Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle • Hacker News Board

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#191

Post by marcinzm » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #69

sandGorgon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also recently found out there is slack channel ! But look, this is not what people want. We are looking for a plain, vanilla, ticketing system that someone can respond to. GCloud does have it at the Gold level support. So in my mind, GCloud is more figure-it-yourself-dont-call-us . AWS is more dependable. They have scaled their sales/devrel/support ops so that a small startup can access it. Google only does this fo…

> We are looking for a plain, vanilla, ticketing system that someone can respond to. You definitely don't have to be Snapchat-sized to get access to the support console where you open tickets. The base plan is $100/m, which is admittedly more expensive than Amazon's $29/m but should give exactly what you're looking for. Disclaimer: I work for Google Cloud. [0] https://cloud.google.com/support/#support-options

Isn't it $100/month/user? How are users calculated?

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#192

Post by hylaride » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #185

aqwsedopl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft’s bias towards windows stunted it’s growth severely. It seems googles bias towards its ad-revenue based models is something similar. Specifically, googles inability to adopt a customer-service oriented mindset and customer-privacy will be its end. Is search really it’s core strength anymore? I’d think it’s more it’s ability to reindex in a day and filter out spam. Fundamentally, as long as google offers fre…

"Microsoft's bias towards Windows?" Microsoft was one of the first major developers for the Mac when it came out originally. Microsoft is happy for you to run Linux in the Azure cloud. Microsoft added Linux emulation to Windows. Microsoft gave up on Windows Phone (if only because Verizon and AT&T refused to approve new Windows Phones on their networks.)

Microsoft does all of that now, but ~6-8 years ago when the initial cloud pushes were happening they most certainly weren't.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#193

Post by gruez » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 2:58 PM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #165

patwolf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've built applications on AWS, IBM Cloud (Bluemix at the time), Azure, and GCP. If a client has no preference over platform, I usually go with GCP. I find it the simplest, cheapest, and most reliable for the type of stack we use. I've never had a client question GCP on the basis of Google's pattern of removing services. I think people can logically separate Google's consumer-facing offerings from their paid cloud se…

Anecdotal evidences are great. It is not an accident that GCP and Azure storage service has a S3 API and not the other way around. https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/interoperability https://www.microsoft.com/developerblog/2016/05/22/access-az...

>It is not an accident that GCP and Azure storage service has a S3 API and not the other way around.

both look like third party projects rather than something by Google/msft. saying that "gcp/azure has a s3 API" would be like saying "Linux has a win32 API" because there's WINE.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#194

Post by eitally » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

spricket wrote: post #94

politelemon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely anecdotally speaking - at a few enterprises, convincing customers to make use of GCP has been an uphill battle. I notice deep misgivings regarding the support timescales, and even for supported products, poor support in general (ymmv+++). GCP do have a clause in their SLA/T&C where they promise a 1 year notice in the case of any services they plan to deprecate, but that hasn't helped assuage fears - they w…

Thanks, I used to do consulting so I've seen this firsthand. Many of our non-technical clients demanded Azure even when it wasn't ideal (this was years ago, before they cloned most of AWS). Why? Microsoft is known for long term support, at reasonable prices. Any business that's survived more than a decade loves them for it. We had clients running Windows 95 in VM's if that gives you an idea of how far some companies…

"Reasonable prices" is only fair compared to, for example, Oracle's gouging. It's not that MS has actually reasonable support pricing, just that ELA maintenance has become a cornerstone of most CIO's IT budget so there's no real incentive to do anything differently. I think the more important factor here is that MS sysadmins are a dime a dozen and the ramp from supporting an on-prem data center to "Azure Cloud" is a lot lower than learning something brand new.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#195

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #92

spricket wrote: post #87

The reason for IBM's failure is pretty obvious. Their old school bare-metal servers at Softlayer are a good value, but the need for bare metal is decreasing with IO improvements like SR-IOV and real hardware level virtualization (ex HVM on AWS). I've also heard IBM is running that division into the ground. Their cloud offering sucks. Last time I was curious, I couldn't even figure out how much my server would cost. T…

Completely anecdotally speaking - at a few enterprises, convincing customers to make use of GCP has been an uphill battle. I notice deep misgivings regarding the support timescales, and even for supported products, poor support in general (ymmv+++). GCP do have a clause in their SLA/T&C where they promise a 1 year notice in the case of any services they plan to deprecate, but that hasn't helped assuage fears - they w…

Yeah one year is a step in right direction, but in the enterprises that I’ve worked at, getting capex for maintenance activity like that is usually an 18-24 month process.

