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Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

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Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#22
Google is doing the right thing.

EPIC is a perfect example of the walled garden ecosystem that extracts every last drop from its clients and keeps anyone trying to innovate out. Healthcare tech could use the competition to drive down costs related to medical record management and exchange.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#23
GCP seems culturally a terrible fit for anything compliance-related. Azure and AWS both offer high-compliance regions (Azure Government / AWS GovCloud) that are absolutely necessary for many industries (medical, defense, etc). Slightly salty about this as I am currently migrating a legacy Firebase app because Google doesn't care...

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#25

GCP seems culturally a terrible fit for anything compliance-related. Azure and AWS both offer high-compliance regions (Azure Government / AWS GovCloud) that are absolutely necessary for many industries (medical, defense, etc). Slightly salty about this as I am currently migrating a legacy Firebase app because Google doesn't care...

GovCloud is for government agencies though, mostly to facilitate rules such as no access by foreign nationals. Just because you are in a regulated field doesn't mean you qualify to use it.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but: > That report notes that "insufficient interest" from Epic customers in Google is behind the decision to focus efforts instead with those cloud competitors. It seems like if you run Epic Systems at Google, you were in a minority that is apparently not worth supporting. This seems less like Epic putting their thumb on the scale, and more like their customers putting their thumb on the scale.

I have only limited experience in the healthcare space when it comes to cloud selection, but I can tell you that every single healthcare company I work with uses Azure. They don't do it because it may or may not be right for their needs. They pick Azure because somewhere along the line the mid- and upper-level managers, including director-level IT people, have been made to believe that anything other than Windows is…

Windows and Office are Trojan horses for Azure. Microsoft does all sorts of SKU trickery at the time of Windows and Office license renewal to make it seem like you can't afford to NOT buy Azure from them.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#27

GCP seems culturally a terrible fit for anything compliance-related. Azure and AWS both offer high-compliance regions (Azure Government / AWS GovCloud) that are absolutely necessary for many industries (medical, defense, etc). Slightly salty about this as I am currently migrating a legacy Firebase app because Google doesn't care...

Government Cloud seems to revolve around “access controls” to the cloud instances. I skimmed over one of specifications (“FedRAMP”) and most of the requirements seem like the standard requirements for any type of multi-tenant system (eg, user login expiry).

Doesn’t seem like it offers anything different from the “non-government” packages.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but: > That report notes that "insufficient interest" from Epic customers in Google is behind the decision to focus efforts instead with those cloud competitors. It seems like if you run Epic Systems at Google, you were in a minority that is apparently not worth supporting. This seems less like Epic putting their thumb on the scale, and more like their customers putting their thumb on the scale.

I have only limited experience in the healthcare space when it comes to cloud selection, but I can tell you that every single healthcare company I work with uses Azure. They don't do it because it may or may not be right for their needs. They pick Azure because somewhere along the line the mid- and upper-level managers, including director-level IT people, have been made to believe that anything other than Windows is…

The company I work for does not deal with health-related data so I don't have direct exposure to the issues. But, I think there is something analogous happening with SOX compliance. It is a very expensive and slow bureaucracy that reacts very poorly to change. For example, once I was mortified to find out that due to me randomly logging in to some SOX-covered server, afterward there were multiple meetings between SOX people and my manager to justify that login. (Manager didn't tell me originally to shield me, I just happened to find out later). Any changes to SOX-covered systems have to go through many meetings with technically not very good SOX team.

As a result what we end up having is this shadow-structure/architecture at the company that is highly resistant to change, such that when new projects are discussed and designed, oftentimes decisions are made that are technically worse but save time due to not messing with the SOX structure.

I feel the Azure choice might be due to a similar phenomenon. Maybe the Azure people promise all sorts of out-of-the box HIPAA compliance and insurance and security etc. and the upper management is happy not having to deal with it. Price difference almost doesn't matter very much, if saving a few bucks means that you'll now have to hire and retain a team to design and maintain compliance in your AWS stack. I've no idea if this is actually what happens but it smells like it.

Re: Epic Tells Customers It Will Stop Google Cloud Integrations

#29
post #20

> “We could never pin down Google on what their true business model was,” says a Cerner executive involved in the discussions. Imagine being that insecure in what you do. What were they looking for? A non-compete from Google? Innovate or die.

I don't think that is fair. Understanding your partners business model is a key part of dd for collaboration. If the partner is being cagey about it, there is probably a reason, and it probably isn't a good sign.
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