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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

#41

Post by Out_of_Characte »

hnarn wrote: post #23

Making accurate calculations of data center cost is of course complicated and rarely manages to take everything into account, but the common knowledge I’ve heard is that there comes a point when a company is so large that going on-prem is what actually saves them a lot of money. If FedEx is not large enough to be one of those companies, how large do you actually have to be? Or has cloud pricing changed to the point w…

Technology scales faster than fedex's data needs. Maybe somewhere in the future the reverse trend happens as their needs can be met with very small servers. Though I've always been wary of putting your data somewhere because getting your data to a competitor costs alot of money.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#42

Post by lou1306 »

hnarn wrote: post #23

Making accurate calculations of data center cost is of course complicated and rarely manages to take everything into account, but the common knowledge I’ve heard is that there comes a point when a company is so large that going on-prem is what actually saves them a lot of money. If FedEx is not large enough to be one of those companies, how large do you actually have to be? Or has cloud pricing changed to the point w…

Or maybe they are large enough, they just don't realize it right now.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#43

Post by _0w8t »

oceanswave wrote: post #31
arghwhat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly seems unlikely. Maybe it's the current operational cost, not subtracted the new operational cost. Maybe it's due to already adopting cloud and thus having paying double. Maybe it's due to the use of mainframes, rather than conventional servers. Either way, it's definitely not the cost difference between on-premise and cloud. Cloud providers are not charities, and their buildings and staff are not cheaper…

So do you feel FedEx should make their own trucks, ships, and planes?

With trucks etc. there are still independent companies that can fix those and transitioning to a new provider is straightforward. With IT in cloud there is a strong vendor lock-in.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#44

Post by chrisseaton »

kragen wrote: post #19

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…

You can say the same thing for hundreds of parts of a company like FedEx.

For example FedEx flies Boeing jets. It's completely reliant on Boeing for parts for those jets. Presumably Boeing can charge whatever it wants.

Your company is always going to be reliant on other suppliers and contracts. Unless you're planning on building your own independent country in some location that has all the natural resources you need.

Non-argument.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#45

Post by bcraven »

benj111 wrote: post #15

What's the 8MW in this context? Is that power. Or something else?

"We presently own and operate four primary campus locations (“Primes”), encompassing 12 active multi-tenant data center facilities with an aggregate of up to 14 million gross square feet (GSF) of space. Our existing facilities are equipped to provide up to 490 megawatts (MW) of power, with the potential to scale to more than 1,300 MW upon full build out of our existing footprint."[0]

It sounds like Switch Inc. advertise their datacentres by Wattage. I am not sure how common that is.

[0]https://investors.switch.com/company-profile/default.aspx

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#46

Post by usrusr »

kragen wrote: post #19

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…

But that's only really a change when you come from commodity hardware. For those still on mainframes, what's the difference? Technically the hardware might be charged per replacement cycle instead of monthly, but vendors are just as empowered to demand whatever they want. It's certainly hard to avoid lock-in running stuff on a cloud provider, but I suspect that it is even harder when depending on ye olde mainframe.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#47

Post by noobermin »

cs702 wrote: post #36
kragen wrote: post #19

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…

Without a doubt, a future generation of executives will revisit and reverse the decision to rent all information infrastructure, but that will likely be many, many years down the road. In the meantime, the current generation of executives who made this decision will look very smart for saving the company lots of money for a good number of years. And they stand to benefit personally from it. They're doing the rational…

It's amazing there are no other voices in the room pushing back against this. It really makes you wonder how companies even function at all, much less make money. Being so short sided never ends well.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#48

Post by quickthrower2 »

rbanffy wrote: post #13
jupp0r wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gracef…

I think a lot of sites would benefit from offline-first and cache a bit of information, perhaps encrypted with the same password you used. There is a lot you can still do if you can a functioning site (served from a service worker) with some cached data.

You could read HN articles you read before, for example!

Not to rely on this for the nines, but as a nice way to keep things useful when there is an outage or just slowness.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#49

Post by pclmulqdq »

baud147258 wrote: post #12

Are they really going to save 400 m$, or was it the figure "promised" by the shop that will handle the migration?

They were probably promised a very low price for their first few years, before their cloud costs get re-negotiated. Once they are locked in, the cloud cartel can jack up their price to make sure they get as much money as possible.

But also, mainframes are extremely expensive, so they can probably do better on commodity hardware. The cloud is a way to rent a lot of commodity hardware.

The big-brained move that they are almost certainly not doing is to use cloud services to bridge the retirement of their mainframes and move everything back on-prem with Linux boxes in 5 years.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#50

Post by ithkuil »

cs702 wrote: post #36
kragen wrote: post #19

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…

Without a doubt, a future generation of executives will revisit and reverse the decision to rent all information infrastructure, but that will likely be many, many years down the road. In the meantime, the current generation of executives who made this decision will look very smart for saving the company lots of money for a good number of years. And they stand to benefit personally from it. They're doing the rational…

Tragedy of the executives
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