If everything on a platform is an emergency, that vendor won’t be around in those businesses.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#196

Post by harlanji » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

spricket wrote: post #87

The reason for IBM's failure is pretty obvious. Their old school bare-metal servers at Softlayer are a good value, but the need for bare metal is decreasing with IO improvements like SR-IOV and real hardware level virtualization (ex HVM on AWS). I've also heard IBM is running that division into the ground. Their cloud offering sucks. Last time I was curious, I couldn't even figure out how much my server would cost. T…

> That's just not enough when you need something easy to setup that you can build then forget about for a decade.

I’ve been thinking about building a 10yr hosting plan for my own want. I thought designing static and then hosting on RasPi behind CDN would be great, just stock enough spares and keep Internet service live... 3G or better sufficient.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#197

Post by apetresc » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 3:13 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #193

StreamBright wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotal evidences are great. It is not an accident that GCP and Azure storage service has a S3 API and not the other way around. https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/interoperability https://www.microsoft.com/developerblog/2016/05/22/access-az...

>It is not an accident that GCP and Azure storage service has a S3 API and not the other way around. both look like third party projects rather than something by Google/msft. saying that "gcp/azure has a s3 API" would be like saying "Linux has a win32 API" because there's WINE.

S3Proxy is third-party, but Google's GCS S3 compatiblity is very much native. It was a selling point when they first launched it that you could just take boto and change the endpoint, add a header, and have it work.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#198

Post by Spooky23 » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #185

aqwsedopl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft’s bias towards windows stunted it’s growth severely. It seems googles bias towards its ad-revenue based models is something similar. Specifically, googles inability to adopt a customer-service oriented mindset and customer-privacy will be its end. Is search really it’s core strength anymore? I’d think it’s more it’s ability to reindex in a day and filter out spam. Fundamentally, as long as google offers fre…

"Microsoft's bias towards Windows?" Microsoft was one of the first major developers for the Mac when it came out originally. Microsoft is happy for you to run Linux in the Azure cloud. Microsoft added Linux emulation to Windows. Microsoft gave up on Windows Phone (if only because Verizon and AT&T refused to approve new Windows Phones on their networks.)

You’re missing 1996-2013 in Microsoft history.

A story that Microsoft honchos loved to tell was that some VIP dared to meet with Steve Ballmer and showed him something on his iPhone. I think the moral of the story is that Microsoft had changed at the time because Ballmer was insulted, but didn’t toss a chair at the guy.

The not invented here syndrome at that company is/was amazing. Microsoft wasn’t as bad as IBM, but they were on that path!

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#199

Post by ohaideredevs » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 3:22 PM UTC

spricket wrote: post #189

ohaideredevs wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"cute shitty documentation" - reading the GCP docs has been nothing but a pleasure for me. I genuinely hate most documentation (I am looking at you Microsoft), but GCP is up there in quality, almost standing next to MDN. Could you give me an example of something you had trouble looking up? I am genuinely curious. As far as experience - the Cloud hasn't lived up to the promise for me. We often use Azure function apps…

It really comes down to having code I can copy-paste. Google's documentation tends to be minimalist, like a research paper. One small example for everything, just enough to cover every feature. AWS is closer to "copy paste this big blob and modify it a bit". A lot less work for people trying to implement. I'm not planning to read all the documentation, I just want something that works. Google almost forces you to in…

That's true. Ideally it would be both - very clear explanations WITH code snippets, which are important to avoid missing "that one little thing" for half an hour when writing code from scratch.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#200

Post by devy » Wed, Feb 13, 2019, 3:26 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #187

PaulHoule wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure muggles don't care about Google dropping services. My experience is that Google services are often an order of magnitude harder to use than competitors. For example I did a shootout between the visual recognition APIs from IBM, Amazon, clarif.ai, Google and some others. I had the other ones up and running in under ten minutes each. Google made me go through a sign-up and authentication process that looked like h…

> My experience is that Google services are often an order of magnitude harder to use than competitors. Huh, I think most people feel the exact opposite, especially with the comparison between AWS and GCP. GCP has lots of services that are really easy to get set up and running easily by a small Dev shop (Firebase is pretty fantastic in my opinion), while with AWS unless you have some DevOps/networking experts it's a…

> I think the biggest issue with GCP is they still don't have the "DNA" to do enterprise support at the level large companies expect, while AWS does.

You nailed it. Coming from 8-years of AWS and working on GCP for the last 4, enterprise support is the BIGGEST differentiator IMO between AWS and GCP. GCP's services are usually technical advanced sooner (encryption architecture, various of compliances certification, etc.) and more developer friendlier, their support is absolutely the worst in the industry, opaque, slow and hard to reach, just like the support from any other Google consumer facing products. Google has never been a consumer friendly technology company, probably never will. This is in dire contrast with Amazon, which Bezos claim it always has been a customer focused business.