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

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

#61
Pears to apples absolutely. It is an interesting observation, but for most of cases, which I am aware of, big companies are using Office365 and, probably, Dynamics, which automatically makes them the Azure customer and ticks the "Migrate to cloud" box at IT presentations to the boards. AWS, on the other hand, is being used primarily for either proprietary AWS technology, or just simple EC2s, which are very slow to be moved over to the clouds by the big companies.

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

#62

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…

I don’t think this is true at all. I see a couple of very obvious reason that large organisations go with Azure. 1) Most large orgs already have Exchange/AD/SharePoint infrastructure. Move that into the cloud and boom, you’re already an Azure customer whether you noticed it or not. Want to take some more IaaS services on? Want a cloud SCM?... Don’t worry about procurement, you’re already a customer. 2) Procurement de…

I don’t disagree with #1. But #2 is not really valid IMO. In terms of cloud AWS fills the role of nobody got fired for picking IBM as opposed to Azure.

Procurement decisions usually start with AWS.

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

#63
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 ?

An potential problem is that now half of your IT recruits go to reinventing this stuff instead of working on domain problems. There aren't that many it staff per 10k municipal employees.

(Of course this is assuming Azure specific hassles take much less staff time than running your own infra, not a given...)

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

#65
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 ?

Haha. Here's another one: "At this scale, why not write your own OS, since you already have a lot of servers to maintain?"

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

#66
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft first got onto my shitlist radar by putting a series of application vendors out of business by making bad knockoffs and leveraging bulk sales. EE&E has its roots in those stories. With a leopard this old, it’s hard to tell if it has changed its spots or it’s just covered with old dirt. What I do know is if you get bit I don’t want to hear about it. I’ll just laugh and laugh in your face.

You’re really bringing up EE&E in a thread comparing Microsoft & Amazon?! LOL indeed.

I’d say it’s safe to say if MS has the market dominance Amazon does now, they would absolutely be doing the same things. They used to, and would again, despite their “underdog” current PR campaign.

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

#67

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…

> MS has a long history of being a provider of tools and not really competing with partners.

MS claim to fame was by providing tools to a partner and directly competing with their partner.

"In 1985, IBM requested Microsoft to develop a new operating system for their computers called OS/2. Microsoft produced that operating system, but also continued to sell their own alternative, which proved to be in direct competition with OS/2."

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

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

#68
post #60
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Amazon absolutely looks at whatever data they legally can, because, well, they’re Amazon. Leveraging their market position to the maximum effect is not only what they do, it’s basically guaranteed.

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

#69
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…

Errm. "Estimated" 300-500 systems?

I worked at a corporate with (at one point) 1891 systems; we had several ways of counting them... Some ways said 44 ( business platforms) But count them we could!

If I was your CIO counting would be my number one mission!

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

#70
Yet I have the feeling GCP is the one which has been improving the most the quality of its offering.

It's interesting to monitor what's happening with data-warehouses for instance.

It almost feels AWS is having its "Kodak moment" with Redshift: a very remunerative but old technology in which they are deeply invested in.

It prevents them to put more effort behind solutions that decouple compute from storage (see Athena) and as a result they are offering a subpar competitor to BigQuery.

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