Re:Dropbox saved almost $75M over two years by moving out of...
by dalbasal on Sunday February 25, 2018 @03:39AM
(#16457892)
Well...first off, I don't think that "human factors" like wanting one less manager, are always that bad.
Those two reasons (for needing aws) are the technical problems that aws can solve, but you can't solve in-house. That is, they are not even solvable on a boardroom whiteboard, where the board pretend everything is just a matter of resource (money) allocation.
But (imo) most of the things that companies fail on... it's not because it is impossible to do a good job. They fail for less inevitable reasons.
In any case, I actually like the strategy where you try to be good at the things that you're good at but minimize things you need to be good at.
Dropbox knew that aws was expensive. If the numbers here are real, then in housing would have been a byug efficiency gain (on said boardroom whiteboards) for years. Makes sense when you consider what Dropbox does.
I assume they paid this price because it let them avoid being an infrastructure company. They would have had to be a very good infrastructure company. Why introduce this additional failure point, limiting factor or whatnot?
I (maybe you too) have seen the kinds of problems that aws solve be the limiting factor in a bunch of companies. The fact that they're technicaly solvable is almost academic, at some point.
tldr, sometimes it's good to solve certain problems with money.
Those two reasons (for needing aws) are the technical problems that aws can solve, but you can't solve in-house. That is, they are not even solvable on a boardroom whiteboard, where the board pretend everything is just a matter of resource (money) allocation.
But (imo) most of the things that companies fail on... it's not because it is impossible to do a good job. They fail for less inevitable reasons.
In any case, I actually like the strategy where you try to be good at the things that you're good at but minimize things you need to be good at.
Dropbox knew that aws was expensive. If the numbers here are real, then in housing would have been a byug efficiency gain (on said boardroom whiteboards) for years. Makes sense when you consider what Dropbox does.
I assume they paid this price because it let them avoid being an infrastructure company. They would have had to be a very good infrastructure company. Why introduce this additional failure point, limiting factor or whatnot?
I (maybe you too) have seen the kinds of problems that aws solve be the limiting factor in a bunch of companies. The fact that they're technicaly solvable is almost academic, at some point.
tldr, sometimes it's good to solve certain problems with money.