Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft • Hacker News Board

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#71

Post by RossM » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

cmauniada wrote: post #13

Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in? Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted…

I migrated the company's services from AWS to OCI at the startup I was at. The trade-off is simple, if Oracle can say $product runs on OCI, they'll put you in front of the biggest industry players who are using their POS, database - and since our sales pipeline pivoted around web integrations this was crucial. They also give a bunch of credits (as do the other providers).

We argued against it in the dev team, but it wasn't the worst cloud migration I've done. The console reminds me of early days AWS as it's essentially just VPC+EC2+S3, but it was refreshing to spin up a server without a pages of config being presented to you. We took the opportunity to containerise our older sites and ran everything in their managed k8s cluster. I very rarely had to use the console for anything, which tbh is a bit of a grab-bag of managed services beyond the core cloud offering. Terraform support is there if you need to do anything serious.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#72

Post by corpMaverick » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

DevKoala wrote: post #54

Do people questioning the intentions of this move, have actual experience using Oracle cloud? It seems that people really eat the marketing that AWS/GCP/Azure are the best cloud provider for every single product. Oracle Cloud's perception is in the gutter, and it's all press. It's very possible that they have a competitive cloud service. They were making some decent offers for talent last time I checked.

Oracle has a long history of being an all around shitty company. So is probably that. Even if they have may have a good cloud offering.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#73

Post by andrewflnr » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #34

I suspect Oracle is giving good deals as nobody ever considers them as a cloud provider, so they need to gain market share to stay relevant. They wouldn’t be in the top 10 lists of ones I would think of. How many here even knew they had a cloud you could use?

Me, but not because I wanted to. They advertised pretty heavily in the Washington DC metro, big bright red ads all over.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#74

Post by wp381640 » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #60

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google sees Zoom as competition (They recently updated Google Hangouts to compete with Zoom) so it won't make sense for them to host there. Microsoft has Skype. I am not sure about Amazon. Someone please enlighten us.

Amazon has Chime.

Is that another IoT doorbell thing they acquired?

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#75

Post by chrisseaton » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

cmauniada wrote: post #13

Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in? Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted…

> I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either?

Because Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are competitors to Zoom. Why would you host on your competitor?!

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#76

Post by sylens » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

searchableguy wrote: post #46

SteveNuts wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(In my professional experience) Google is absolutely terrible at B2B, their support is sorely lacking. (In my personal experience) Google deprecates products I love at a fast pace and have for many years. For me, they went from an air of mystery like they were the "Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory" of shops to "just another software conglomerate", and not a particularly good one at that.

> (In my professional experience) Google is absolutely terrible at B2B, their support is sorely lacking. I am curious about which products and what kind of support they are lacking at. > (In my personal experience) Google deprecates products I love at a fast pace and have for many years. Can you name a few? (going to guess reader, inbox for gmail etc) And if they are being like any other tech company, why the extra u…

https://killedbygoogle.com/

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#77

Post by Havoc » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #34

I suspect Oracle is giving good deals as nobody ever considers them as a cloud provider, so they need to gain market share to stay relevant. They wouldn’t be in the top 10 lists of ones I would think of. How many here even knew they had a cloud you could use?

I did. Tried their free credit stuff. Was seriously unimpressed. Felt like a beta test

Unless it's way cheaper I don't see the point

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#78

Post by roosterdawn » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

linuxftw wrote: post #59

cmauniada wrote: post #13

Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in? Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted…

The same way a startup chooses any hosting platform. They pick who their VCs tell them to pick because it's all a slush fund. Zoom's losses are another business owned by the same VC's gain.

The last time I checked, Zoom was a publicly traded company. Of course, this doesn't invalidate your second point due to the existence of large institutional public investors.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#79

Post by rubiquity » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:26 PM UTC

holler wrote: post #52

mcbain wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has Chime. Not heard of it? You aren’t alone there.

I've heard nothing but negative reviews about Chime from amazon employee's whom have to use it daily...

Disclaimer: I work at AWS.

I use Chime and love it. Its lack of features is a feature in my opinion. I used Slack for years before using Chime and I’m happy with the switch. I don’t get nearly the chat fatigue I used to get from Slack. Chime reminds me of HipChat and Campfire in terms of UX but with the availability you’d expect an AWS service to have.

Re: Zoom taps Oracle for cloud deal, passing over Amazon, Microsoft

#80

Post by djannzjkzxn » Tue, Apr 28, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #30

cmauniada wrote: post #13

Why? Is it because of cost? Perhaps nepotism? I don' see a reason why Amazon or Azure would be passed over in favour of Oracle. Why wasn't GCP a contender either? Something seems fishy... someone from Zoom care to chime in? Maybe they are afraid that Amazon or Microsoft with their tradition of copying competition would pose a threat? Even then, Microsoft is already competing using Microsoft Teams and if Amazon wanted…

My guess is simply, they don't want to fund their own competitors. Microsoft is a direct competitor already (so is Google,) and who knows what Amazon will do. That really only leaves IBM and Oracle. I've always been baffled when someone hosts on their competitors' platform. Like Netflix hosting on AWS, and Grocery Stores hosting on AWS. Microsoft & Google rarely have that problem (except on this one.)

If the amount of revenue you are going to give is a rounding error for AWS, you are not going to move the needle on the funding of their other projects. This should be a non-factor in your decision-making process.