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Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

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Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#281

Post by tech_tuna »

matchagaucho wrote: post #38
lalos wrote: post #8

Microsoft will reap the rewards of supporting XP and Office for decades, that wins enterprise trust & goodwill, and clients will expect that from Azure. On the other hand, every month we have a new product/service of Google being deprecated (officially or by raising prices). Even if it's technically better, the most sane business decision from enterprise would be to bet on Microsoft for support reasons. Microsoft tal…

The inability to connect with a real human when escalating Google Cloud issues seems to be recurring theme on HN.

I've been a gmail/drive/GSuite/Chrome/Android user for a long time and of course I use Google for internet searches. I am getting kind of tired of their bullshit though.

However, I have also been a paid Adwords user and it is unbelievably difficult to reach a live support person with AdWords. I finally tracked down the contact page (this is years ago fwiw) and it was so intentionally buried it became quite clear to me that Google was like the anti-Apple regarding technical support.

It would not surprise if they still operate the same way. Part of the problem is that Google is a company which is "too good and too smart" for the mortal masses which comprise their user base.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#282

Post by tech_tuna »

theevilsharpie wrote: post #179
matchagaucho wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inability to connect with a real human when escalating Google Cloud issues seems to be recurring theme on HN.

I've gotten a prompt response from Google Cloud every time I've filed a support request. Then again, my company pays for a support contract with an SLA.

Yeah, that's the catch.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#283

Post by pmart123 »

matchagaucho wrote: post #38
lalos wrote: post #8

Microsoft will reap the rewards of supporting XP and Office for decades, that wins enterprise trust & goodwill, and clients will expect that from Azure. On the other hand, every month we have a new product/service of Google being deprecated (officially or by raising prices). Even if it's technically better, the most sane business decision from enterprise would be to bet on Microsoft for support reasons. Microsoft tal…

The inability to connect with a real human when escalating Google Cloud issues seems to be recurring theme on HN.

Yeah. That has been my experience. AWS has way better customer interaction and will refund "small accidents" with credits. Google makes it hard to reach a person and won't budge at all on similar issues. On the flip side, the documentation on Google Cloud seems a lot better than AWS.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#284

Post by metildaa »

awad wrote: post #67
metildaa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Amazon offer for a cloud office suite though? I have never heard of one despite living in Seattle, where we see all kinds of failed Amazon expansions.

Here you go, all offered under the 'Business Productivity' umbrella of AWS: Amazon WorkDocs https://aws.amazon.com/workdocs/ Amazon WorkMail https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/ Amazon Chime https://aws.amazon.com/chime/ Amazon Alexa for Business https://aws.amazon.com/alexaforbusiness/

I would be seriously challenged to find more than a handful of businesses in Seattle that use any of these offerings. I don't think I have ever heard of these offerings, compared to G Suite there seems to be no marketing of these offerings.

For reference, we've seen a variety of failed attempts by Amazon to expand, like Amazon Register.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#285

Post by manigandham »

jpatokal wrote: post #188
whoisjuan wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assuming "enterprise" really is that big of a deal in this arena. Enterprise is not a big deal. It's literally everything when it comes to cloud infrastructure. You can thrive with SMBs but you will never be able to match the revenue potential of closing enterprise deals. The hardcore SaaS sales motto is that if you win the enterprise, you win the market... That's a very very real statement. You're unlikely to capi…

You're incorrectly conflating "enterprise" with "large" here. For example, Snap and Apple are very large companies in terms of Cloud spend, but they're very much not an "enterprise"/Fortune 500 company that moves at the speed of an arthritic sloth and needs to be sold on the benefits of moving to the cloud.

Enterprise has always primarily meant size, not "old". It's about the complex requirements that only really come in at a certain scale.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#286

Post by navinsylvester »

scarface74 wrote: post #252
navinsylvester wrote: post #147

Would like to cover few points discussed here. I don't think its fair to judge cloud platforms competency with just the market share since there are players like Microsoft/Oracle who have lot of enterprise foothold. I have used all other major cloud providers and as a power user, have found GCP to be rock solid. Paid support is the only option with all major cloud platforms if you want faster response. I think all of…

Make sure your stack can be migrated over to another provider at very short notice or have at least a footprint with other providers in parallel. Changing infrastructure over a small increase in price (which rarely happens) is a one of those dreams that techies have but hardly ever happens because the risk of regressions is too high. The minute you don’t use managed services and you host everything yourself on EC2 in…

Depends on your team and product needs.

