Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
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Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
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Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#2I recently heard from a senior IT person that the company for which he works could save many millions by moving a certain application from a hairball of micro-services at AWS to a much simpler architecture on colocated servers... but the company's management doesn't want to hear any of it. In fact, management wants IT to move every legacy application that's not yet on the cloud to the cloud, specifically to AWS, because it's considered "more flexible" and perceived as "the future."
He's taken to calling AWS the "lifetime employment program for enterprise software developers."
Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#3I often fantasize about moving a bunch of my company's crap off of ECS/EKS and onto a managed colo with just old-school ansible deployments. I've even spec'd out some bare metal from our local colocation facility and the servers they offer are so ridiculously powerful and CHEAP. We could run our entire production system in a half-rack for about 10% of what we pay AWS.
But alas, nobody will ever go for it and I'm left to dream.
Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#4I recently heard from a senior IT person that the company for which he works could save many millions by moving a certain application from a hairball of micro-services at AWS to a much simpler architecture on colocated servers... but the company's management doesn't want to hear any of it. In fact, management wants IT to move every legacy application that's not yet on the cloud to the cloud, specifically to AWS, beca…
This is a new type of conflict of interests.
I assumed only good intentions from IT guys.
But you're right that some of them may be more interested in complexity of used solutions, bigger budgets, and their personal job security than in company results and sustainability.
Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#5I recently heard from a senior IT person that the company for which he works could save many millions by moving a certain application from a hairball of micro-services at AWS to a much simpler architecture on colocated servers... but the company's management doesn't want to hear any of it. In fact, management wants IT to move every legacy application that's not yet on the cloud to the cloud, specifically to AWS, beca…
A significant number of "cloud migrations" involve moving an application running on Linux on a server to running on Linux on a VPS for similar or higher cost. Not even using ANY of the "features" of the cloud, just treating it like a server. But then they can say "cloud" and everyone's happy.
Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#6I recently heard from a senior IT person that the company for which he works could save many millions by moving a certain application from a hairball of micro-services at AWS to a much simpler architecture on colocated servers... but the company's management doesn't want to hear any of it. In fact, management wants IT to move every legacy application that's not yet on the cloud to the cloud, specifically to AWS, beca…
I think a lot of companies are going to find that they have the same relationship with AWS as banks do with Bloomberg i.e. a massive spend that they constantly try to manage downwards but can never escape.
Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#7[deleted]
Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#8Pretty interesting point there at the end of the post:
But with the mass layoffs in Big Tech in recent months, this may be an opportunity to re-evaluate the approach to the cloud, consider a reverse migration from the cloud, and hire seasoned professionals of the data center world.
Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#9I recently heard from a senior IT person that the company for which he works could save many millions by moving a certain application from a hairball of micro-services at AWS to a much simpler architecture on colocated servers... but the company's management doesn't want to hear any of it. In fact, management wants IT to move every legacy application that's not yet on the cloud to the cloud, specifically to AWS, beca…
From a biz perspective, that can be a bad move and signals that you're not in growth phase but in cutting costs to preserve profits. Using cloud derisks you for future costs because it's managed for you, and then you allocate capex towards making better features. Doing it locally means having a team of IT admins/professionals you normally only need a few of which also incurs a lot of cost and risk.
Re: Ahrefs saved $400m in 3 years by not going to the cloud
#10Pretty interesting point there at the end of the post: But with the mass layoffs in Big Tech in recent months, this may be an opportunity to re-evaluate the approach to the cloud, consider a reverse migration from the cloud, and hire seasoned professionals of the data center world. I do think with all these layoffs we can't help but see some interesting things happen from people who have been let go. Either through t…
despite what everyone thinks that doing things locally is cheaper, if you're running a business and allocating money towards headcount and benefits plus additional risk of maintaining team it rarely makes sense. HN is full of people who run a hobby server and think that a fortune 500 should manage its own PostGres