AWS just went multi-cloud • Hacker News Board

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#91

Post by hrktb » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

cheesgrateron wrote: post #47

julianozen wrote: post #7

I wonder if Amazon’s theory here is that by offering multi-cloud support they can put decision makers at ease when choosing cloud vendors by making them feel like they’re not getting locked into AWS - but Amazon also expects most customers to mostly only use AWS out of convenience Disclaimer - I used to work for AWS

I've worked as a consultant in this area for years with large F500 companies and not once have I heard anyone actually be concerned with the "lock in" boogeyman. There used to be a lot of concern around general trust of the cloud, which drove people to stick to on-prem servers. But "lock in", IME, is only something people fret about on HN. What I think is happening is that companies are starting to gain more experien…

TripAdvisor had a very strong “no lock in” policy that impacted the technical stacks we could keep/choose when we got bought by them.

We could use an nginx installed and maintained on EC2 by ourselves but not the AWS flavor on it, or I guess we’d have needed to fight to get an exception.

That’s just an anecdote, but I am sure more companies put real money behind getting “locked in”.

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#92

Post by swasheck » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

cheesgrateron wrote: post #47

julianozen wrote: post #7

I wonder if Amazon’s theory here is that by offering multi-cloud support they can put decision makers at ease when choosing cloud vendors by making them feel like they’re not getting locked into AWS - but Amazon also expects most customers to mostly only use AWS out of convenience Disclaimer - I used to work for AWS

I've worked as a consultant in this area for years with large F500 companies and not once have I heard anyone actually be concerned with the "lock in" boogeyman. There used to be a lot of concern around general trust of the cloud, which drove people to stick to on-prem servers. But "lock in", IME, is only something people fret about on HN. What I think is happening is that companies are starting to gain more experien…

Where I work, lock-in is actually embraced. Homogeneity is valuable. It is a boogeyman in HN but the concern does have merit, for sure.

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#93

Post by dv_dt » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:00 PM UTC

heyoni wrote: post #90

dv_dt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would note that F500 companies are going to have the resources to move out of lock in if it came down to it, and AWS sales management knows it and would have to negotiate costs with that in mind. Smaller scale companies than the F500 that don't have that kind of leverage have to concern themselves more w/ lock-in.

Didn’t AWS just move some of their infrastructure off of oracle because it basically took them a decade to figure out how?

Yup, the interesting data point would be what did Amazon pay for their oracle usage vs smaller companies? I would guess that as long as Oracle gave them a reasonable price Amazon would be happy to stay on - except for a question of long term independence and vertical integration.

Amazon is probably in a unique position in that providing data and database services is a core competency, and so vertical integration off of Oracle makes a lot of sense even separate from the cost leverage question.

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#94

Post by YarickR2 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

staticassertion wrote: post #73

dboreham wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who is not concerned about lock in is a fool. There are many fools in business.

Lock-In is dead simple to avoid with AWS. Even with Lambda, which people tend to point to and say "lock-in!". Even now we've got lambdas running Docker containers. It's a total boogeyman and I've never heard anyone care about it except on HN, where it comes up constantly.

first , it is real. second, it is very much a concern. we're buying game studios, and, if their projects are using Amazon-specific technologies( gamelift, f.e) we know it's an uphill battle to profitability ; games are low margin enough to take hosting and bandwidth costs into account

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#95

Post by samstave » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

victor106 wrote: post #79

samstave wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME (my experience) -- Lock-in was really about APPs in the 90s and 2000s... JDE Edwards, IBM AS 400, etc... AWS is a substrate platform, thus is does not look like lock-in in any other respect other that price. if you marry with Oracle, JDE, AS-400 etc you are mapped to an APP and not a platform on which you can build WTF you want... so only noobs think of AWS as a lock-in because they are only looking a price/cost…

AWS/Azure lock in is more about data than platform. Fortune 500 have lot of data and while its free to move data to a particular cloud provider they pay a bomb to take it out.

Good point, but begs the question; how fix?

maybe there is a market for JUST data migration/storage/translation service?

Such that you can be a data miration/router first hop - and then pipe to AWS/GCP/MS at will - then an overlay which launches the overlay infra on demand depending on which rout you want to take...? Layer 9

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#96

Post by forty » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

swasheck wrote: post #92

cheesgrateron wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked as a consultant in this area for years with large F500 companies and not once have I heard anyone actually be concerned with the "lock in" boogeyman. There used to be a lot of concern around general trust of the cloud, which drove people to stick to on-prem servers. But "lock in", IME, is only something people fret about on HN. What I think is happening is that companies are starting to gain more experien…

Where I work, lock-in is actually embraced. Homogeneity is valuable. It is a boogeyman in HN but the concern does have merit, for sure.

I used to be very careful / strict with the lock-in. But not anymore. You have to compare the cost of an hypothetical migration to something else to the cost of not using the capability of the platform to its full capacity. I read somewhere here that accepting vendor lockin is being a fool. I would say that paying aws prices without benefiting from any of their great stuff is also not very clever.

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#97

Post by misiti3780 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

qz2 wrote: post #21

abiro wrote: post #19

Don’t read too much into this — they are just catching up with GCP and Azure here. AWS has a history of introducing half-assed products with great fanfare when the lack of such a product could be a disadvantage for customer acquisition (think Beanstalk, Cognito or Amplify).

Don’t forget their ElasticSearch version. Now that is a shit show.

Why is it a shit show?

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#98

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #63

cheesgrateron wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked as a consultant in this area for years with large F500 companies and not once have I heard anyone actually be concerned with the "lock in" boogeyman. There used to be a lot of concern around general trust of the cloud, which drove people to stick to on-prem servers. But "lock in", IME, is only something people fret about on HN. What I think is happening is that companies are starting to gain more experien…

Anyone who is not concerned about lock in is a fool. There are many fools in business.

You’re always locked into your infrastructure when you are at any type of scale. The cost and the risk of regressions hardly ever make it economically viable to migrate to another cloud provider.

How does avoiding “lock in” add business value either by reducing cost or increasing revenue.

Out of all the business risks that a company has, avoiding lock-in is the least of them.

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#99

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

heyoni wrote: post #90

dv_dt wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would note that F500 companies are going to have the resources to move out of lock in if it came down to it, and AWS sales management knows it and would have to negotiate costs with that in mind. Smaller scale companies than the F500 that don't have that kind of leverage have to concern themselves more w/ lock-in.

Didn’t AWS just move some of their infrastructure off of oracle because it basically took them a decade to figure out how?

Yes and AWS also built multiple database types to meet their needs. Is your company going to do the same?

Re: AWS just went multi-cloud

#100

Post by karambahh » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

There has been a player in "AWS compatible workloads" for quite some time, the french company Outscale:

https://us.outscale.com/products/compute/aws-compatible-clou...

They have PoPs in several "exotic" locations, but I'm not entirely sure the list is public. They also run AWS-compatibles clouds for state actors.