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When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

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Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#71

Post by maxwell »

qeternity wrote: post #39
nebabyte wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon had governed its growth by deciding just to stay at where it "is", it'd still just be an online bookseller. And you'd be asking "why should they move into digital services? They're in a unique position to sell books online with low risk." Amazon has the potential to distupt nearly any service it wants to. The "risk" analysis and assessment is something they can handle - besides, the "riskier" applications t…

AWS was already low risk, since they started with idle platform capacity that they needed to have for holiday shopping bursts. You're proving my point. They go for very asymmetric return profiles. Selling books online is exactly the same. Using expensive retail space to sell goods that have few good substitutes between them is a really dumb proposition. The market for books was well established, so that wasn't risky.…

"Real applications" (someone named off CMS, CRM, VoIP, groupware, helpdesk, and callcenter software above) hardly seem like moonshots.

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#72

Post by sitharus »

iainmerrick wrote: post #65
nebabyte wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even LEGO sells mass-produced kits. And sure, kids predominantly play with LEGOS by building their own things. But when it comes to toys, LEGO isn't the only thing out there. And which helicopter would you think kids play with - the make-believe one that they have to wave around and pretend flies, or the mass-produced quadcopter that actually flies? Just because Amazon does what it does now well doesn't mean it can't…

And which helicopter would you think kids play with - the make-believe one that they have to wave around and pretend flies, or the mass-produced quadcopter that actually flies? Mostly the Lego one. :)

The pre-built one only flies. The lego one can be a submarine, turn in to a rocket, shoot lasers, arrack your brother... much more fun!

Same is true of AWS, I'm just older.

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#73

Post by reilly3000 »

brianmurphy wrote: post #50
nebabyte wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if one works well, why stop there? Amazon isn't some tech startup with only a few hackers to focus on supporting their core product. They can easily maintain support for their core offerings while building out/up. As to why: why not? In this day and age, why let anyone have a slice of something you have the recources and reach to do far better and cheaper than them?

One reason: Focus. Anybody who has tried to launch a SAAS app knows that launching the software is not enough. The sales and support infrastructure has to be there as well. I'm not saying they can't do it. They certainly have the money to throw at the problem. The question is if they really want to.

They are practically offering support-as-a-service now. It's a clear segment of their core business they are leveraging by creating services around it. They are giving it the same focus and support as they do logistics, an area where they are also an indisputable leader.

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#74

Post by tgjsrkghruksd »

013a wrote: post #54
iamacynic wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. you're out of your mind. customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. DESPERATELY. their entire business is being held hostage by amazon. jeff bezos has them by the balls and is squeezing harder and harder by the day. they have hired consultants to do the analysi…

I agree. This is definitely the impression I've gotten from people I've talked to. In an ideal world, how would they solve this? Is it to move back to self-hosted infrastructure? Isn't that the same problem; they're just hostage to their own employees and capex instead of Amazon?

Am I being a hopeless romantic to imagine that barons of days yore used to actually think owning the capital and employing the labor with which they went about their business made them powerful?

Who is holding who hostage? Not everyone is an SV technoweenie too young to remember when the dot-com crash was a thing.

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#75

Post by tgjsrkghruksd »

maxwell wrote: post #71
qeternity wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS was already low risk, since they started with idle platform capacity that they needed to have for holiday shopping bursts. You're proving my point. They go for very asymmetric return profiles. Selling books online is exactly the same. Using expensive retail space to sell goods that have few good substitutes between them is a really dumb proposition. The market for books was well established, so that wasn't risky.…

"Real applications" (someone named off CMS, CRM, VoIP, groupware, helpdesk, and callcenter software above) hardly seem like moonshots.

Right, it's not like Amazon doesn't have big spend on all of these things for itself.

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#76

Post by iamacynic »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #70
iamacynic wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. you're out of your mind. customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. DESPERATELY. their entire business is being held hostage by amazon. jeff bezos has them by the balls and is squeezing harder and harder by the day. they have hired consultants to do the analysi…

> customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. Our monthly AWS spend was six or seven figures. We were ostensibly looking for ways to both move to and from AWS, but we were hardly desperate. It turns out running data centers is HARD and it simply wasn't our core competency. If you're not profitable with AWS you're probably…

who says you have to run a DC if you're not on aws? did i say that, or did you project that onto me?

how about hiring a smaller company that can do it for you, for half the cost? i know why not, because you think they're going to fuck it all up, get you fired, and you'll be homeless and ashamed. and so back to amazon you go.

false dichotomy.

