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Comment by mwcampbell | Hacker News Reader

I'm generally reluctant to add dependencies on third-party services such as Ably in the core application, because that would add another barrier to providing an on-prem deployment option, or even allowing a customer to deploy on their own AWS infrastructure instead of ours. I'm actually contemplating this decision right now for a new product.

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This is one reason I'm making my up and coming SaaS entirely open source, so you can run a clone in any environment: http://www.adama-lang.org/

That's an understandable concern you have IMO. As with anything, the solution should fit the problem. Those aren't issues for us but I can empathize with the concern with adding more external services. In our case, we actually tried to implement our own socket "stuff" in one project and ended up switching that to Ably as well just because it was very difficult to both implement and debug over AWS.

I am surprised to hear about on-prem deploys when the direction of travel is towards serverless/cloud solutions that don't require orchestration. Out of interest, why is on-prem so important for your use case? Separately, I'd be interested in how you'd view that decision if there was a less scalable but mostly fully functioning open source version of the third-party service you could deploy if you needed to?

Matt, co-founder of Ably

Sorry to butt in like this, but cloud is just one direction, not the direction. Pretty much any company that values their privacy and independence will want on-prem. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

For one of my company's products, we're already working with a security-sensitive customer on a deployment on their own AWS infrastructure (in their own VPC). This customer wouldn't be comfortable using our public cloud deployment unless we get a SOC2 certification or similar. For the product I'm developing now, some potential customers will definitely want to keep it physically located within their corporate network. That's all I can say publicly.

If there was a less scalable, but still mostly functioning open-source substitute for Ably, then I'd be way more comfortable using Ably in the main public cloud deployment.

I understand the SOC2 requirement, which is why we're SOC2 compliant. A long and painful process, but one that has opened up opportunities like the one you said would otherwise require an on-prem installation. We have in fact also got some VPN-like links (AWS PrivateLink) with customers who are particularly sensitive to security and data leaving their network, and that coupled with SOC2 has made it possible.

> If there was a less scalable, but still mostly functioning open-source substitute for Ably, then I'd be way more comfortable using Ably in the main public cloud deployment.

Thanks for the feedback, I will pass on to the product team!

Where I'm based (in Asia) on-prem is definitely a need for some sectors. Banks and financial institutions, healthcare, government etc. They may not need it for all solutions, but they sure want to know they can have it if needed. Its the very reason we (SaaS company) make sure we don't rely on any cloud PaaS services for our product.

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