I don't think price is the main motivation to use cloud. Ease of use, vast resources to provision without any significant delay and pay for what you use are the main factors.

If your infra is not mission critical and if you have deep pockets you can afford to be tied to a vendor. Otherwise - having skilled expertise and designing your architecture in vendor agnostic way is pretty much essential.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#287

Post by scarface74 »

navinsylvester wrote: post #286
scarface74 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure your stack can be migrated over to another provider at very short notice or have at least a footprint with other providers in parallel. Changing infrastructure over a small increase in price (which rarely happens) is a one of those dreams that techies have but hardly ever happens because the risk of regressions is too high. The minute you don’t use managed services and you host everything yourself on EC2 in…

Depends on your team and product needs. I don't think price is the main motivation to use cloud. Ease of use, vast resources to provision without any significant delay and pay for what you use are the main factors. If your infra is not mission critical and if you have deep pockets you can afford to be tied to a vendor. Otherwise - having skilled expertise and designing your architecture in vendor agnostic way is pret…

Of all the business risks you have, AWS or Azure going out of business is the least of them. Do you think that the executives at Netflix stay up at night worrying about AWS going out of business?

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#288

Post by petra »

navinsylvester wrote: post #286
scarface74 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make sure your stack can be migrated over to another provider at very short notice or have at least a footprint with other providers in parallel. Changing infrastructure over a small increase in price (which rarely happens) is a one of those dreams that techies have but hardly ever happens because the risk of regressions is too high. The minute you don’t use managed services and you host everything yourself on EC2 in…

Depends on your team and product needs. I don't think price is the main motivation to use cloud. Ease of use, vast resources to provision without any significant delay and pay for what you use are the main factors. If your infra is not mission critical and if you have deep pockets you can afford to be tied to a vendor. Otherwise - having skilled expertise and designing your architecture in vendor agnostic way is pret…

Does using cloud that more expensive, as a share of revenue, in most businesses ?

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#289

Post by scarface74 »

petra wrote: post #288
navinsylvester wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your team and product needs. I don't think price is the main motivation to use cloud. Ease of use, vast resources to provision without any significant delay and pay for what you use are the main factors. If your infra is not mission critical and if you have deep pockets you can afford to be tied to a vendor. Otherwise - having skilled expertise and designing your architecture in vendor agnostic way is pret…

Does using cloud that more expensive, as a share of revenue, in most businesses ?

Probably not, but I’ve seen two companies that were in AWS.

The first company where I was the Dev lead and at the time didn’t know the first thing about AWS and neither did the infrastructure guys and we brought in consultants. Yes it was much more expensive. We didn’t reduce the number of people, didn’t increase automation from the netops side and we developed just like we did on prem. So yeah they should have stuck with the colo and from what I’ve heard, they kept my system on AWS but stopped there.

On the other hand, I’ve worked for a company that started off on AWS from day one. They outsourced most of the netops to a Managed Service Provider, they have one person in house that manages some of the EC2 instances and does some other projects, and they used as many of the managed service offerings on AWS as they could. They were more concerned about focusing on their core business than worrying about the “undifferentiated heavy lifting”.

Re: Google May Have to Get Used to Third Place in the Cloud

#290

Post by navinsylvester »

scarface74 wrote: post #287
navinsylvester wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your team and product needs. I don't think price is the main motivation to use cloud. Ease of use, vast resources to provision without any significant delay and pay for what you use are the main factors. If your infra is not mission critical and if you have deep pockets you can afford to be tied to a vendor. Otherwise - having skilled expertise and designing your architecture in vendor agnostic way is pret…

Of all the business risks you have, AWS or Azure going out of business is the least of them. Do you think that the executives at Netflix stay up at night worrying about AWS going out of business?

Its not about them going out of business - its the other way around. Its not just the pricing bump that can have an impact. All cloud providers have some sort of quota. Say if some quota cannot be increased by one provider and your business cannot thrive without it. What would you do?.

We had one such case but in the end it worked out positively. We realized GCP had 100 service account limitation when we exhausted it. We have had our quotas bumped for many different things sometimes instantaneous or max in a day or two. We needed more than 100 service accounts but it seems GCP wasn't even designed to handle that request. After two weeks we got it approved but still we can't go to service account page on the console to see the accounts since its not designed to list that many. We have to use gcloud to view and to handle them. What if GCP said no?. There are players who aren't anyway big enough like netflix but still are powers users but without deep pockets.

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