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#77

Post by inferiorhuman »

iamacynic wrote: post #76
inferiorhuman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. Our monthly AWS spend was six or seven figures. We were ostensibly looking for ways to both move to and from AWS, but we were hardly desperate. It turns out running data centers is HARD and it simply wasn't our core competency. If you're not profitable with AWS you're probably…

who says you have to run a DC if you're not on aws? did i say that, or did you project that onto me? how about hiring a smaller company that can do it for you, for half the cost? i know why not, because you think they're going to fuck it all up, get you fired, and you'll be homeless and ashamed. and so back to amazon you go. false dichotomy.

> who says you have to run a DC if you're not on aws? did i say that, or did you project that onto me?

I didn't. In fact I even suggested that moving away from AWS wouldn't make sense even if you only needed a few racks. Less than that and it makes even less financial sense to self-host unless you've got really compelling compliance issues.

> how about hiring a smaller company that can do it for you, for half the cost?

Well...

> i know why not, because you think they're going to fuck it all up, get you fired, and you'll be homeless and ashamed. and so back to amazon you go.

I was going to say that a lot of the inertia with AWS is due to feeling like we get a good value and at that size decent support. From what I can tell I either worked for a very anomalous company or you're mostly grasping at straws. A few things though:

- No, I wouldn't worry about being fired for choosing a vendor that didn't pan out. Short of committing a felony that would reflect poorly on the company admin action wasn't even a possibility. Large companies move very, very slowly (if at all).

- No, we're not desperately looking for alternatives to AWS. There's some unhappiness with cost, but mostly that's a capex vs opex go fellate the corporate radiers kinda thing and less of an actually saving money kinda thing.

- No, you're not going to save us 75%, 50%, or likely even 30%. We had enough cruft in our AWS stuff alone that culling 10-25% (depending on the product) was relatively painless.

- No, we don't feel like we're getting ripped off. At that kind of monthly spend you get plenty of attention from Amazon. And not the used-car-salesman kind of attention.

Ultimately, at that scale, few decisions were made because they'd save money up front which seems like your main selling point. As an example from the hardware side: there's a reason why vendors like Cisco and Juniper still do very well in the enterprise environment and vendors like Ubiquiti and MikroTik don't (despite the latter offering 10GBE equipment for under $200).

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#78

Post by user5994461 »

iamacynic wrote: post #49
user5994461 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are fickle and extremely price sensitive Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. There are numerous people who are price sensitive, the amateurs who are running a test app and complaining that digital ocean is cheaper, then move to the weirdest hoster they could find because that's only $2 a month. These are NOT AWS customers.

> Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. you're out of your mind. customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. DESPERATELY. their entire business is being held hostage by amazon. jeff bezos has them by the balls and is squeezing harder and harder by the day. they have hired consultants to do the analysi…

Use google cloud if you care about money so much, it's half the costs of AWS.

If a company is running a product that is not profitable, it's a business problem on their side, not on AWS. Having your own infrastructure is not cheaper than having AWS so that's not gonna save you either.

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#79

Post by user5994461 »

013a wrote: post #53
user5994461 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are fickle and extremely price sensitive Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. There are numerous people who are price sensitive, the amateurs who are running a test app and complaining that digital ocean is cheaper, then move to the weirdest hoster they could find because that's only $2 a month. These are NOT AWS customers.

I have to agree with your other responders. Cloud consumers are, fundamentally, price sensitive. The only ones who might not be are venture-backed startups with deep pockets. Individual consumers are price sensitive, as you say. That's one of the reasons why Lightsail exists; its easier to understand why you're being charged what you are. Large customers are also highly price sensitive. They negotiate huge contracts…

I am thinking about big companies actually. Not VC startups.

Big companies have huge money flows and some are truly terrible at managing expenses.

Re: When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

#80

Post by user5994461 »

iamacynic wrote: post #58
Spooky23 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're spending $1M/week, what do they expect to spend on their own? If you're too dumb to manage costs on AWS, the answer is "we have no clue".

a competitor that charges literally 75% less. except they won't do it, because they are SCARED out of their MINDS.

Charging less... but for what service? ;)

AWS is providing a service, not a price number.

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