Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 260 posts

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#51

Post by luckydata »

polskibus wrote: post #28
moksly wrote: post #7

I work for a Danish municipality with roughly 10,000 employees. I’m not sure if you know, but our public sector has been competing with Estonia at being the most digitised in the world for a decade. We operate an estimated 300-500 different IT-systems, some of them enterprise sized SAP solutions deployed on old IBM mainframes with multiple layers of APIs to make their fronts somewhat web-based (don’t ask). Others are…

At this scale, why not invest in your own datacenter, since you already have a lot of servers to maintain? I understand you have to use Office 365, but what is the value prop of Azure to you beyond that ?

It would be a tremendous hassle for little to no payoff as they probably don’t have the skill set to actually run a data center, and probably their size is actually not that large, they just run a lot of software I suppose (that’s usually the case in the public administration). It would be rampant malpractice to open your own data center for something like that.

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#52

Post by swarnie_ »

akudha wrote: post #39
addicted wrote: post #22

I think everyone here is missing the real reason why big companies want to go with Azure (and smaller companies probably should consider too). No one trusts Amazon to not screw them over. The A to Z in the Amazon logo hurts AWS because big companies are worried Amazon will compete with them (if they don’t already) and will use AWS data and information against those companies. MS has a long history of being a provider…

will use AWS data and information against those companies. Aren't there laws to prevent this? Say I am a big retailer - target, aldi or some company at that scale using AWS. Are you saying Amazon can look into my database/code etc and learn from it and use that knowledge to compete with me? Shouldn't such a thing be illegal, though it would super hard to prove?

Aren't there laws to prevent this?

Potentially yes but when have big tech ever played by the rules though. Its hard to name a single FAANG company that hasn't used terrible/outright illegal practises to get to the top.

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#53

Post by therockspush »

The twist is a lot big companies(Global 2000) are the least cloud savvy, being dragged kicking and screaming out of their data centers.

They don't even know what they don't know, and when Azure shows up offering AD which they already use to manage their juggernaut of a domain it feels like home. They haven't even considered lock in yet.

The teams that end up managing Azure infrastructure come from a more IT/Networking background. Azure supported UDP load balancing before AWS, and has more intuitive and easier to build internal load balancers.

AWS tends to appeal to more cloud native companies that just want to build and tend to be younger. Azure appeals to the familiarity and ease of transition for the 20 year IT squad that is trying to stay relevant.

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#54

Post by thawaway1837 »

akudha wrote: post #39
addicted wrote: post #22

I think everyone here is missing the real reason why big companies want to go with Azure (and smaller companies probably should consider too). No one trusts Amazon to not screw them over. The A to Z in the Amazon logo hurts AWS because big companies are worried Amazon will compete with them (if they don’t already) and will use AWS data and information against those companies. MS has a long history of being a provider…

will use AWS data and information against those companies. Aren't there laws to prevent this? Say I am a big retailer - target, aldi or some company at that scale using AWS. Are you saying Amazon can look into my database/code etc and learn from it and use that knowledge to compete with me? Shouldn't such a thing be illegal, though it would super hard to prove?

They don’t need to look into your data to get valuable information.

Simple stuff that shows up on your bill, such as the amount of data transfer, the sizes of your databases and how they change, etc is enough.

I doubt there are laws that prevent them from doing deep dives into your data but that’s not really the concern. I don’t expect them to do that.

However, when it comes to trying to solve problems, create bespoke apps, as a retailer you will probably be far more comfortable sharing the information about your data with a Microsoft rep than an AWS rep helping you build that bespoke solution.

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#55

Post by mac_was »

closeparen wrote: post #43
heavenlyblue wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me for my ignorance, but doesn’t Azure provide the same APIs as AWS? PS: I have onoy used AWS

It provides roughly thee same APIs, but the cultural context it sits in is different. The APIs are there for parity with AWS, not as the key value proposition.

Any examples to backup up your opinion?

