How Amazon Keeps Cutting AWS Prices: Cheapskate Culture

An anonymous reader writes "Amazon Web Services has cut its prices on 40-plus consecutive occasions, at times leading the charge, at other times countering similar moves by Microsoft and Google. This article at CRN includes some interesting behind-the-scenes trivia about how Amazon keeps costs down, including some interesting speculation — for example, that perhaps the reason Amazon's Glacier storage is so cheap is that maybe it might be based at least partly on tape, not disk (Amazon would not comment). The article also explains that the company will only pay for its employees to fly Economy, and that includes its senior executives. If they feel the need to upgrade to Business or First Class, they must do so from their own pocket. And instead of buying hardware from an OEM vendor, AWS sources its own components – everything from processors to disk drives to memory and network cards — and uses contract manufacturing to put together its machines."

Comments

Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you work in finance, oil/gas or certain luxury markets and have money to burn you're flying economy no matter what industry you're in. It's not being cheap, it's being smart. You're stil going to get to the same place at the same time as the other passengers.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people do not enjoy travel and upgrading them is one way to encourage them to do it more often.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you work in finance, oil/gas or certain luxury markets and have money to burn you're flying economy no matter what industry you're in. It's not being cheap, it's being smart. You're stil going to get to the same place at the same time as the other passengers.

Not always; often international long-haul flights (that are unbearable if you are flying alone in coach) are done business-class for even the plebs that work for tech companies, otherwise you would never convince your employees it's worth it to work with BCC teams. Domestically, yes, no sane company will put you in business/first by default unless they just had money gushing from every seam. However, travel enough and the free upgrades become plentiful (with certain airlines).

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

You're stil going to get to the same place at the same time as the other passengers.

Albeit, for some people, with much sorer knees.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[wienerschnizzel]

You're stil going to get to the same place at the same time as the other passengers.

Not in the same shape though.

It might not impact you much if you are going to one conference, but if you fly to multiple destinations within a week, it will build up. Your back/joint pain, stress level, lack of sleep will show. It might mean that you will save 5k on the boarding passes of your exec but then pay millions for the bad decision she makes.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[cryptizard]

Yeah I was kind of thrown off by them using the loaded term cheapskate. I would call that efficiency or austerity. Everyone was complaining that they were assholes when companies were flying around in private jets while at the same time laying off employees. Now we complain that they are cheap if they make their employees fly in coach with the rest of us proles.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[danbert8]

I work in the oil/gas industry, and the rule is you are flying economy unless the flight is over 8 hours. We have to negotiate with supervisors to spend extra money to take a direct flight instead of wasting hours on connections and layovers...

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[mapuche]

If you travel a lot for business there's a chance you have to fly for half a day or even more hours, sign a contract, shake hands and return home the same or next day. Using business class is the best way to arrive fresher for you meeting and make good decisions. For me doesn't make much sense to pay business for a less than 4-5 hours flight, but that's just me.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[mccalli]

Smart for who? Not for the employee.

Unless flying regularly is clearly stated in your contract (and I mean regularly, not 'you may be asked to travel from time to time'), the company is inconveniencing you over and above your normal duties, and causing actual discomfort in the case of many economy flights. You ask for decent standards or refuse.

I'm astonished to see so many people defend this. For flights of two or three hours, fine. For anything longer - absolutely not.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[epyT-R]

Try flying economy from the USA to china. If you expect your employee to be functional the moment they leave the airport on the other side, you'll fly them business at least.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[PPH]

It's not being cheap, it's being smart.

I used to fly a lot when I worked for Boeing (commercial, not gov't contract). We had an entire travel department that arranged trips and accomodtions. And they prided themselves on finding the cheapest (crappiest, that is) deals that they could. One time, when I had to fly from Seatle to New York, I just called travel and said, "You find me the flight that meets your cost requirements. I'll upgrade to first class out of my own pocket." They practicaly shit themselves. It wasn't about the cost, it was about the perception of being tight with a dollar. While actualy wasting buckets of money*.

One time when a group of us had to spend a week in Cincinnati, Boeing travel booked rooms at a flea-bag airport motel which was about 30 miles from the vendor we were working with. I fought that one and found a cheaper (and much nicer) extended stay motel a few miles from the vendor. From that point on, I was on the travel department's shit list.

*I suspect that certain members of the travel department get some frequent flyer miles in their own accounts for steering business toward certain airlines and hotel chains. And for missing the actual lowest cost deals when planning company trips.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[rtaylor]

That is the airlines problem.

The more workarounds a person finds for not travelling (calls, emails, etc.) the less the cost to the ticket buying company; assuming they manage to keep productivity the same.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Pembers]

You're stil going to get to the same place at the same time as the other passengers.

True, but you have a nicer seat with more room, and everything before and after the flight runs faster and smoother. You have your own check-in desk and security line, so you can arrive at the airport an hour later than the economy-class passengers. You have a bigger baggage allowance, so you might not have to put anything in the hold - and if you do, it'll probably come off the plane first. All that can make the difference between a day trip and an overnight stay, or turn a trip of n days into n-1 days.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[DuckDodgers]

Or lose her because she quits to work for a company that has less travel.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel that business class is very important for people that need to be able to fly somewhere and make a presentation or make business decisions on the same day as their arrival. Economy and business class will both get you there at the same time, but flying long-distance on economy is going to leave you mentally and physically fatigued--not good for business.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Triv]

Yeah, that's WAY more efficient than establishing the relationship in advance and just Fedexing the document back and forth once it requires a signature.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

If you fly to multiple destinations per week, you probably have frequent flier status that gets you free upgrades anyway.

dom

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[fermion]

Some people don't enjoy work and paying them more might get them to work on time or to work the whole day. Or you could just fire them and hire someone who has an understanding that they have agreed to do a job for a rate of pay.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[K. S. Kyosuke]

To be frank with you, I like me not enjoying travel and wouldn't consent to anyone trying to upgrade me with a travel-enjoying brain module.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Zeorge]

Direct flight from Dulles to Tokyo (and back), only flew coach. That was on US Government sponsored travel. They don't care, it's simply cheaper. The only time I have heard of people flying business or above was if that was in the contract, and the customer missed that part. It's rare to find that now a days unless the ROI is high enough. But, you really need to look at those ticket prices to see what I am talking about. There is a quantifiable difference between a coach and first-class ticket. You can seriously buy a decent car for a first-class ticket to a far destination.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they could say, "travel or you're fired". You know, like how they'd do any other peon in the company that isn't white collar. Honestly, if a person hates traveling so much and wants to, on their own dime, upgrade, then I don't see a reason for the company to resist. But this idea that you have to incentivize things for white collar workers seems ridiculous. It'd be different if it were something of a random morale thing or some other equally applied rule. But the idea that people can just complain and get better treatment...

