Amazon’s Cloud Isn’t One Size Fits All
In popular tech publications, you’ll find that the many experts act as if every startup will instantly adopt the cloud. While the data exists to suggest that this is true, it is important to note that a handful of new startups have tried Amazon’s AWS and they’re less than satisfied with the service. A few of these starts ups include Uber, MemSQL and TestingBot. Since trying out Amazon AWS, each of these companies have migrated their services out of the cloud. Why would a company want to leave the public cloud? Performance and cost seem to be the main factors.
The cost of Amazon AWS is pretty competitive when you compare it to other cloud providers. Companies like TestingBot have seen less than stellar results while using the cloud compute services of Amazon to run its company. TestingBot is a company that tests websites using different browsers and reports the results back to the website owner. For almost 24 months, the company had setup their service to utilize Amazon AWS. TestingBot’s main criticism of the cloud is that their service was bogged down by other applications running in the cloud alongside their own. TestingBot, which is still in its startup phase, was also being overwhelmed by its $10,000 per month Amazon bill.
By migrating from the cloud back to leased dedicated servers, TestingBots monthly server bill fell by over 66%. The reason that the cloud didn’t work for TestingBot is because their software also required other services to run in the background thus running up the bill for their public cloud use. In this instance, it made more sense for the company to use dedicated servers and manage them accordingly. While it wouldn’t be fair to say that Amazon’s cloud service is a one size fits all solution, it can be said that the solution is a “One size fits most.” It is important for technical consultants to weigh the cloud versus dedicated servers to see which solution fits best for your company and its bottom line.
