Azure has an edge over AWS at big companies, Goldman Sachs survey says • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

adev_ wrote: post #104

ptd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One point(though I will admit this is the cynical part of my brain speaking) immediately jumps to mind. If the server goes down, you can blame Microsoft. Even the least technical person can’t blame you for that. If you create your own data center however, if it goes down, you may potentially be on the chopping block if service is interrupted. Self preservation is a strong motivator, perhaps the strongest in a busines…

> Self preservation is a strong motivator, perhaps the strongest in a business environment. And it's the most bullshit one. Outsourcing the risk does not mean avoiding it, it means however putting it out of control. This is a typical manager bullshit attitude "nobody got fired to buy IBM" that generally lead to adopt unadapted, bloated, overpriced solutions to trivial problems. Just because they do not have the balls…

Yes, surprisingly enough, people look out for their own self interests.

What makes outsourcing hardware different from the dozens of other software as a service vendors that most companies depend on?

Why spend the time developing competency in managing servers if that doesn’t give you a competitive advantage.

But, going with the biggest most stable vendor is usually good. If you bought IBM hardware in the 70s you can still buy new hardware that supports your software. If you went with their competitors - not so much.

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

#112

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:08 AM UTC

JohannesH wrote: post #100

sgt101 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this scale why not contact all your neighbouring or peer municipalities and go for a joint cloud migration?

As someone who worked in the very same municipality... one word; bureaucracy. More specific reasons were. Legal boundaries between ownership and taxpayer money separation. Of cause GDPR is also a big obstacle in joining forces on this scale. I worked on a project which tried to make a joined venture between several municipalities. I'm not sure if that partnership has ended yet, but overall you could only progress if…

Or not dealing with infrastructure gatekeepers.

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

#113

Post by ak39 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:11 AM UTC

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…

Agreed. No one got fired for choosing IBM. No one gets fired for choosing Microsoft - still. It's about trust. Or the perception of it.

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

#114

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:11 AM UTC

laurentb wrote: post #105

jasonvorhe wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This always had a vibe of a conspiracy theory to me. If this were to ever happen and it came out, AWS would be screwed for all eternity. You just need one disgruntled employee to keep a screenshot of their auditing logs to make…

You don't have to look that deep to see the example. Walmart categorically refuses to buy anything that runs on Amazon simply because amazon competes with walmart directly in retail. having said that, i'm sure there are exceptions and some examples where they do have some stuff they use hosted on aws but that's the exception not the norm.

But yet Netflix is all in on Amazon even though Amazon Prime Video exists.

Apple depends on Samsung for many of its components and Google pays Apple billions a year to be the default search engine. Companies cooperate and compete with each other all the time.

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

#115

Post by willjr10 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:13 AM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #93

iakov wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but want to chime in. My experience with Azure support has been dreadful, to say the least. Insanely long response times, being bounced from agent to agent, people just misreading the ticket. I really don't want to deal with Azure at this point because I don't trust the support. Most of our company infra is on AWS, and while they aren't without fault, I can say that every time we needed to talk to a human bei…

To chime in with another single data point, my experience with Azure support has actually been pretty good. Tickets take anywhere between 2h and 72h to get a response, which I'll grant is not ideal, but the ticket handlers I've dealt with have all been knowledgeable and helpful. I work for enterprise-level companies though, so I don't know if support varies for smaller ones depending on spend.

I agree. I work for a company who is a top 100 globally customer of Azure. In case where we have needed support, depending on how severe we define the issue, we are contacted within minutes. Well within the defined contact times stated as when creating support tickets. In several other cases, Microsoft has brought in people from around the world to help workout various issues. However, I don't know if the response times and help offered would be the the same if we were a different scale organization.

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

#116

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:14 AM UTC

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?

It’s a conspiracy theory. I doubt very seriously that Amazon is going to the AWS department to look at competitors data and that’s assuming a company concerned about security is not doing encryption at rest.

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

#117

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:19 AM UTC

olavgg wrote: post #73

mac_was wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples to backup up your opinion?

It is true, many of the companies I have worked for the last few years is using Azure and only the UI. No one uses the API/SDK. They hire devops cloud consultants to click on the UI, not to use the API to tie everything together.

The equivalent of “AWS Consultants” who are just a bunch of old school netops people who passed one multiple choice certification. All they can do is duplicate an on prem infrastructure on AWS doing a lift and shift and costing their client more for the privilege.

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

#118

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:21 AM UTC

disappearance wrote: post #44

hinkley wrote: 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.

Pardon my ignorance, what is EE&E?

Edit: just had a flashback to /. - is it “embrace, extend, extinguish”?

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

#119

Post by moksly » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:24 AM UTC

dustinmoris wrote: post #96

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…

> We have a direct line to Seattle, and parts of what we ring up at tickets have made it into the global 365 infrastructure. This is great for one business, but bad for the whole of businesses IMHO. Microsoft shoehorns every little thing into their products, never asking themselves if they should . As long as they think they can they will. This leads to stupid things like Durable (aka stateful) Azure Functions. Durab…

I agree, but I think that’s on Microsoft. I’m not sure they’ve ever adopted any suggestions from us that weren’t universally wanted. When teams first became available in 365, it was automatically enabled for everyone. Today it’s not, we requested this change, but I really doubt we were alone in that.

That’s not really what’s important to us, but I should have made that more clear. What is important is the direct line, so that we can call Microsoft and get updates directly from the techs working on the issue when something breaks. Amazon also has genuinely great support, they were even quicker to resolve the GDPR issues that made sure no one outside of the EU will ever access any of our data, not even through logs. But other companies let you talk to automated scripts, and take days to get back to you. So that’s why we like the direct line to Seattle, because it’s better support than most of their competition.

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

#120

Post by DaiPlusPlus » Thu, Jan 09, 2020, 11:25 AM UTC

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.

Microsoft has line-of-business software titles at different market-tiers - so you could be referring to any one of them.

At the low-end, Office 365 now includes web-based invoices, bookings (a la hairdresser appointments), and the like.

Middle-tier would be using something from their former Great Plains titles (now under the Dynamics brand). And at the high-end, that’d be a partner-customised build of MS Dynamics.

Now all they have to do is bring back Microsoft Money!