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[quetwo]

Yeah, good luck with that. They give more upgrades to monkeys that use their credit cards than they do people who travel often. As somebody who used to travel > 100k a year of domestic travel (plus international), those would barely qualify for an upgrade to super coach every so often given today's rates.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[MikeTheGreat]

Three comments:

1. 1) Companies don't fly around in jets, people do
2. 2) People don't fly around in private jets, executives do
3. 3) We're still calling those executives that fly around in private jets assholes

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

I fly about 4-6 legs a month. I have to sit in an aisle. For whatever reasons or how dumb that may sound to someone, it is what it is. I scope out flight times that I can get an aisle and I don't mind leaving early or later to get it. I almost always fly United and they have "Plus" seats. Not many people will pay the extra $29-79 to get those seats so they are usually still unfilled close to departure time. The advantage to me is my company will pay the difference for them as it is not billed as class upgrade and I almost always get my aisle seat.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

I flew from Hawaii to Dulles airport in northern VA. I arrived at 8am and 45 minutes after I landed I had a job interview (at the airport Marriot). 3 hours after landing in VA, I was back on a plane to Hawaii. 4 separate ~6 hour flights pretty much back to back and two 6 hour time changes. It sucked. I did get the job though.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[volmtech]

Sometimes having a rare skill gets you on a private jet. My father in law worked for 48 years as a machine operator in a paper mill. He was often flown to other mills to setup machines and instruct other operators. His wife worried anytime the flew. One night he had to be flown from Florida to Oregon to get a mill back into production. He called his wife and told her he had to pull a double shift. They had him back in plenty of time.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[n7ytd]

I was once upgraded to "business class" on a flight from Madrid to Malaga Spain. As far as I could tell, the luxury afforded to the business traveler was being served my water in a glass rather than the paper cups given to the row behind me.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[tlhIngan]

You're stil going to get to the same place at the same time as the other passengers.

Not in the same shape though.

It might not impact you much if you are going to one conference, but if you fly to multiple destinations within a week, it will build up. Your back/joint pain, stress level, lack of sleep will show. It might mean that you will save 5k on the boarding passes of your exec but then pay millions for the bad decision she makes.

It doesn't have to be multiple flights. Just one is enough - let's say you book a meeting a couple of hours after the plane lands, on a flight from Seattle to say, Singapore. That's a 19 hour flight.

I can tell you most people (ignoring jet lag) would need a day or so to recuperate and such. You really want said exec worrying about that pain in the back when discussing the finer points of a contract? Or being unable to sleep except in fits, completely dead tired and having to negotiate?

And sometimes schedule demands make the extra layaway day impossible. Enough so that companies that do send their employees on long transcontinental flights often allow the upgrade - a fit and refreshed individual is able to get to work immediately, versus wasting a day of hotel, salary, expenses, etc., just to save the plane ticket.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[jareth-0205]

Some people don't enjoy work and paying them more might get them to work on time or to work the whole day. Or you could just fire them and hire someone who has an understanding that they have agreed to do a job for a rate of pay.

Oh really? Alright I can play your game: those people have agreed to do a job that involved standard office hours. Travel means being asked to sit in a cramped aeroplane for many hours and give up their evenings and potentially weekends to do their job. By your own measure, work travel spreads outside normal work hours, so making it comfortable is hardly an unreasonable request. Just because an employee asks for something doesn't mean they should be fired over it.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[ottothecow]

Seems like it is pretty standard to fly economy. Even in the industries the parent poster listed, policies tend to be economy except for international flights and executives.

Thing is...if you fly often for work, you will reach status within a year and be getting upgraded on every flight. The monday-thursday consultants and other heavy business travelers are getting their upgrades for free...the fees are usually being billed to the client, and clients don't like to pay for first-class.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[bloodhawk]

I have worked for several of the largest IT companies over the past 30 years, I think only once have I ever travelled business class out of the companies pocket, and even then it was because I was travelling with government clients who get Business Class for overseas trips. economy or more likely DISCOUNT economy is standard for just about all companies, Business class is a luxury very few companies provide, So I would have been far more amazed if the article said they allowed it.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

I travel ~6000 miles / month, StarAlliance Gold. I almost always get upgraded to business class on my economy tickets. Never wait in lines, in security, or at the gate. You need to find a better airline...

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Balthisar]

Or, well, you get to silver, gold, platinum, or diamond and then get promoted to business class 90% of the time for the price of a coach ticket.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[EmperorOfCanada]

If you are in Canada around 80% of First/Business class will be populated by something government flavored. So actual government people (especially politicians), government funded companies such as the CBC, government granted monopolies (Emera/NSP), or companies that thrive doing government work such as politically connected advertising agencies.

When I was in the consulting world I often had to fly at the last moment so paid full fare economy, so by being polite while checking in I often was bumped to first. So I sat beside these self entitled douche bags and only twice did I sit beside someone who was employed by a private company that wasn't bankrupt within 5 years.

One notable exception was a guy who flew so much he had hit some uber-mega-ultra elite status and was now automatically bumped to first class after flying for years in economy.

But the government people all blah blahed about how important it was for them to show up in good shape and that first class allowed them to do that. The error of their thinking was that the two things that get you from flying are the bad air and the time zone induced jet lag. The lack of a warm towel doesn't hurt.

These were people who weren't paying for it and wanted to be treated like a princess so they get the tax-payers to pay for it.

My simple formula is that any organization that isn't governmental that has its employees flying first class (executives included) either doesn't pay enough taxes, or doesn't pay its employees well enough. Don't get me started about private jets.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[MrKaos]

Some people don't enjoy work and paying them more might get them to work on time or to work the whole day. Or you could just fire them and hire someone who has an understanding that they have agreed to do a job for a rate of pay.

Oh really? Alright I can play your game: those people have agreed to do a job that involved standard office hours. Travel means being asked to sit in a cramped aeroplane for many hours and give up their evenings and potentially weekends to do their job. By your own measure, work travel spreads outside normal work hours, so making it comfortable is hardly an unreasonable request. Just because an employee asks for something doesn't mean they should be fired over it.

