Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#171

Post by djannzjkzxn » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 1:48 AM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #14

crazygringo wrote: post #6

Wow. First of all, I'm curious to what proportions this is driven primarily by remote office work (O365), videoconferencing streaming, recreational video streaming (does Disney+ run on Azure?), or what. But second... I'm fascinated by the concept of prioritization rules in place rather than simply raising prices. I wonder if it "looks bad" to raise prices, or if the vast majority of customers already have locked-in p…

I don't think 1) locking in customers via proprietary APIs 2) limiting supply of resources 3) auctioning off to the highest bidder among your locked in customers was entirely the core feature of clouds. Rather, the idea was "we'll charge so much margin you never need to worry about anything physical, another machine is just an API call away". You don't need to overprovision for peak times and there is less physical s…

I think given the growth these cloud providers are having every year, expanding to meet the needs of a temporary increase in demand looks more like moving forward projects that were already planned. It’s not like they are going to have to build a bunch of datacenters they will never need again.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#172

Post by burkaman » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

loeg wrote: post #118

burkaman wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s also how much you actually want it, and the amount of opportunity cost you’re willing to pay. Money doesn't have much relation to opportunity cost in the presence of enormous wealth inequality. An unemployed person willing to pay their entire bank account of $100 for some good clearly wants it more than a work-from-home tech worker willing to pay the $600 they made yesterday. The same applies to businesses…

You've just described how a monetary system works and have not refuted the link between prices and opportunity cost.

The unemployed person in my scenario is willing to forgo the opportunity to buy food, pay rent, or buy literally anything else. The tech worker is paying a negligible opportunity cost, as they have tens of thousands in their checking account and paying $600 has no effect on their ability to purchase food, rent, or anything else they want.

If I as the merchant believe the amount of money someone is willing to pay is equivalent to the opportunity cost they're willing to incur, I have to assume the person offering $600 wants it more.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#173

Post by AmericanChopper » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 1:52 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #151

loeg wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just described how a monetary system works and have not refuted the link between prices and opportunity cost.

I'm not sure "opportunity cost" is the correct term for what the OP wanted to say, since it usually refers to the (theoretical) loss incurred by choosing one alternative over another. The point is simply that a consumer's ability to pay is not necessarily a reflection of their need of the product. That's not an argument to blithely decouple pricing from supply and demand, but it's a recognition of a problem that a ma…

Opportunity cost is everything you choose to forgo when you choose to allocate any resources to anything. If supply and demand is allowed to have its normal influence on price, then you can decide what you actually have the most demand for, and allocate your resources accordingly. The decisions you make regarding your own needs are always going to be much more efficient than those that any rationing authority could ever make.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#174

Post by azernik » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:07 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #6

Wow. First of all, I'm curious to what proportions this is driven primarily by remote office work (O365), videoconferencing streaming, recreational video streaming (does Disney+ run on Azure?), or what. But second... I'm fascinated by the concept of prioritization rules in place rather than simply raising prices. I wonder if it "looks bad" to raise prices, or if the vast majority of customers already have locked-in p…

As Microsoft noted in their blog post, XBox Live also runs on Azure.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#175

Post by dang » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:15 AM UTC

enlyth wrote: post #93

spencerwgreene wrote: post #68

The Microsoft blog post that the article is using as a source: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/update-2-on-microsoft... .

After reading this, it seems the headline is a bit misleading. The Microsoft blog post states: "We have seen a 775 percent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders." So it's not an overall increase, just in certain regions?

Ok, we've taken 775% out of the title above.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#176

Post by toyg » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

p1necone wrote: post #81

pwarner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Slack themselves use Zoom. Slack is a channel based messaging tool, it integrates with best of class video tools like Zoom and file storage tools like Box or even SharePoint. Teams does it all OKish, although the channel based messaging is probably the worst part. It's sort of wrong to look at Teams as a Slack replacement. Well, it is for who just want chat, and don't care about channel messaging.

Integration seems like the ideal path for Slack. Make it easy and seamless to use any third party service from Slack rather than trying to build functionality directly into it other than the core group/direct chat stuff.

> Integration seems like the ideal path for Slack.

It's pretty easy for Teams too.

I don't particularly like Teams, nor do I like Slack, but there is nothing feature-wise, today, that would make me choose Slack over Teams. Teams also plays much better with OneDrive and Outlook, obviously.

