AWS launches fresh challenges to on-prem hardware vendors

Amazon Web Services has launched two significant challenges to on-prem hardware. One is the addition of Dedicated Hosts to its on-prem cloud-in-a-box Outposts product. Outposts see AWS drop a rack full of kit, or individual servers, onto customers' premises. AWS manages that hardware, which is designed to run its own cloud …

[Pascal Monett]

I know Cloud is salespoint

What I don't get is why established companies are so intent on putting their servers in the hands of a single-point-failure scenario (not talking about startups or one-man shops here).

Yes, your server can fail in your own server room, but when that happens, you have sysadmins and assorted underlings who are on the ball immediately and get to work fixing the problem. Status reports are a question of going to the server room and asking how's it going.

When you put your server in the hands of cloud giants, you are at the mercy of their availability in case something goes wrong and if they don't publish any info, phone calls won't give you more. You just have to sit on your hands and wait it out.

I really don't get the appeal of that.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: I know Cloud is salespoint

One reason is cost and absolute ease of use. I can set up servers anywhere in AWS, meaning a lot of different countries around the world, in no time from a web browser. I (or my company) cannot do that ourselves unless we go through a lot of hoops. If we do it ourselves, we need people there to do it = time + cost + support contracts. If we buy VPS machines, that's no different from buying from AWS. Except that AWS is unified. If you learn how to set up storage or compute nodes in Germany, you can do exactly the same in Tokyo.

-> When you put your server in the hands of cloud giants, you are at the mercy of their availability in case something goes wrong

Agreed. So it is a trade off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I know Cloud is salespoint

AWS is about 10 times the cost of real bare metal if you have higher spec machines.

[elip]

Now I've seen everything. The first cloud provider, realizing most of its 'valuable' customers are hybrid-cloud, and are likely to stay that way forever, is going after their on-prem competition. This will not end well for Amazon, but I'm glad they're at least trying. Google is doing the same thing, but is pointing their customers looking for a physical 'as-a-service' offering to HPE. Much more pragmatic move in my opinion.

"Selling the Gateways through the channel means AWS has the muscle to challenge on-prem storage vendors like never before."

^^^ This is a bit of a stretch. Amazon's storage box cannot hold a candle to any existing large storage array. They're decades behind.