Precisely. Will I be paid for the weekends and evening I don't have with my family, friends or activites and will they. What about when they fly employees over weekends and expect them to be fresh and shiney Monday morning after being stuck in aircraft and airports over the weekend.

It's a fucking tax deduction anyway, fly me business class and I may have a hope of being productive on Monday and the rest of the week. It's false economy to spend the money to send someone around the world just to have them to exhausted to do anything when they get there.

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[PhloppyPhallus]

Conversely, US Government travel is always economy, and government contract fare seats are often the least desirable seats available (rear-rows, bulkheads, and middle). Although, rental cars are usually intermediate, not economy, and hotel per diem usually lets you stay somewhere pretty decent, though never luxurious. Altogether it's actually pretty reasonable for the tax payer and the traveler--however, the paperwork is still a nightmare!

Re:Business class is a misnomer

[Anonymous Coward]

You're stil going to get to the same place at the same time as the other passengers.

Not in the same shape though.

It might not impact you much if you are going to one conference, but if you fly to multiple destinations within a week, it will build up. Your back/joint pain, stress level, lack of sleep will show. It might mean that you will save 5k on the boarding passes of your exec but then pay millions for the bad decision she makes.

You have a weak and feeble CEO if that's the case and you work for a company that won't exist in 20 years.

Economy Class Only

[CohibaVancouver]

The requirement of 'no business class' for air travel isn't unique to Amazon. Every tech company I've worked for had the same policy - From the senior execs on down.

Thankfully, the company I work for now doesn't require red-eye flights. So I can arrive at a destination, sleep overnight in a hotel bed, then wake up the next morning and start working.

Re:Economy Class Only

[Anonymous Coward]

When I interviewed with Intel, I was told that they own (or maybe charter, I can't remember) their own planes to send people around. I thought it was cool, but they said they were often referred to as sardine cans. Tightly packed, very little space.

Re:Economy Class Only

[binarylarry]

Little planes can also be scary as fuck.

Re:Economy Class Only

[bsane]

They have (had?) regular flights between their west coast locations, you just show up and take a seat. I don't know that they fly charter flights anywhere else on a regular basis. It also wasn't unique to Intel, HP used to do something very similar.

Re:Economy Class Only

[BonThomme]

And I'm sure if you ever actually flew with one our your senior execs, you'd be mystified why you can't find them in the coach section...

Re:Economy Class Only

[Anonymous Coward]

I fly those planes regularly to get between Intel sites. The experience is infinitely better than commercial flights.
1) You go via smaller airports, or a separate terminal. No bilking for parking, stupid busses etc.
2) Walk in, wave your badge, get on plane. 5 minutes.
3) It's economy sizes seats, but they have a power socket.
4) Yes you do sit next to the execs.
5) You drop your bag on the trolley going out. It's on a trolly on the tarmac when you get out the other end
6) No one is going to steal expensive things from your bags.
7) No assigned seating. Get on, find a seat, sit down.
8) It costs Intel a lot less to fill its own plane than to pay commercial rates.

The downside is they are popular and so it's hard to get seats at short notice.

Re:Economy Class Only

[schlachter]

I can see this for domestic flights, but I'd be pretty annoyed if it were true for international flights.

Re:Economy Class Only

[CohibaVancouver]

And I'm sure if you ever actually flew with one our your senior execs, you'd be mystified why you can't find them in the coach section...

A couple of years ago I flew back from Mobile World Congress (Barcelona) in economy class. An Intel exec was seated next to me and an IBM exec was across the aisle.

Re:Economy Class Only

[PTBarnum]

Right, because they fly enough that they can get free uprades on almost every flight, or worst case they can afford to pay for the upgrade out of pocket.

Re:Economy Class Only

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming up within 5 years (you can quote me):

Senior execs being required to use Airbnb if there is a couch to sleep on thats cheaper than a hotel room...

Re:Economy Class Only

[CohibaVancouver]

Senior execs being required to use Airbnb if there is a couch to sleep on thats cheaper than a hotel room..

Ridiculous things your company has done to reduce travel expenses:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum...

Re:Economy Class Only

[whoever57]

The requirement of 'no business class' for air travel isn't unique to Amazon.

In large companies this may be really "no purchased business class seats", except that the company will buy for senior execs the most expensive economy seats and then get free upgrades for them because of the volume of travel bought by the company.

Re:Economy Class Only

[Anonymous Coward]

It's been some time, but when I worked at Intel, I would fly international to Malaysia from the US - in Business Class. I think it was their gift to us given that the flight was over 10 hours long and they made us fly during the weekend. Flights to Europe, unfortunately, were still Economy Class.

Re:Economy Class Only

[Anonymous Coward]

The requirement of 'no business class' for air travel isn't unique to Amazon. Every tech company I've worked for had the same policy - From the senior execs on down.

Same policy where I work now (>10 employees), and they take false pride in stating that even the CEO cannot get business or first class tickets. Of course, the CEO and other senior executives fly on private (=company-owned) jets, so ticketing does not enter into it. Their security staff precede them by a couple of days to look over every step they'll take in every place they'll visit. Interestingly, the security staff also fly privately. This is a US-based multinational, with a household name recognized even by plebs.

Re:Economy Class Only

[Anonymous Coward]

10 should be 10^5... stupid slashcode

I have a different theory

[slashmydots]

Or it's their unbelievable number of screw ups that ended up in downtime making people not respect them.

Re:I have a different theory

[Anonymous Coward]

All bytes are processed and sent by mechanical turks.

Fly Economy - tragic!

[Overzeetop]

We're supposed to be surprised that everyone is supposed to fly coach?

And, if you're custom rolling your backend at the scale of AWS, I wouldn't expect anything *but* sourcing yourself. Outsourcing is for organizations that don't have the expertise in house and want a finger to point if things go wrong. Vertical integration is more cost efficient if you have the scale to make it work.

Re:Fly Economy - tragic!

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Flying from LA to Chicago or Seattle to Phoenix? Sure. Economy's just fine.

From NYC to Shanghai? Dallas to Rio? Anywhere to Honolulu or Juno?

More than 4 hours on a flight and pay the outrageous fees. your sanity will thank you for it.

Re:Fly Economy - tragic!

