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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

#271

Post by aliswe »

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

These hyper-ideological takes on finance are so tiring. If you think they are bound to make more profits, I suggest you invest in them, they are called FDX on NY stock exchange.

EDIT: I used to be like that, too.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#272

Post by SoftTalker »

bluGill wrote: post #247
29083011397778 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so the only reason to do it in house is they can't trust any company they hire Now I'm deeply confused. Any company hired either has a profit margin (plus enough to fund an "Oh shit" fund in case times turn bad) or will not stick around longer than a few years. At which case why not just hire people directly and cut out the other company's profit margin? Assuming you hire similar people at the same rate, using your…

You need to deal with overhead. Nobody does their own HVAC in house because you rarely need them, and would have to pay to train people on that despite them not using it. In some cases you can even get a discount. Utilities are. Big customer of tree trimming, the companies doing that work can give a great deal because the utility doesn't care that they take a week off after a storm for high profit margin consumer tri…

Lots of places have their own HVAC techs in house, if they have enough HVAC work to justify it. Even if it's not their core line of business. They will do whatever costs less, +/- some amount of subjective "hassle factor."

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#273

Post by NDizzle »

adwn wrote: post #126
goindeep wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work with a very smart man that I'm sure was some kind of secret genius. He's was that sort of tech gofer. Hardware, software, didn't matter, if there was a problem he'd solve it. Sort of guy you'd see carrying a thick ass SQL book around because he 'needed to learn it' to solve just one little problem. He built whole entire solutions for the company I worked at in his spare time that the company once tried…

> the pain mixing machines That sounds ... dystopian.

Obviously he's been working with javascript recently.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#274

Post by safaci2000 »

JamesAdir wrote: post #227
mhh__ wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mainframe = locked in to IBM, is probably the logic.

How is it any different than being locked to AWS/Azure/Oracle/Google?

Well your also hardware locked. The last time I worked on a mainframe (about a decade), 8 mb of RAM was $1000, a network card was $800. Commodity hardware around the same time 8mb was probably $50 and a network card even a good one was most $100.

You're paying a premium for both the hardware and the lack of develops knowing EBSIDIC, JCL, Cobol, etc..

Actually, from what I remember of Oracle, that might be very similar. I remember having to pay license fees per core.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#275

Post by daemoens »

safaci2000 wrote: post #274
JamesAdir wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it any different than being locked to AWS/Azure/Oracle/Google?

Well your also hardware locked. The last time I worked on a mainframe (about a decade), 8 mb of RAM was $1000, a network card was $800. Commodity hardware around the same time 8mb was probably $50 and a network card even a good one was most $100. You're paying a premium for both the hardware and the lack of develops knowing EBSIDIC, JCL, Cobol, etc.. Actually, from what I remember of Oracle, that might be very simila…

You mean gb of memory right? Or you might have been working with several decades ago.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#276

Post by iso1631 »

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…

They don't run their own electric companies, and often don't even own their own buildings, both of those are essential. I suspect they lease their trucks and planes too.

If they're building it on AWS only kit and locking in, then they open themselves to risk. If they build it on standard VMs running on AWS, Azure, Digital Ocean, then they can shop around at contract renewal time, just like they can with Mercedes vs Ford vs VW trucks

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#277

Post by arghwhat »

Aeolun wrote: post #27
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…

> 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 than yours. Exactly, which is why it’s quite a bit cheaper to not have a building and staff right? The premium you pay for the cloud provider having them must be less than having them yourself, or nobody would ever move to a cloud provider.

No, if the premium was less than the cost of operating a datacenter, no cloud provider would be able to stay in business, much less interested in entering the market.

In order for the cloud business to make sense, turn a profit and sponsor the kind of development into new products done by these companies, we can assume that the cloud services sold by these providers must have a very healthy margin compared to the cost of operating a datacenter full of resources.

