thing, and gleefully pointed out when gmail went down for 3 hours 2 years ago, screaming about how dangerous it is to rely on an external entity for these services. The outcome: we had our own servers for our email, and experienced DAYS of unplanned outages a year, not counting the planned outages due to migrations. On top of that, he had to pay the salaries of sys admins who could have been devoting their skills to stuff that our business actually got paid for. The justifications for insourcing IT vs. using a SaaS pretty much align with the justifications for keeping cash in a safe in your house vs. using a bank. Sure, they are there, but they all are much, much less likely than the scenarios which will make you wish you weren't handling it yourself (local server failures, local internet failure due to ice storm, hurricane, software update, idiot sys admin) or in the case of money in a safe(house fire, robbery, flood). My company had very competent sys admins, but I'll never forget losing email for 3 business days due to an ice storm 3 states away where the other office was hosting the servers. Then we decided to purchase servers in our other office to prevent this, and then we hired more people to run them. It was fucking stupid, and all due to a stupid mental paradigm of "If i'm not in direct control then it's not being done right." We had less uptime, less security, and a much higher operating cost. That's a high price to pay for illogical, emotionally based paranoia.

WayneDB 14y ago
I'm not saying that running your own servers is always easier, nor is my stance one of emotional based paranoia. I'm saying that "private cloud" products that you host yourself could be just as easy to setup and use as cloud-based products if developers wanted to build those products. Instead they want to nickel-and-dime everyone for every business function while retaining absolute control over access to the product. SAAS can absolutely be more expensive in the long run. (EDIT: Coincidentally, gmail is down again today.)