[ZeroConcept]

For certain services, commoditization makes it very unlikely that your internal organization will be able to compete in cost/quality ratios with specialized service providers. Example: Banks used to manage all aspects of their networking due to downtime impact, nowadays redundant providers can deliver networking with adequate SLAs (contractual, penalised) at lower cost than their internal staff, are there any banks that still lay their own fiber?

Cheapskate?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Doesn't 'cheapskate' have a somewhat perjorative connotation, either edging into 'stingy' (if talking about spending on socially normative things) or 'penny wise, pound foolish' (if talking about good sense in short and long term cost/benefit thinking)?

From what the article decribes, Amazon isn't so much 'cheapskate' as operating perfectly sensibly given their scale, cutting unnecessary (but usually bundled) components, and not giving in to poorly justified; but commonly assumed, habits like sending Important Employees to fly business class.

I can understand why they would be scaring their competitors pretty seriously; but I'm not sure that I see the 'cheapskate' bit.

Re:Cheapskate?

[mysterons]

People here are forgetting the costs associated with flying senior (ie expensive) people around. There is an argument that if you are billing a client for three figure sums a day, you had better ensure that the person flying arrives in good shape so they can work straight from the flight. Sending people coach can be a false economy.

Re:Cheapskate?

[Anonymous Coward]

The place I work has a pretty decent policy on this. I'm based in the US. They say any flight over 6 hours you can upgrade. Of course, for all practical purposes, for US based workers, this means all trips within the continental US are economy. Pretty much all trips "overseas" for us are business class. Now, we are global, so people in say Singapore don't get business class when flying to Malaysia since it isn't even close to 6 hours, but in general for those of us in the US - cross an ocean, fly business class is the rule.

Re:Cheapskate?

[cusco]

I've noticed that one thing that they are NOT skimping on is security, either physical or network. No one gets anywhere in any facility worldwide without controls, even Chinese and US government officials. I'm actually quite impressed with their degree of organization and adherence to (generally well thought-out) policies.

Re:Cheapskate?

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA uses the term "frugal". And this is just one of many ways that costs are kept down.

Clearly whoever titled this has a beef with Amazon.

Re:Cheapskate?

[azadrozny]

I have seen many comments like this, but I think there are a lot of what-if scenarios to consider. Is it necessary for that person to work straight from the flight? It could be cheaper to fly them in the night before, and pay for an extra night in the hotel. Is this person expected to work while on the plane? If not, all that extra space mat not be necessary. How often is the person expected to travel? If this employee is hopping around the country, especially for a multi-city trip, perhaps the upgrade is warranted, since they may not be able to settle in at anyone location very long. In the end, I hate to see hard rules. A manager should have some discretion to adapt to the situation and the employee. At the same time, I consider upgrades like this a perk. An employee (executive or otherwise) should not expect to travel this way, and be prepared to justify the cost if they ask.

Re:Cheapskate?

[DuckDodgers]

Outrage gets more visitors, which increases ad revenue. So 'frugal' became 'cheapskate' for the sake of a few extra dollars. Welcome to the modern internet, where the people who aren't launching flamewars as fast as they can lose their business to those that do.

I've heard this somewhere before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon, in its majestic equality, requires both code monkeys and senior executives to pay for their own upgrades.

Re:I've heard this somewhere before...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Amazon, in its majestic equality, requires both code monkeys and senior executives to pay for their own upgrades.

It beats the alternative of providing the upgrades for free to the people who can most easily afford them, in the service of maintaining a good, solid, hierarchy.

Re:I've heard this somewhere before...

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. With the army of plebes that Amazon has working under those execs, the internal politics PR value of making the same rules apply to C-level execs has massive benefits to share-holder value. Since those same execs get compensated at least partially according to share price, the productivity increase tied to the morale-boost of this policy likely buys more in stock dividends for the execs than the airline upgrades cost. That's just good business.

AWS is NOT cheap

[afidel]

AWS is expensive, I can provide the equivalent of an m3.large reserved instance to my users for 1/4th the cost over 3 years, if you ammatorize my infrastructure over 5 years (which is what we've actually been doing) then it's almost 1/7th as much. The only places where AWS makes sense is if you're a quickly growing startup, have a VERY bursty workload, or you're so small that you can't justify 3 hosts for a VMWare Essentials bundle.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[the_scoots]

That's assuming everyone is paying the sticker price. Larger customers can negotiate better rates with Amazon.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, AWS is defintely not cheap by cloud standards. I recently did some cloud price comparisons and Amazon had, by far, the most expensive offerings. In some cases, where relatively small workloads were involved, services like Azure were half the price of AWS.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

>blah blah blah. 1/4th the cost blah blah blah
>VMWare
have you ever heard of Xen?

besides, somehow I doubt you can provide the same redundancy & scalability from a server in your parent's basement.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[rebelwarlock]

I also provide hosting. Give me money instead.

Fixed that for you.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[cryptizard]

There are a lot of workloads where it makes sense. If you are doing research and you only need to use a lot of computing resources for a few weeks out of the year to run simulations or something, then it is much more economical to go AWS than have a giant cluster sitting idle most of the time.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[afidel]

Yes, I've heard of Xen, and I've even run it in production, both Xenserver and Oracle VM flavors, and both sucked horribly. Back when VMWare tried the v.Tax I contemplated switching to KVM using RHEV but Redhat took almost 30 days to even get me access to a RHEV download by which time VMWare had backed off on their pricing.

As to the crack about redundancy and scalability, I've got a better uptime metric than any cloud provider, zero unplanned downtime in the last 5 years (vmotion + svmotion makes replacing both hosts and storage a breeze) thanks to redundant generators, UPS, chillers, and internet connections.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[afidel]

LOL, only to internal customers =)

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[RabidReindeer]

Yes, I've heard of Xen, and I've even run it in production, both Xenserver and Oracle VM flavors, and both sucked horribly. Back when VMWare tried the v.Tax I contemplated switching to KVM using RHEV but Redhat took almost 30 days to even get me access to a RHEV download by which time VMWare had backed off on their pricing.

As to the crack about redundancy and scalability, I've got a better uptime metric than any cloud provider, zero unplanned downtime in the last 5 years (vmotion + svmotion makes replacing both hosts and storage a breeze) thanks to redundant generators, UPS, chillers, and internet connections.

There was a time when I ran Xen because a paravirtual VM ran MUCH faster than an VMWARE guest OS. Not so true these days and on modern hardware, but back then, the difference was immense.