The primary thing a cloud business can do to drive cost back down past what you could do with your own datacenter is to have better utilization of their resources by dealing with an average across a much wider range of workloads, or by selling spot instances that get killed if capacity is needed, but based on how things are priced it appears that this mainly just pads their margins.

For the customer, it only really ends up cheaper than on-premise is if: A) you need very few resources and do not already have anywhere to put a server or lack a good uplink; B) your use-case is extremely well-optimized for cloud (e.g. extremely bursty serverless where you average load is a tiny fraction of a single machine); or C) you are Netflix and can make a deal with AWS.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#278

Post by mbesto »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #186
mbesto wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> rent all information infrastructure Most of them were renting most of the infra anyway: - Co-location (physical space rented) - Managed service to keep the lights on (power, back-up generators) - Leased hardware that gets replaced every 3 years - Managed service for switch, firewall, etc. monitoring - ISP, back-up generators, etc. > but that will likely be many, many years down the road They're going to explain to…

You're paying for all of that whether it's the cloud or on-prem. The only real difference if you're a large company is whether you're paying another company's profit margin as well. If you are big enough to have your own datacenter, you are paying Amazon enough to buy that much physical space, power, bandwidth, IT staff, etc. plus funding Bezos' trips to space. There's a justifiable niche where you're too small to ju…

> You're paying for all of that whether it's the cloud or on-prem. The only real difference if you're a large company is whether you're paying another company's profit margin as well.

So, then why even provide the distinction of rent vs own if thats the case?

> you are paying Amazon enough to buy that much physical space, power, bandwidth, IT staff, etc.

And you're also sharing the costs with other people. Clearly FedEx is saving $400M/year while also funding Bezo's trips to space, no?

> But any Fortune 500 transitioning to the cloud is literally just taking their money and burning it, because the alleged cost savings of efficiencies of scale are being completely absorbed by the cloud provider's profit margins.

This is literally not the case without the details so stop speculating. Every F500 should (and probably is) be doing a rent vs own calculation and determining the TCO, and then making the decision from there. It's not unilaterally the case, it has to be assessed.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#279

Post by rbanffy »

sackerhews wrote: post #97
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

context is everything, reading that I thought it would be hilariously funny as an exchange in Father Ted.

Wow, this both a fantastic joke and could be used as a school book example of the importance of context. Given of course that everyone would have watched Father Ted. But the world would be a better place if everyone did.

Indeed. Hadn't heard of it before moving to Ireland, I credit my loving neighbors for introducing us to this national tradition.

Re: FedEx to close data centers, retire mainframes

#280

Post by cupofpython »

bluGill wrote: post #137
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 53, and I've worked for 3 Fortune 250's. Can confirm. I've seen this happen over and over again. Senior management makes some broad pronouncements, and the mid-level lieutenants have meetings with consultants, and then implement new, expensive projects that "will surely fix 'it' this time." Five to ten years later, after the dust settles, and we figure out that we've strapped YET ANOTHER LAYER of technical debt o…

8-10 years is as long as senior executives last, if they don't make a big change then thee is no way to take credit for their vision. Even if the company had a "perfect" org chart (as if such a thing is possible), they need to make changes otherwise someone will say that they old org chart is the cause of success and they as a leader were not worth anything. I don't know if the above fear would actually play out, nob…

I think we are giving these people too much credit. Being the head of the organization is like inheriting someone elses filing system. the only way for them to actually understand wtf is going on at the company is to reorganize some things in a way that makes sense to them.

High level management is fundamentally hard to stay on top of over time. It's about as easy as thinking chess is easy because you can theoretically know every move your opponent might make. There are so many moving parts to an organization that having visibility to them isnt enough to perform well. They have to influence most of the business pretty indirectly. If changing things gives you the confidence necessary to keep things running.. that's what you're going to do. Everything is a gamble, so doing nothing is kind of unacceptable leadership behavior unless they are actively taking up the mantle left by previous management and understand it very well already.

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