For some time now I think why Hetzner is that weak? We've used them in my last Startup and their cloud offering was fine (price, quality), but to use them one would need loadbalancers and managed Postgres and some caching
We managed that on our own but it felt unnecessary. AWS has a lot of bells and whistles not every one needs, but there is a set of tools you need to operate a website. I currently use DO who are very slow but get there I think.
Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
111–120 of 516 posts
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#112"The acquisition, which completed on May 1, brings 70 cloud specialists into the wider group”. For comparison, Amazon has 40,000 employees in AWS.
Do they really? That’s an absurd number even by large company standards.
It's not absurd, it's undersized in fact.
AWS is nearing 50% larger than SAP in sales, which have 101,000 employees.
AWS is now approximately the size of Oracle in sales, which have 136,000 employees.
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just EC2 networking (VPC) is several hundred, maybe 1000 employees. My guess at the total headcount for EC2 would be several thousand employees. Source: worked as an engineer at Amazon, including EC2 for 5 years.
Some cloud providers have a lot fewer employees and are doing well. They don't have as many features compared to EC2 and VPC but it's not a major problem for them.
Yeah, but are they doing "$35 billion per year"-well? :-)
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#114Former Schwarz employee here: The company made SO much money in the past 4 decades with big box / discount retailing, you won't believe it. Salaries are off the charts (it would make senior software engineers in SV look pale). Hubris is as well. The only thing that drives reasoning are statements like 'we're not just some random company, we're Schwarz Group'. It's the poster child Corp described by Andy Gorves statem…
I was running a stall at a graduate careers fair and was amazed at the interest both Aldi and Lidl were getting. Both had amazing starting salaries - I think Aldi was £48k rising to £70k over 3 years if you went on the area manager scheme. Plus a car. The teams there were so enthusiastic and energised and appeared to really really enjoy their jobs. I am impressed by any company that consistently looks after their sta…
I don't have firsthand experience but from what I know those salaries come with very high expectations. Things like "you have to drive to some random neighborhood on a Sunday to check that flyers were being delivered correctly'.
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're talking about GCP, and MS, then they have thousands of engineers too. If you're talking about Digital Ocean, Mongo, and other medium sized players, then I only give them a couple more years before things get really ugly.
Yes I'm thinking about smaller players. I would bet GCP will be cancelled before most of the small players give up.
GCP is moving the corporate needle. Not a lot, but it is. It won't be cancelled.
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've only been to Lidls in the US, but their stores seem pretty streamlined to me.
In Germany, their store managers do inventory manually, which means they have to order items they run low on, no tech insight. Their attempt at setting up SAP failed after burning 500 million on it. Delivery robots, Amazon-style prototypes for cashier-less systems, heck, even Instacart like delivery are nowhere to be found. If Amazon decided to enter the German supermarket landscape, Lidl (also, Aldi and others) woul…
That's the thing I tried to point out in my original comment: They don't embrace automation because it will 100% lower prices in the whole industry.
In the German market, ALDI/LIDL/REWE currently have a healthy oligopoly. Why destroy end user prices and your own margins by automating?
Amazon is not directly attacking their store-focused model because for the billions needed in investment to reach the automation needed for main-stream adaption, they can get way higher margins in other categories (e.g. non-food).
IMHO the perfect supermarket of the future is not food delivery, but a drive-in/pick-up model where you can go 24/7 and where your order is packed 100% by robots. Until we reach this point in terms of technology, the traditional supermarkets will not change due to the above-mentioned oligopoly.
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#117I've been to LIDL / Schwarz Group headquarters in Heilbronn last year, and while they're a super young company with a vibrant atmosphere (which quite unique amongst large German companies), IMO they are ultimately too much attached to their legacy cash cows. They are not streamlining retail processes because they earn too much money with it. They have great IT talent, which is building fancy pilots all day, but refus…
>building fancy pilots all day, but refuse roll them out because it will cannibalize their core business That's the big difference I've noticed between German and US companies. In German companies if you are an exec that brought success to the company in the past then your word is the law and focus is on keeping the status quo and make sure that any new ventures don't make existing higher ups obsolete. Whereas in US…
They are more conservative.
Blockbuster, Sears.
VW, BMW.
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#118I've been to LIDL / Schwarz Group headquarters in Heilbronn last year, and while they're a super young company with a vibrant atmosphere (which quite unique amongst large German companies), IMO they are ultimately too much attached to their legacy cash cows. They are not streamlining retail processes because they earn too much money with it. They have great IT talent, which is building fancy pilots all day, but refus…
>building fancy pilots all day, but refuse roll them out because it will cannibalize their core business That's the big difference I've noticed between German and US companies. In German companies if you are an exec that brought success to the company in the past then your word is the law and focus is on keeping the status quo and make sure that any new ventures don't make existing higher ups obsolete. Whereas in US…
It's the typical innovators problem you describe and that is pretty international. I do think you have a point about culture and in Europe in general software engineering is not seen as such a value adding activity as in the US. Salaries are less than $100k even in senior positions and
I think because of this more talent has moved to the cutting edge technology companies in the US than Europe wants to admit.
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#119I don't get how they plan to compete, do they have chip designers? or deals with SOC manufacturers because AWS/Google/Microsoft are fast because of custom chips that link NVMe directly to the NIC and skip the CPU and some of the network stack
This is clickbait. That's why it says Lidl instead of Schwarz Group. Everyone in Europe knows Lidl and find it amusing that they would run a cloud service. Which means they'll click the link. In reality it's a major german business group who plans to get into IT services with a recent acquisition. They have none of the experience that AWS or GCP have acquired in the last 6-10 years. They'll do their best and I honest…
Plans to get into IT logistics services.
If you want a database tracking how many potatoes are in which trucks and when they'll arrive, they'll sell it to you. If you want a Kubernetes cluster, that isn't their business.
Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Germany, their store managers do inventory manually, which means they have to order items they run low on, no tech insight. Their attempt at setting up SAP failed after burning 500 million on it. Delivery robots, Amazon-style prototypes for cashier-less systems, heck, even Instacart like delivery are nowhere to be found. If Amazon decided to enter the German supermarket landscape, Lidl (also, Aldi and others) woul…
> If Amazon decided to enter the German supermarket landscape, Lidl (also, Aldi and others) would be in serious trouble. I doubt that since I think that Amazon's vision is very different from what many German customers want. Here is a (German) text of a German blogger who went to Amazon Books in the Empire State Building. His experience was not positive: > https://www.danisch.de/blog/2019/06/18/ein-seltsamer-einkauf.…
That’s not how prices work at Whole Foods, and that wasn’t my personal experience at the same store in January this year. Most items had e-ink price displays next to them so they could update but they were slow to update and so price updates were generally limited to once a day. In Whole Foods, they still use the usual printed price tags everywhere, though maybe locations vary. In Ontario, where I am, there’s a Retailer Code of Conduct that most grocery stores have signed up for which says if the price in the aisle is cheaper than the price at the register, you get the item for free if it’s under $10, or thereabouts.
Also as a clarification, the in store demo Amazon Echo devices are set to a variety of names including Alexa and Amazon, which one to say where is printed on the product description tag I saw. They’re not spaced far enough apart though, occasionally “the wrong one” would answer me.
I had a much nicer time shopping at an Amazon Go Store, though selection was limited and I had to edit my receipt later as it thought I’d bought a pop when I had only browsed for flavours.