Xen has always been reliable for me. The main problem was what it did to networking. And it added injury to insult by zapping the MAC addresses on my NICs on a routine basis.

Supposedly Xen4 fixes that. They make YOU do all the network setup. Which ordinarily I'd resent, but at least when magic elves aren't meddling around in the configuration, I have a much easier time of it.

And that goes for NetworkManager, too!

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[cusco]

I don't doubt that **YOU** can provide the equivalent of x, y and z, but very few SMBs have that talent available. Is it worthwhile for a (for example) physicians' clinic to pay AWS, or cough up the money for staff/contractors to manage their cloud infrastructure? Hard call, and how many doctors can adequately judge whether the people that they're paying are competent?

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see AWS useful for a short term project (a month, or maybe a quarter)... but like the parent, if there is a project going on for a long time, it can be better to take it in-house.

1U x86 servers are not too expensive, especially if custom built. For the initial cost of a m3.large reserved, one can start off with a bare-bones server. Add the hourly time, and one can have a basic VMWare or Hyper-V infrastructure that can be hammered to the limits of the hardware 24/7 without worry about CPU/disk use. As an added bonus, one gets the benefit of physical security.

For bursts, AWS is useful, but long-term, the best buy is servers in-house. Plus, you will be communicating with them via core LAN links as opposed to over the edge WAN that is slower and can cost more.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[poached]

That's great that your service is 1/4 the cost of AWS, but do you have a data center in Europe that I can run my apps on? How about South America, Asia Pacific? Yeah, it may cost more, but I get to have my apps and services running in all major geographies so that customer can actually have a good experience. Can you provide that kind of service at your current price point?

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[DuckDodgers]

It's the scaling. If you have fixed resource requirements, set up your own servers in a good colocation somewhere. If you usually run with X server capacity but a few times a year or more you need 5X or 10X, go with AWS (or Google, Microsoft, Rackspace, DigitalOcean, etc.... )

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be work in a business that had one of the top 10 biggest Xen deployments in the US. After scalability issues and the need for Live Migration/vMotion, the place moved from Xen to one of the top two commercial VM servers.

Xen is OK, but you do get what you pay for, and you will be throwing man-hours getting it set up, and more man-hours keeping it maintained than you would with Hyper-V or ESXi. Personally, I'd rather pay the license fees (if using Windows, you have to buy the license for Hyper-V anyway), and use that solution for anything.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[FearTheDonut]

Don't forget the other savings you get for using AWS (or other cloud providers). Facilities (and associated maintenance), power costs (cloud centers are almost always more efficient), and hardware administration. Obviously, you have to run the numbers yourself, but remember it isn't JUST hardware costs that are saved by moving to a cloud.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[Slashdot Parent]

AWS is expensive, I can provide the equivalent of an m3.large

Oh, excellent! I need to analyze 5PB of data in a 1000 node Hadoop cluster, which I'll need for about a week. I'll need to start the analysis in 3 days. It's a bit of a last-minute rush job. What would you charge me for that?

What? You can't provide that infrastructure at any time at any price? Oh, rats. I guess I'll just have to use AWS.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

>blah blah blah. 1/4th the cost blah blah blah >VMWare have you ever heard of Xen?

besides, somehow I doubt you can provide the same redundancy & scalability from a server in your parent's basement.

Heard of it? damn straight, we are in the middle of decommissioning that shit from our production datacenters at the moment. Xen was once great, now it is second rate compared to both VMware offerings and even Microsoft offerings. only a fool would choose it nowadays.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[Mabhatter]

the money is that enterprise level setup to do a "Cloud" with backups, redundancy, and all the licenses (or employees that can work at that level) is easily 7 digits... before you're even putting your BUSINESS on it. For a startup that's literally paying bills as they cash checks a few thousand up front for access to a multi-million dollar setup isn't that bad.

Re:AWS is NOT cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is meaningless without dollar figures.

Walmart on the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon has always been about low costs. It's why I love them as a customer, but ran the other way after interviewing for a job there. Their offices (at least the ones I saw in a Seattle tower) were dirty and dingy. I'm kind of a neat freak, and don't like that kind of atmosphere at home, so I could not handle the idea of tolerating it every day at work.

Re:Walmart on the web

[wonkey_monkey]

You do not want to know what I'm doing right now.

Re:Walmart on the web

[azadrozny]

Amazon is not doing anything new. Walmart has had this general philosophy for a long time. Good or bad, they have been squeezing every cent out of their supply chain, using the power of their distribution centers to keep their costs low. I recall reading somewhere that their CEO occupies the same modest office that Sam Walton used, and it does not get lavishly redecorated often (if ever). At least they are passing the savings on to the customer.

Re:Walmart on the web

[cusco]

Unlike Wally-world, Amazon is not fucking over its employees at every opportunity. Amazon employees make enough that they don't qualify for food stamps, much less need them to survive. Amazon employees have actual benefits. Amazon employees have actual insurance. Amazon doesn't take out 'dead peasant' life insurance policies on its employees either. Even the much-pitied fulfillment center temps are treated better than the best WalMart employee.

Re:Walmart on the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the much-pitied fulfillment center temps are treated better than the best WalMart employee.

LOL. Maybe the actual Amazon employees at those centers, if any exist. The vast majority are subcontracted out so Amazon can conveniently avoid any responsibility for their conditions.

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
[print version]

Business/First class is absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

I see zero reason why any company would pay for business or first class. It's like paying ten times the what it would otherwise cost, for...what, the chance to have 3 nips of something on the way? Good for Amazon for not flushing its money down the drain.

Re:Business/First class is absurd

[Virtucon]

It's the bigger seat and room you get in First/Business. Those make a difference if you have to fly long distances (7+ hours) week in and week out.
Try it sometime to see what I mean.

Re:Business/First class is absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what theytold you...naive...mhc...naive...

Re:Business/First class is absurd

[PPH]

Wider seats in first class. Sometimes business class is a rip-off (same seats, better snacks). But on long trips, first class seating is much more comfortable.

I could care less about leg room (I'm only 4' 18" tall). But I'm built like a tank and my arms hang into the aisle or across the shared armrest in economy class seating.