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#56

Post by jeswin »

akudha wrote: post #39
addicted wrote: post #22

I think everyone here is missing the real reason why big companies want to go with Azure (and smaller companies probably should consider too). No one trusts Amazon to not screw them over. The A to Z in the Amazon logo hurts AWS because big companies are worried Amazon will compete with them (if they don’t already) and will use AWS data and information against those companies. MS has a long history of being a provider…

will use AWS data and information against those companies. Aren't there laws to prevent this? Say I am a big retailer - target, aldi or some company at that scale using AWS. Are you saying Amazon can look into my database/code etc and learn from it and use that knowledge to compete with me? Shouldn't such a thing be illegal, though it would super hard to prove?

Even metadata will be useful information and most likely not covered under laws. For example, peak load, usage patterns, spends etc.

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#57

Post by mac_was »

blihp wrote: post #27
bazza451 wrote: post #5

I would assume it’s due to a lot of the banks running windows and having large AD rollouts means it’s a bit of a gateway to the rest of their cloud services. You have to use Azure ADFS for things like office 365/teams, so would make sense for people to keep all their eggs in one basket.

Unfortunately, Enterprise deals are more based on sales skills than technology. Companies like Microsoft tend to have multiple ongoing points of contact with their Enterprise customers such as account managers, technical account managers, professional services consultants etc. These points of contact are (hopefully) doing whatever it is the customer wants them to but are also feeding back intel to their (Microsoft's)…

What is wrong with all that? That they implement what the customer wants?

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#58

Post by swarnie_ »

antupis wrote: post #4

Is this because of AD and Office integrations?

In my experience yes. between 2012 and 2015 i did an on prem to office 365 migration every couple of weeks on average working for an MSP.

The pitch is just so insanely easy when speaking to management/finance types. You can remove so much financial ambiguity which comes with maintaining servers or expanding a business.

Every Finance director i spoke with loves being able to model costs years in advance.

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#59

Post by thawaway1837 »

polskibus wrote: post #30
leoc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MS has a long history of being a provider of tools and not really competing with partners. Windows ISVs and other OS providers excepted, of course ...

What about CRM, messaging, analytics, BI, etc.? Some time ago they released a beta (?) of invoicing product - not sure how that went.

I mean, they crush competitors. Not so much partners and clients.

These are all tool makers and basically competitors.

And frankly for the vast majority of them they actually bought the alternatives. For example, they bought Skype for messaging, they bought Great Plains, etc.

Re: Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says

#60

Post by Joe8Bit »

akudha wrote: post #39
addicted wrote: post #22

I think everyone here is missing the real reason why big companies want to go with Azure (and smaller companies probably should consider too). No one trusts Amazon to not screw them over. The A to Z in the Amazon logo hurts AWS because big companies are worried Amazon will compete with them (if they don’t already) and will use AWS data and information against those companies. MS has a long history of being a provider…

will use AWS data and information against those companies. Aren't there laws to prevent this? Say I am a big retailer - target, aldi or some company at that scale using AWS. Are you saying Amazon can look into my database/code etc and learn from it and use that knowledge to compete with me? Shouldn't such a thing be illegal, though it would super hard to prove?

I did some strategy work for a global retailer a few years ago and this kept coming up, they even have a policy that SaaS tools they acquire "can't be hosted in AWS".

Their reasoning seemed a bit paranoid, but it wasn't that Amazon would secretly start mining their data there without telling them, it's that this retailer would invest 10's (even 100's) of millions of dollars in tools and infrastructure on AWS and then AWS would change their terms and conditions to allow them to look at/share data 'legally' and the retailer would be so in the hole in terms of investment/technology they couldn't leave/stop them without losing millions. They saw it as risk mitigation.

I think it's _incredibly_ unlikely this would ever happen, but if you combine that with "I don't want to give one of our biggest competitors a cent" it ends up with policies like this

Post reply on HN