I've never understood why so many companies are comfortable giving Amazon such leverage over their business infrastructure.
Could someone explain why this is a good move in spite of the risk that Amazon could jack their prices up in the future?
Could someone explain why this is a good move in spite of the risk that Amazon could jack their prices up in the future?
Like hell they will. The switching cost for Netflix, and really most heavy AWS users, would be extreme at this point. A good portion of the engineering org would pretty much have to dedicate themselves to the task of switching. That isn't to say other organizations can't be nimble between providers, but it would be hard for Netflix at this point.
AWS is already engaging in a commodity hardware market in order to run the DCs running. AWS fears becoming a pure extension of the same thing, and they have a decent bit of lock-in designed to their services for that reason.
Does that sound like a drop in the bucket?
You have to be a pretty big company in order to not let another company have leverage over your infrastructure. Hosting your networked servers in your own office? You're depending on Verizon, AT&T or Qwest, even if those are not the companies selling you your pipes.
Co-locating your servers, getting feeds from 2-3 carriers, while doing BGP with your high-end Cisco routers? You're depending on the hosting facility, such as Telehouse.
So you want to survive a blackout in one section of the US. Now you need at least two server facilities. Your remote facility needs at least one full-time tech.
Corporate infrastructure can get in the way as well. Your division of the conglomerate is in San Francisco, but another division is in New York. Perfect, your division's remote IT person can work out of that division's New York office. But the conglomerate might be structured so that is not really possible. The other division may as well be another company.
So a small company can't afford to do this. A big company can get so big that it's not feasible either. If the big company has one central IT department that all divisions use, it becomes more feasible, but how many big companies only have one centralized IT department? Even if such a creature exists - the big company buys a small company, or merges with another big company - boom, two IT departments again.