Re:Business/First class is absurd

[Amtrak]

This is exactly it. My brother who is 6' 10" and built like a tank always pays to upgrade when he has to fly a long distance like to Europe. I however don't care I'm 5' 11" and pretty normally wide. (It's funny being normal sized in a big family BTW. I grew up thinking I was short.) I can suffer through coach just fine thank you very much. Though I have been known to jump on getting an exit row if the occupant doesn't want to/can't open the door.

Not being huge has other advantages as well. For example I have no problem driving a Mazda 3 with manual transmission. My brother has trouble getting his knee to fit under the dash while bringing his foot up to hit the clutch. Also in my sister's Chevy Cruz his head hits the ceiling every time you hit a bump. As a result he drives an Impala which he knows gets terrible gas millage compared to my Mazda but at least he's comfortable.

Re:Business/First class is absurd

[kilfarsnar]

I see zero reason why any company would pay for business or first class. It's like paying ten times the what it would otherwise cost, for...what, the chance to have 3 nips of something on the way? Good for Amazon for not flushing its money down the drain.

I get the impression you have never traveled business class. On a trans-atlantic filght, it makes a world of difference. It is the difference between stepping off the plane feeling like you have been shipped in a crate and feeling like you just woke up from a nice nap. When I flew business class, I didn't want to get off the plane and when we arrived I was like, "Oh, were here already?"

Re:Business/First class is absurd

[n7ytd]

I could care less about leg room (I'm only 4' 18" tall). But I'm built like a tank and my arms hang into the aisle or across the shared armrest in economy class seating.

4' 18"? That's almost 5' 6"!

Of course it is tape

[cryptizard]

perhaps the reason Amazon's Glacier storage is so cheap is that maybe it might be based at least partly on tape, not disk

That is one of the stupidest things I have ever read. Of course it is using tape, why else would it take up to 24 hours to get your data when you request it? Everyone knows that is the whole point of Glacier, and the reason they can offer it so cheap. Nobody wants to deal with the hassle of having their own offsite tape library, so Amazon will do it for you with a convenience user interface. That is literally exactly what all of AWS is based on, doing something cheaper for you because they have the expertise and the facilities at scale.

Re:Of course it is tape

[PPH]

Yeh, but duct tape?

Subsidies

[Anonymous Coward]

It's able to afford this because they have been on a campaign of raising prices for the most popular items on Amazon.com for the last several months, increases as large as 30%.

Re:Reluctantly, grudgingly,

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

oops wrong thread.

could be blueray

[schlachter]

It could also be blueray disk based. Not as likely as tape based, but could be cheaper/faster at scale.

Re:could be blueray

[Anonymous Coward]

BD-R is not a reliable medium

Re:could be blueray

[DuckDodgers]

I used to use DVD-Rs for personal backups but unlike commercial DVDs, some of the disks started having read errors (despite very careful handling) after less than three years.

On the other hand, Amazon certainly has the resources to get whatever the hell it is the movie studios use to create the same Blu Ray disks you get when you buy Back to the Future on Blu Ray. I have yet to have a Blu Ray have a read error, and I've got a few dozen of them. So maybe Amazon uses that.

Re:could be blueray

[silas_moeckel]

Nor is it ever cheaper and it's rarely faster. A LTO 6 tape is 2.5 TB uncompressed at about 60 bucks A 50 pack of 25GB BD-R's is also about 60 bucks and writes at what 30MBs? You need 5 running in parallel to get nearly as fast as a single LTO drive. DB-R's are about the same price as a sata drive per GB your better off plugging them in as needed though neither is as reliable as tape in the long term.

Re:could be blueray

[BaronAaron]

Commercial optical disks from movie studios are stamped.. Stamping disks requires costly equipment and setup time and only makes sense when you are going to make many copies of the same disk.

Writable optical disks often use organic dye which breaks down over time, especially when exposed to bright light. This is often why their shelf life is very bad.

There is no way Amazon is using either technology for this.

Re:could be blueray

[schlachter]

Yeah, my bad, this could never happen.
http://hardware-beta.slashdot....

BTW, consumer grade writable optical disks have a life expectancy of 10 - 100yrs depending on materials used.

Re:could be blueray

[Mabhatter]

LTO DRIVES are super expensive... and the cards to connect them are super expensive. That's why more people don't use them on the lower end they're out of most "hobby" range and even mild professionals that don't have somebody else footing the bill.

Re:could be blueray

[silas_moeckel]

LTO6 drives at 2500 bucks the cards that connect them about 200. Break even is about 55 tapes worth aka 55 3tb drives worth or 110 50 packs of disks.

Re:could be blueray

[DuckDodgers]

Interesting, thanks for the link. But it's not clear to me that they have any way for the disks to last longer. Maybe this is a cost-controlling interim solution until they come up with anything better? The same article says they eventually want to use low power flash instead.

Flight costs

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is funny that Berkshire Hathaway also has this unwritten policy. Execs of business units know better than to fly anywhere first class.

FWIW: This is how it is where I work. The only exception is if you have a long flight. I think it is crazy though. Something like a 12 hour flight. Basically, fly to Australia I guess.

This sounds like an ad..

[slashkitty]

AWS services are NOT cheap at all when compared to running dedicated servers. With a little bit of load balancing, you can have a much faster, more reliable, cluster for a fraction of the price. Currently, I rent quad core machines for about $60 a month. That works out to $0.08 / hour. AWS charges $0.56 for a comparable speed service. It's not just that they can lower prices, they have to to compete with the real world.

Re:This sounds like an ad..

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that virtualization and intelligent load balancing allows you to get more processors (translating into speed and failover/reliability); but without moving some storage onto tape, you aren't going to be able to purchase name-brand disk storage arrays for the pricing that AWS offers.

If you look at disk (IBM/EMC/HDS) costs; not just drives, but controllers, space, power, and cooling -- that stuff can cost as much as your processing. But, if you are able to keep your old/unused data on tape; using Pareto Principle 80/20 rule; you can get huge savings in density, media, energy, and so on. Doesn't matter if the spinning disk is 30% cheaper or 50% higher capacity, when compared to tape that is literally pennies on the dollar in comparison.

  Tape is the way to go

Re:This sounds like an ad..

[Prehensile Interacti]

Your maths is off. $60 a month is $0.16 / hour (* 12 / (365.25 * 24)).

Also you're using AWS wrong, if you're comparing a by the hour price, with a contract price elsewhere. If you take AWS 1yr contract pricing, then the m3.xlarge will set you back $127pcm or $81 if you commit to 3yrs.

