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Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

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Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#191

Post by eppsilon »

jessaustin wrote: post #74
ajarmst wrote: post #43

I know there's some complexity here, but let's just take a minute to marvel at the phenomena of Walmart complaining about another company's excessive dominance and potential to apply monopolistic power.

It is my custom to use Amazon gift certificates at Coinstar machines to dispose of my extra coins, because in that case the coins are exchanged for free. (I have many extra coins, since I usually eschew credit cards.) Wal-mart hosts many Coinstar machines, but I have yet to see one that will produce Amazon gift certificates. You have to go to Coinstars hosted at grocery stores for that. So, they have a contract with…

Some banks will do this for free too. Maybe not as convenient, though.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#192

Post by michaelbuckbee »

oceanstone wrote: post #90
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #32

Interesting that Netflix (biggest competitor to Amazon Prime Video) still is on AWS. Not sure who is being savvy and who is being short sighted.

“The best way to express it is that everything you see on Netflix up until the play button is on AWS, the actual video is delivered through our CDN,” Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers said. http://www.networkworld.com/article/3037428/cloud-computing/...

Yes. I'm aware and they do https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ - but the point remains that they're both:

1. Giving their largest competitor money

2. Relying on them not to peek at their data for competitive advantage.

Which are the items that Walmart has objections with.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#193

Post by Kocrachon »

KirinDave wrote: post #182
gaius wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a company in the world that is competing at scale and cost with AWS. Azure has more locations, and is better than AWS is several areas.

Azure is a better service imho, but is it actually succeeding? I'd argue it is not, yet.

Better service? That is highly arguable.

What Azure and GCE both have over AWS is better performance and better cost. AWS on the other hand has more services that just work together. So you either choose ease of integration or better performance. My company chose ease of integration.

Example, Amazon owns its CDN, Amazon owns all its services. Everything is in house, developed to work together, and just works out of the box, and you are dependent only on AWS.

Azure CDN uses Akamai. So it's not entirely in house designed and built. So we are now reliant on two companies working smoothly together rather than just one keeping it together. Not a huge issue, but something my company also had to factor in on reliablity.

Same with SLA. AWS has a better up time than Azure and GCE.

Again, not to say these services are inferior, but to say Azure is a better service is a lie. Does it have better performance on networking and HDD side? Yes, but I will take slower performance over a better up time, every time.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#194

Post by petraeus »

Oletros wrote: post #75
throwawaymanbot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree totally. I would find it hard to believe, that large well financed companies, with some of the most technically capable staff on the planet, would have the restraint to not peek.

So you think Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, etc spy the confidential data of their customers?

So .. you think they ... don't?

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#195

Post by fragmede »

bedhead wrote: post #156
KirinDave wrote: post #94

This is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a ge…

This kind of hyperbole is absolutely and demonstrably absurd. What a disgrace that this is the top comment.

Simon Head wrote "Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon’s sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers" back in 2014, and if anything, it's gotten worse since then.

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_...

It's not limited to warehouse workers, either. In 2015 Jodi Kantor and David Streitfeld of the New York times published an expose of the hard-charging environment at Amazon, with stories about employees reduced to tears at their desks.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...

That was so untrue, that Jeff Bezos felt the need to send out a memo stating how much he has never seen that side of Amazon, which, as CEO, of course he's never been mistreated by middle management.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#196

Post by socalnate1 »

KirinDave wrote: post #94

This is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a ge…

This encapsulates my feelings so well. I feel like I am watching King Kong and Godzilla fight it out and I don't really know who to root for since they are both going to destroy Hong Kong when they are done with each other.

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#197

Post by Kocrachon »

KirinDave wrote: post #111
hunterjrj wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand a bit on your suggestion that Amazon is approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status? Are you speaking specifically about AWS?

AWS is definitely a worry, as increasingly it's the fabric american business is woven from. Shutting that down or raising its prices suddenly would severely disrupt US business. But secondary effects of lost sales from vendors would almost certainly upend the vendor table and make goods very difficult to get ahold of. Amazon as a delivery service (and its smile boxes, ads for its own products on said boxes, and speci…

Amazon accounts for 43% of online sales currently.

But accounts for less than 5% of retail sales overall. Until they start hitting a bigger chunk of total sales, I would not consider them too big to fall. Walmart is too big to fall, as it litterally controls a bunch of local economies. If Amazon closed tomorrow, there would be a shitty time in Seattle, but people would just go to Ebay, Walmart, Etsy, and Alibaba.

If WalMart closed tomorrow, a good chunk of the southern states would run into a state of emergency because the unemployment rate would skyrocket, and there would be no companies to pick up the slack locally, so local economies all across the US would crash.

Many towns would lack groceries or supplies because WalMart is all they have after WalMart ran everyone else out of business. How many businesses has Amazon shut down across the entire US?

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#198

Post by mongol »

joezydeco wrote: post #129
eli wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. Wal-Mart is pretty infamous for squeezing suppliers & vendors on price and operating procedures. Hard.

"It also is not unheard of for Wal-Mart to demand to examine the private financial records of a supplier, and to insist that its margins are too high and must be cut." https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

Honest question. How do companies in the US go about assessing the solvency and financial status of suppliers. In Sweden annual reports are public records for all limited companies, not only public companuee. How would US company determine that a supplier is solvent and not at risk of bankruptcy, which would be a risk to build into supply chains etc?

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#199

Post by throwawaymanbot »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #179
KirinDave wrote: post #94

This is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a ge…

Wal-Mart have always been pure bastards to their supply chain. My family had a small manufacturing business that went bankrupt years ago. At one point we were making a part that ultimately ended up on a WM product. Periodically WM's folks would come around and do a strong arm routine trying to renegotiate the contract. It got bad enough my dad adopted the habit of bringing a couple of the very burly folks that worked…

This is how Wal-Mart maintains its position, and grows to where it is today. Thats Business at their level.

I sympathize however. Strong Arming small and middle sized businesses, which are the bedrock of American Capitalist Power is just egregiously scummy. This is also what I think is currently gone wrong with the American Capitalism, but thats another comment, somewhere, sometime I guess :)

Re: Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS

#200

Post by sib »

KirinDave wrote: post #115
smt88 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard of conglomerates being broken up, as long as they didn't have too much share of any single market. Amazon may end up like Uber: forcing competitors to upgrade their technology, but not succeeding in stamping the competitors out entirely.

> I've never heard of conglomerates being broken up, as long as they didn't have too much share of any single market. Maybe that should change. But... even if we take it at face value... Name a company in the world that is competing at scale and cost with AWS. In the US, Amazon is definitely nowhere near suffering a loss of customers from Google and Microsoft's offerings. and they're securing massive contracts with k…

You may be interested in some history related to United Airlines [itself an agglomeration of many airlines], Pratt & Whitney, Boeing, Sikorsky Helicopters, and others, which all used to be part of the same organization. They were broken up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Aircraft_and_Transport_...

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