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There is some back and forth on the "best" approach to hosting infrastructure, but there is no silver bullet or always right answer. There is a full spectrum fo

There is some back and forth on the "best" approach to hosting infrastructure, but there is no silver bullet or always right answer. There is a full spectrum for hosting infrastructure options, and each company has to pick the hue/tier(s) that delivers for them best a particular point in time and realize that it will likely change as time moves on. At each hue/tier, you trade man-hours and in-house expertise for cost. Typically, you see companies move backwards down the choices as time goes on to find that optimal spot. - Multi DC colocation, building your own servers/network equipment - Multi DC colocation, buying servers/network equipment - Single DC colocation, building your own servers/network equipment - Single DC colocation, buying servers/network equipment - Dedicated servers - VPS servers - Virtualized servers as a service with barebone supporting infrastructure (e.g. Digital Ocean) - Virtualized servers as a service with robust supporting infrastructure (e.g. AWS) - Platform as a service (e.g. Heroku) You do see companies get into "trouble" where they might have picked the right hue/tier but haven't reflected upon the choice in some time. In those cases, you might see a startup dropping 60k a month on AWS services when they would have no earthly business spending more than 10k amortized on a multi-DC/added hires approach (I've observed this exact scenario).

toomuchtodo 12y ago
> You do see companies get into "trouble" where they might have picked the right hue/tier but haven't reflected upon the choice in some time. In those cases, you might see a startup dropping 60k a month on AWS services when they would have no earthly business spending more than 10k amortized on a multi-DC/added hires approach (I've observed this exact scenario). I too have seen startups burning six figures monthly in AWS because they're afraid of buying gear, renting colo space, and hiring sys|network|linux admins.
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beachstartup 12y ago
i run a hosting company. or - i guess 'cloud computing' is what they call it these days. a huge number of our sales conversations are people who spend $50k+ on aws or something similar, but are scared shitless to move off of it because they don't know what they're doing and their trusted technical advisors got them into the situation they're in. you literally have to talk them down, like a kitten that climbed up a tree and can't get back down. imagine amazon had your business by the balls to the tune of $1M/year and the cost is increasing faster than your business can sustain, and you have no idea what hosting really is, or how it actually works. this happens. a lot. there are a lot of very lucky people out there who build incredibly successful businesses with a trail of terrible decisions. for what it's worth, we've figured out the threshold is basically $10k. if you're spending over 10k on amazon, you might just be doing it because it's convenient, not because you have any idea of what you're doing, either technically or from a P&L perspective.

toomuchtodo 12y ago

> You do see companies get into "trouble" where they might have picked the right hue/tier but haven't reflected upon the choice in some time. In those cases, you might see a startup dropping 60k a month on AWS services when they would have no earthly business spending more than 10k amortized on a multi-DC/added hires approach (I've observed this exact scenario). I too have seen startups burning six figures monthly in AWS because they're afraid of buying gear, renting colo space, and hiring sys|network|linux admins.

deleted 12y ago
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beachstartup 12y ago

i run a hosting company. or - i guess 'cloud computing' is what they call it these days. a huge number of our sales conversations are people who spend $50k+ on aws or something similar, but are scared shitless to move off of it because they don't know what they're doing and their trusted technical advisors got them into the situation they're in. you literally have to talk them down, like a kitten that climbed up a tree and can't get back down. imagine amazon had your business by the balls to the tune of $1M/year and the cost is increasing faster than your business can sustain, and you have no idea what hosting really is, or how it actually works. this happens. a lot. there are a lot of very lucky people out there who build incredibly successful businesses with a trail of terrible decisions. for what it's worth, we've figured out the threshold is basically $10k. if you're spending over 10k on amazon, you might just be doing it because it's convenient, not because you have any idea of what you're doing, either technically or from a P&L perspective.