Sure it's more expensive, but not the orders of magnitude more that you claim. AWS is probably not cost-effective for a single box, but that's not the real use-case for cloud computing. If your workload is burstable, then only being active for the hours you need will save. And if you're scaled up to more than a single box, then having your next boxes in a different availability zone to increase your overall reliability is very hard to do outside of cloud . Quality infrastructure costs.

Re:This sounds like an ad..

[Anonymous Coward]

Starbucks breakfast sandwiches are NOT cheap at all when compared to buying eggs, bacon, cheese, and English muffins from Costco. With a little bit of refrigerator space and and a toaster oven, you can have much tastier, more freshly made sandwiches for a fraction of the price.

Re:This sounds like an ad..

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to add your hourly salary into the equation... I can get hamburger cheaper than walmart if I source half a cow (or even split the cost with someone) then pay to have it butchered into the various cuts I want. Even cheaper if I do it myself. Of course I haven't spent time learning how to butcher, or buy the equipment, don't know anyone else who wants 1/4th of a cow in their freezer, and don't really have the freezer space for that much meat.

I'm sure you see my point.

Not authors though

[Anonymous Coward]

AWS may be cutting the fees it charges for file downloads, but the fees that Amazon charges authors for downloading their ebook to customers remains gross. It's 15 cent per megabyte, over 100 times what AWS charges and roughly the equivalent of a $400 hamburger.

Only cheap for the big players

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring costs for persistent storage and network traffic (which will not be negligible, by the way), an EC2 m3.2xlarge Heavy Utilization Reserved Instance in N. Virginia costs $2691 up-front (for a 3 year agreement; i.e., getting the best possible per-hour rate) plus $86.40 per month, assuming you want 24/7 uptime (which, if your web server isn't up 24/7, you are just losing business). This is for a minuscule 160 GB of SSD storage, 8 "virtual CPUs" (which works out to be slower than a non-virtualized dedicated Ivy Bridge Xeon), and 30 GB of memory.

Even if you could smooth out the $2691 over 3 years, that's $86.40+$74.75 per month = $161.15 per month. And, again, this does not count persistent storage or internet traffic, which are very expensive.

I am paying about $105/month at Hetzner for a Core i7-3770, 32 GB DDR3, and 2 x 3TB HDD in hardware RAID-1 with an LSI RAID controller, a 1 Gbps dedicated port, and an IPv4 /28. My virtualization is container-based, so I have zero virtualization overhead, whereas EC2's hypervised virtualization carries a measurable overhead. The network and power to my server have been up 100% of the time since I started dealing with Hetzner in 2008. None of my disks have ever failed.

So: I don't have to put out a ridiculous amount of money up-front; I have no virtualization overhead; I have 2 GB more memory than an x2large; I have 18.75 times more usable storage than an x2large; I have a /28 to assign out to my containers; and I'm not competing for other users on my box who might be using some of my resources, as is often the case with S3/EC2. And it turns out to be cheaper on a per-month basis if you factor in the upfront cost. If you instead went with an on-demand instance with EC2, then EC2 becomes even more expensive.

And this is after **40** price reductions from EC2? I can't imagine how expensive it must've been back then. Yeesh. Nope, cloud is not cost-competitive for the little guy who just wants a beefy box on the internet. You'd probably have to provision something like 200 instances for it to start being cost-effective.

They're no better on the low end, BTW. A cheap Atom or Core2-era Xeon box will own EC2 on cost effectiveness on lower-end hardware any day of the week, even after EC2 has had another 20 price reductions.

Put simply, if you aren't pricing hardware for a Fortune 1000 company, or a smaller company whose business model depends on having lots of compute or network throughput or storage, EC2 is not cost effective. Hobbyists and independent developers should look elsewhere.

Re:Only cheap for the big players

[FlyHelicopters]

Even if you could smooth out the $2691 over 3 years, that's $86.40+$74.75 per month = $161.15 per month

If $161 per month is a serious cost for your business, then you aren't a real business.

That is chump change.

Re:Only cheap for the big players

[Prehensile Interacti]

I would be very concerned about running a single m3.2xlarge in AWS.

Presuming you're hosting something that you intend to grow, you have no room to manoeuvre when your user growth maxes out. My rule of thumb is to deploy on a large until you max out. Then scale vertically to keep your site operational onto the xlarge, while you put the development into scaling out horizontally. Horizontal scaling will take development effort, often considerable amounts. You keep the 2xlarge in your back pocket for emergencies.

Of course once you have more than one box serving your content, then this is where cloud comes into its own. You ensure your boxes are distributed in different data centres, to increase your availability when disaster strikes - it will! At that point cheap single-box offerings are moot, because its apples and oranges.

Re:Only cheap for the big players

[EmperorOfCanada]

Unless you are deploying a zillion of these for each of your customers, at which time the chump change has decimated your cashflow.

Re:Only cheap for the big players

[FlyHelicopters]

Yes, and somewhere between one and a zillion, it makes sense to roll your own. I was responding to the one comment.

If you need one, or five... use Amazon...

If you need five hundred... now you have some math to do...

If you need five hundred thousand... probably do it yourself...

Focusing on the wrong hand

[putaro]

The article focused on how Amazon cuts hardware costs. The first step there is a big one - once you let go of buying name brand hardware, especially for storage, the price drop dramatically. So dramatically, in fact, that hosting (largely electricity, cooling and network connectivity) becomes the major cost in the equation. Amazon is pushing for extremely high density, however, that has a ripple effect throughout your whole datacenter design. If you're not in a high cost area, you might ask why focus on density because floor space is relatively cheap.

Re:Focusing on the wrong hand

[Gondola]

Floor space is really cheap... until you run out. Once you run up against a hard limit like that, getting more can be very expensive in money and time.

I don't get it.

[digitalPhant0m]

So the story is Amazon provides cheap services by cutting costs. Is this new or some kind of bad thing?
The way I see it the consumer benefits from cheaper service.

does amazon AWS pay well?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got a couple of recruiting calls from Amazon AWS in northern virginia last year. Wasn't really on the market and I don't believe I applied to them. They probably got my resume off a job site. I generally don't take interviews without talking money first (Im in the top of the market, so why waste my time if you can't pay?). Typically if they can't afford me, it ends there. They refused to talk numbers. I also got back a bizarre statement of 'there is more to working at amazon, then money'. This typically means 'we don't pay well, but we act cool so we get people to work alot of hours for less'. I have found that places that have statements like that require you to live there and don't pay well. So they want the type of person who will just stay put, accept less money and more hours than you can get down the street.

