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FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

datacenterdynamics.com

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Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#11

Post by andyjohnson0 »

joekrill wrote: post #3
sschueller wrote: post #2

So are the moving to AWS? Are we going to have a complete breakdown of packages delivery next time there is an outage at AWS?

> The company is a known Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure customer.

I read the parent comment as questioning the wisdom of relying on a cloud provider (but not specifically AWS, as you indicated) for a global operation life FedEx. Even with service zoning, in extreme cases that provider constitutes a potential single point of failure. Unless FedEx are able to run their core systems on Azure and Oracle‡ then I think the point stands.

It would be interesting to know how Fedex sees the risk/reward equation, and how Azure (for example) compares to a (IBM?) mainframe data centre in terms of reliability and uptime

‡ I'm not sure if there are any cloud neutrality solutions that permit this, but it is possible that FedEx have rolled their own.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#13

Post by rbanffy »

jupp0r wrote: post #6
Thorentis wrote: post #4

Is there any gain here aside from cost saving? Will this saving be passed on to the customer? ( laughs ). What happens when the inevitable AWS outage then causes a global shipping bottleneck? Have we still not learnt that having sovereignty is better than saving money? Has COVID taught us nothing? sigh

What makes you think that a cloud provider outage is more likely than an existing-Fedex-datacenter outage?

Mainframes themselves are extremely reliable. When configured as a cluster they get five nines. I'd say a power or communications failure is much more likely than mainframe downtime.

With cloud you can rely on more datacenters and, if your application is built right, it may end up being more resilient than what a mainframe setup would give you.

Downtime is a fuzzy thing. Whenever possible, I design my apps for graceful degradation - if the database becomes read-only, we can still operate in degraded mode. If we lose queues, some things will not work, but others will continue normally and many users will be completely oblivious to the alarm bells at the NOC (just kidding, there's no such thing). My SLA for full operation is much more relaxed than for degraded operation.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#14

Post by iso1631 »

Thorentis wrote: post #4

Is there any gain here aside from cost saving? Will this saving be passed on to the customer? ( laughs ). What happens when the inevitable AWS outage then causes a global shipping bottleneck? Have we still not learnt that having sovereignty is better than saving money? Has COVID taught us nothing? sigh

Fedex will continue to charge as much as they can to boost their profits. This move will increase their profits, making $1.50 on each of 100 million deliveries instead of $1, boosting profits from $100m to $150m

However if they were to undercut UPS and others they might be able snap up UPS business, dropping the profit to $1, but on 200 million deliveries, and thus they'll make $200m instead, you the customer will have a cheaper delivery, and everybody wins

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#18

Post by bradfa »

It would be interesting to see the actual numbers on how much such a transition will cost.

Can their existing mainframe software and databases simply migrate into a cloud offering? If not, then if their planned transition has delays or technical hurdles, how much of that cost savings is affected?

If their cloud providers change pricing structures in future contract negotiations or if the amount of data they transfer in/out of each cloud provider location changes dramatically in order to better serve their customers, how much of that cost savings is affected?

It's clear that you can run a business with minimal amount of physical plant for servers. It's still not entirely clear to me that large established businesses can actually save money this way.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#19

Post by kragen »

Ultimately companies that abdicate their informatics operations like this will give their profits to their data-center operators, who will be empowered to charge them whatever price they want. Because what's their BATNA? Migrating from Azure to AWS when Microsoft doesn't want to let them?

Renting your information infrastructure is a great way to reduce startup costs, but down the road, that information infrastructure runs your company. Trying to outsource it is like trying to outsource upper management.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the optimal amount of cloud services for an established company like FedEx to buy is 0. They bring in management consultants, too. But it sure isn't 100%.

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