I think Slack is now a goner. They will be acquired in 5 years tops.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#177

Post by perl4ever » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:16 AM UTC

aianus wrote: post #141

perl4ever wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something something mythical man-month.

I have an entire Costco package of toilet paper that will last me months while some poor bastard near me is probably wiping his ass with his hand (or worse, flushing paper towel and causing thousands of dollars of damage) because there is no effective way for me to resell my excess in a way that is legal and won’t result in crazy social media backlash against me. I similarly have months of supply of hand sanitizer (o…

You don't seem to be responding to my comment. High prices cannot necessarily increase supply when the timeframe is strictly limited. This is a reality that a lot of people seem to not accept. So the effect of price is just to determine the distribution of a limited supply. That significantly reduces the utility of a market pricing system. Directing production is a fundamental reason why markets are useful in normal times, and in the very short term of a crisis, it's not applicable.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#178

Post by rmujica » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

sfifs wrote: post #97

crazygringo wrote: post #6

Wow. First of all, I'm curious to what proportions this is driven primarily by remote office work (O365), videoconferencing streaming, recreational video streaming (does Disney+ run on Azure?), or what. But second... I'm fascinated by the concept of prioritization rules in place rather than simply raising prices. I wonder if it "looks bad" to raise prices, or if the vast majority of customers already have locked-in p…

Possibly Teams video chat which seems to work better more consistently than Zoom or Cisco Webex for small groups. At least in my organization, we've seen a lot of folks move to it in the last two-three weeks.

I just had a whole company meetup with 100+ people and Teams handled it like a champ.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#179

Post by DangitBobby » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

bharam wrote: post #154

burkaman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would certainly look bad, and I think it would potentially be illegal in some states. https://consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/price-gou... For example, Georgia: > Selling items or services determined by the Governor during a declared state of emergency to be necessary for public safety at a higher cost than they were immediately prior to the declaration. Kansas: > For any supplier of a "necessary proper…

In the short term it might look bad. But in the long term it would encourage other companies to enter the market and existing players to increase their capacity.

You are assuming that economics for such continue to make sense after the crisis is over, which I sincerely doubt.

Re: Microsoft: Cloud services demand up, prioritization rules in place

#180

Post by AmericanChopper » Mon, Mar 30, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #161

AmericanChopper wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What mechanism do you plan to use to determine the severity of a need?

I've laid out a basic structure for my stance already so let me turn the question back to you: Do you feel that traditional market forces, with hoarding, panic buying, and price gouging at the same time health care providers run out of PPE, ventilators and other equipment... Do you feel the market forces are working in a way that best serves resolving this crisis and helping those in medical peril?

The basic structure of your approach is a vague idea that falls over in all sorts of ways once you attempt to put it into practice. Your comment is also conflating many different issues together. Contrary to your claim, I don’t think the general public has been rushing out to panic buy ventilators, or other heavy duty medical equipment. The government assuming an elevated level of control over the supply chain for medical PPE is also a completely different proposition to allowing Microsoft to increase the costs of video conferencing to properly scale to demand.

The phrase “panic buying” is really just a way to confound discussion about what’s really happening. There is a perfectly legitimate increase in demand, and a perfectly legitimate decrease in supply. If you wanted to stop people from hoarding, allowing market forces to respond to those changes would certainly shut it down. Any centrally enforces rationing policy is going to be far less efficient. The distinction between essential products and services, and non essential ones is also very real. You may choose that for any particular category of product or service, that the benefits in providing stability through rationing outweigh the costly efficiency trade offs. However that doesn’t obviously apply to every category of product or service under the sun.

The trade offs in efficiency are two fold. Firstly, the rationing authority has no effective way to gauge the actual needs of any person or organisation. So they will unavoidably end up allocating too much to some and not enough to others. Secondly, the market will typically respond to increased prices by increasing production. By keeping prices artificially low, you completely remove that incentive, and if the costs of production have risen (as they have), then you end up trying to manage the shortage by applying downward pressure on supply.

Finally, the issue of people not being able to afford the basic necessities of life is completely separate to that of supply and demand. There always have been and always will be people in that boat, regardless of whether there’s a global crisis taking place or not. In developed countries those people receive increased government assistance. I’ve never heard anybody seriously suggest that we should instead engage in mass price fixing to reduce the price of everything, rather than simply providing that assistance.