I passed on the interview. The impression I got was that it was a really long interview process and I didn't want to be bothered.

Anyone know about this? The position was in Herndon, VA.

Re:does amazon AWS pay well?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I left Microsoft to go work for Amazon I got a small pay bump. Microsoft doesn't pay particularly well (at least at the time they publicly stated that their target was to be in the 65th percentile). And considering that I had been at MS for some time, I was probably underpaid there (yearly raises were OK but they weren't in line with market wage increases so the longer you stayed, the worse it got)

Amazon did offer me a decent sign-in bonus that required me to stay with the company for a given length of time. That was nice. Hint: put it in the bank. Not everybody lasts long enough to keep the money.

What really did it for me at Amazon was the stock. It kept going up and up so I made good money there. And since I was doing well they kept giving me more at review time.

What a lot of people don't like at Amazon is that they feel treated like cogs. Every company does it but Amazon doesn't sugarcoat it they way MS does. The delicate little snowflakes from Redmond often swim back to the other side of the lake after a year or two, not always by choice.

Also, be ready to be on call and to come work week ends on occasion.

Amazon is too rough for some but if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. I learned a ton while working for them, really sharpened my technical skills and got into a "just do it" state of mind that has served me well with other employers.

Re:does amazon AWS pay well?

[Slashdot Parent]

'there is more to working at amazon, then money'.

A lot of companies say that. Doesn't necessarily mean that they underpay, they just don't want someone who will jump ship if some competitor offers them $5k more.

Writers have no practical experience

[Zeorge]

They can write, one even authors papers (whoo) but if they actually understood what they wrote about they'd realize what you had just said: no point in buying COTS when you are creating your own. You'll just waste money and time trying to get it to work. Just make it right the first time.

No license for Hyper-V

[FearTheDonut]

Assuming you already own a Windows Server (or Windows 8 or greater), Hyper-V comes with your OS. Obviously you may have to purchase the OS that is going on your VM if you are installing a proprietary OS, but there's no explicit charge for Hyper-V anymore.

"Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is a stand-alone product that is available as a free download via the Microsoft Download Center. Hyper-V is a technology built into Windows Server 2008 R2. If you own Windows Server 2008 R2 then you already own Hyper-V. Find out more information on how to buy Windows Server 2008 R2."

Dreamhost "DreamObjects" is now $0.025/GB/month. N

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine it can be competition from Dreamhost, among others.

http://www.dreamhost.com/cloud/dreamobjects/

http://www.dreamhost.com/cloud/

Amazon principles

[subanark]

The Amazon business is focused around it's core principles:
http://www.amazon.com/Values-C...

Notice that "Frugality" is listed as one of them.

Beta Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

"I get the impression you have never traveled business class."

Bingo. When I fly to Europe and have to drive for two hours after I get off the plane, I want to do it after actually sleeping on the folding-down seat, not after being crammed something the size of a shoebox for eight hours.

Beta Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because readers can download their book an infinite number of times using cellular data, if their Kindle supports it. Amazon have to pay for that forever.

Don't just cut, but clarify

[EmperorOfCanada]

I would love to use AWS but I am on a tight budget. I use Linode because I know that this month I will pay $20, and next month (surprise surprise) I will pay $20.

But I look at two scenarios with AWS, one is that I will screw something up and end up with a $2,000 bill. I will turn on some database crap that is insultingly expensive the way I am using it. My other fear is that I will get hit with an overnight DDOS that wipes out my budget for the month some time well before the month is over. Thus I would now have two options, one to pay more money and hope that it doesn't happen again. Or to shut down my service and stop making money.

Basically the rate pages (hard to find) for AWS are harder to read than my local cell company rates. I signed up for their free trial (had to give a CC) and still wasn't sure that I wasn't going to see a $2,000 bill on my CC so I basically was too afraid to push it. If there had been no CC I would have pushed it hard to see if it would meet my needs. But with my CC it sat for a year and did nothing.

Re:Don't just cut, but clarify

[Anonymous Coward]

You can set up billing alerts. Personally I wouldn't let Linode touch my servers, their security record is questionable.

Shareholders profits?

[manu0601]

And how are they cutting expenses that go on shareholder profits?

Re:Shareholders profits?

[manu0601]

Replying to myself: I assumed they would cut expenses to feed the shareholders but I was wrong. TFA explains:

Amazon generated a whopping $74.45 billion in revenue for its financial year to 31 December 2013, but just $274 million in net income, a margin of roughly 0.3 percent. It sells Kindles at cost.

Compare this with Google, which saw net income of $12.9 billion on revenues of $59.8 billion for the year to 31 December 2013, a margin on 21.6 percent; or to Microsoft, which posted revenue of $77.9 billion for the year to 30 June, with a net income $21.9 billion, a margin of 28.1 percent

Question is: how do they manage to make shareholders accept that?

Re:Shareholders profits?

[gmhowell]

Replying to myself: I assumed they would cut expenses to feed the shareholders but I was wrong. TFA explains:

Amazon generated a whopping $74.45 billion in revenue for its financial year to 31 December 2013, but just $274 million in net income, a margin of roughly 0.3 percent. It sells Kindles at cost.

Compare this with Google, which saw net income of $12.9 billion on revenues of $59.8 billion for the year to 31 December 2013, a margin on 21.6 percent; or to Microsoft, which posted revenue of $77.9 billion for the year to 30 June, with a net income $21.9 billion, a margin of 28.1 percent

Question is: how do they manage to make shareholders accept that?

I'm guessing the investors expect Amazon to become and stay the Walmart of the internet (or perhaps the Sears and Roebuck from catalog days) and be be able to either ramp up margins or pay them at that level for a LONG time.

Re:Shareholders profits?

[manu0601]

I am not used to shareholders able to foresee what can happen beyond 3 months.

Re:Shareholders profits?

[gmhowell]

I am not used to shareholders able to foresee what can happen beyond 3 minutes.

FTFY.

And yeah, it's odd, but I can't think of any other explanation.

What does economy class have to do with AWS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like that would save the whole company money, not just the AWS division.

Plane Seat Upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

You pay for upgrade seat then plane delayed 4 hours!