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Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

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Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#101

Post by tt24 »

lelanthran wrote: post #94
tt24 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s using an army of extremely well paid engineers, something I guarantee the parent comment has no access to

> No it’s using an army of extremely well paid engineers, something I guarantee the parent comment has no access to That's a different argument to the one I replied to, and the reply to "they have expensive infra people" is "you have to have expensive product-trained people to use them anyway".

It’s not really a different argument

The suggestion was to replace DBB and S3 with some VMs. Presumably those VMs would be managed by the engineers part of the parent commenter’s organization. They do not have access to as many engineers as AWS, nor do they pay them as well.

Not arguing about cost effectiveness here. Just pointing out how silly it is to suggest that you can replace DDB/S3 with some VMs ran by a midsize organization

Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#102

Post by eddythompson80 »

walrus01 wrote: post #17
xfactorial wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole business model is around “Optimization through custom tools”. We can go with your idea, sure: a few months in, an Account Manager from the cloud provider shows up and says your bill could be reduced by 50% if you just adopt some changes, using their custom, super optimized tools (“minor changes” will be the mantra). And now you have your own company looking back to you on how can they get those savings, peo…

Preventing this from happening requires a clued-in CTO and equivalent senior level leadership who can defend against such 'attack' methods and knows the difference between, for instance, paying a monthly recurring cost to host a Linux/KVM virtual machine and paying for some totally 'cloud' SaAs. Further, it needs people in decision making roles who understand and value the strategic differences between having an infr…

> Preventing this from happening requires a clued-in CTO and equivalent senior level leadership

Most CTOs (and increasingly M2s and M3s) I've met are what I call "box architects". You know the ones who love drawing boxes, moving one box inside another box, drawing a line between 2 boxes or changing a unidirectional arrow into a bidirectional one, then declaring the hard part is done and now we need any random engineer to implement that or "Is there an AWS service that does that? I just don't see the value in us doing it in house".

A "super optimized tools" is just a box that you swap for another box and the "minor changes" will be just a couple of arrows than need to change or another box to swap for another box. You get them to feel good about doing architect stuff plus the 10x reduction in the bill. They can always replace that box with another box later after all.

Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#103

Post by pronik »

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #85
storus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schwarz seems to be obsessed with how Amazon (book seller) created AWS and they are trying to do the same... with 5 people. Also Aleph Alpha + Cohere is a Lidl work as the current CEO of the former led Lidl digital division.

Lidl famously blew 500M on a failed SAP project, so they're understandably a bit into running things themselves. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17541092

But they had the guts to back away. Not everyone does.

Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#105

Post by holoduke »

vrganj wrote: post #84
holoduke wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The last war Germany started famously ended 80 years ago. The last war the US started is still ongoing and was started by them a few weeks ago.

You really compare 40s Germany with the US? Nah

Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#106

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

lelanthran wrote: post #70
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer not using managed services but I kind of understand the appeal. Instead of paying several engineers, that you have to vet first, to configure and maintain the services adjacent to your product you can just pay AWS or Azure or someone else to maintain the service. Then you can concentrate your whole manpower on your product. In case the service goes down you can blame someone else and maybe even recover some…

> Instead of paying several engineers, that you have to vet first, to configure and maintain the services adjacent to your product you can just pay AWS or Azure or someone else to maintain the service. Your engineers who all have to possess AWS or similar certs before you hire them, work for free? A move off VPS to managed services doesn't reduce your headcount or labour costs.

You are correct. Someone has to manage and plan the infra. But that is the same for on prem or other non cloud. What you don't necessary need is several database admins, several network admins, several kubernetes admins, etc. I don't necessarily agree, but that is the calculation. Azure hires the 24/7 admins for the service and you pay a bit more to get a share of them. I have heard this argument in person.

I think there is a very narrow space where you need the resources that this provides and it's not yet more cost effective to have your own team of admins. At a certain headcount a the number admins don't matter that much anymore.

Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#107

Post by expedition32 »

guywithahat wrote: post #2

> DNB Director Steven Maijoor announced last October that he intended to “set a good example” and switch to a European cloud, though he acknowledged that it “is not yet as robust or high-quality as the one from the U.S.” > Last year, the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) and the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) warned that the Dutch financial sector had become too dependent on foreign IT service providers…

For Dutch people money supercedes politics, religion and human life itself.

Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#108

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

mulmen wrote: post #42
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer not using managed services but I kind of understand the appeal. Instead of paying several engineers, that you have to vet first, to configure and maintain the services adjacent to your product you can just pay AWS or Azure or someone else to maintain the service. Then you can concentrate your whole manpower on your product. In case the service goes down you can blame someone else and maybe even recover some…

What you’re describing is outsourcing. It’s still possible with on-prem or cloud VMs. You just hire a contractor provide those services.

You are correct but I don't know about the cost structure. Also you have to somehow verify that they do a good job. You sometimes only see bad work when something goes wrong. Also you have to first find a company that provides the service.

The cloud makes it simple. They offer you managed service X. They hire experts for service x and you pay a part of the cost on top of your infra cost. No searching. No vetting. You just use the service.

I see the why this might be attractive. It isn't to me. But the pencil pushers like it.

Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#109

Post by nottorp »

bodelecta wrote: post #27
retired wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LIDL sells everything you need in your life in the middle aisle. Even cloud solutions.

It's going to be hard getting that angle grinder I've never needed when there's a line of CTO's blocking the aisle

That's the charm of Lidl. You go in to get milk bread and meat and come out with a tool that you don't need but it's nice to have.

Re: Dutch central bank ditches AWS and chooses Lidl for European Cloud

#110

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

actionfromafar wrote: post #53
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer not using managed services but I kind of understand the appeal. Instead of paying several engineers, that you have to vet first, to configure and maintain the services adjacent to your product you can just pay AWS or Azure or someone else to maintain the service. Then you can concentrate your whole manpower on your product. In case the service goes down you can blame someone else and maybe even recover some…

In my experience it doesn’t take long until you use such complex offerings from the cloud vendors, you need those ops engineers anyways. Just with slightly different skillsets.

I'd say you need people with certain skill sets anyways but at a certain scale you have to get specialized people for some service. Database admins, kubernetes admins, network admins. At a small scale that can be one or two people. But if you want 24/7 with a bigger scale you need multiple people for each role. You have to find them, pay them, schedule their absences.

To some management types it looks like a good deal to not deal with that and just let Amazon/Microsoft/Google/etc. deal with finding people to support the service and just pay a bit extra to the infra cost. Then you can only hire cloud infra admins. I don't think it works that way but that is what I have observed.

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