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Why Amazon Will Make or Break Twilio

7 points by timf 18y ago

delano 18y ago
We don't worry about relying on electric utilities. Eventually people will stop worrying about relying on computing utilities.
- hboon 18y ago
  Actually, we do. That's why we have (backup) generators and UPS.
  - delano 18y ago
    Of course! But no one suggests that it's risky for a company to rely on a third party as a primary source of electricity. This is probably not true in the case where a company requires a massive amount of electricity to operate but other factors, like cost, would factor in to the equation too.
timf 18y ago
Nice quote: "CEO Jeff Lawson’s faith in Amazon might provide some comfort ("If I say, 'I'm a startup and I run my own data center,' you should run like hell," he joked to me)" Also note the comment from Twilio's CEO under the article: "note that we maintain infrastructure not only in Amazon's 3 geographically distributed data centers, but also at other cloud hosting providers, including Rackspace"
Timothee 18y ago
It doesn't really make sense. Yes, if Amazon is down, Twilio is down but that's true for anything. If your internet connection goes down, you can't access Twilio either. But chances are that Amazon's EC2 will be up while one startup's own servers will break. I find that interesting how relying on cloud computing is often met with two remarks: 1. If Amazon/GAE/Rackspace goes down, your company is down too. 2. Why should I trust Amazon/Google with my data? But why would you trust the company that uses these providers more than the providers themselves? The providers probably have more to lose. And why would that company be better at keeping the servers up and running?
- DenisM 18y ago
  I think there are some worthy arguments: 1. Lock-in. Not an issue with Amazon (except for bandwidth lock-in but this is easy to mitigate). With GAE one you wrote your app it's very hard to move it out of there - where would you go? 2. Monopoly formation. Not an issue yet, but may be soon. 3. If Google is trying to acquire you (ha!) they will have a bargaining advantage. Not an issue with your garden-variety web host.

7 points by timf 18y ago

We don't worry about relying on electric utilities. Eventually people will stop worrying about relying on computing utilities.

hboon 18y ago
Actually, we do. That's why we have (backup) generators and UPS.
- delano 18y ago
  Of course! But no one suggests that it's risky for a company to rely on a third party as a primary source of electricity. This is probably not true in the case where a company requires a massive amount of electricity to operate but other factors, like cost, would factor in to the equation too.

timf 18y ago

Nice quote: "CEO Jeff Lawson’s faith in Amazon might provide some comfort ("If I say, 'I'm a startup and I run my own data center,' you should run like hell," he joked to me)" Also note the comment from Twilio's CEO under the article: "note that we maintain infrastructure not only in Amazon's 3 geographically distributed data centers, but also at other cloud hosting providers, including Rackspace"

Timothee 18y ago

It doesn't really make sense. Yes, if Amazon is down, Twilio is down but that's true for anything. If your internet connection goes down, you can't access Twilio either. But chances are that Amazon's EC2 will be up while one startup's own servers will break. I find that interesting how relying on cloud computing is often met with two remarks: 1. If Amazon/GAE/Rackspace goes down, your company is down too. 2. Why should I trust Amazon/Google with my data? But why would you trust the company that uses these providers more than the providers themselves? The providers probably have more to lose. And why would that company be better at keeping the servers up and running?

DenisM 18y ago
I think there are some worthy arguments: 1. Lock-in. Not an issue with Amazon (except for bandwidth lock-in but this is easy to mitigate). With GAE one you wrote your app it's very hard to move it out of there - where would you go? 2. Monopoly formation. Not an issue yet, but may be soon. 3. If Google is trying to acquire you (ha!) they will have a bargaining advantage. Not an issue with your garden-variety web host.