If you run any workloads on Public Cloud Infrastructure, you know that evaluating costs, and comparing proposals is virtually impossible, because one architecture necessitates one piece or another that ends up making all possible architectures cost just about the same no matter what workload you try and deploy.

If it doesn’t, you get to find out why the big guys make so much money, they’re literally holding your companies infrastructure hostage.

For at least one of those big guys, this is how it works.

I’m an extremely large tech company. I make billions every single hour. I want to focus on being the platform for virtually all commercial entities to use. The money is in providing the platform. I incentivize other companies to partner with me so that I can feed them work downstream. Work that is beneath me, or maybe it’s too much at this time. /shrug

I give them capital, so they can expand, it’s a bribe/hookup fee. The company is now able to go and sell services on my behalf to any of their customers. A simple ponzi scheme. They sell more customers, I make more customers, customers make customers, etc.

The companies have an incentive structure. Something to shoot for and achieve. And they get rewards for doing so, like more capital, or more work, or special work. So they hire people that have the skills needed to implement all these things for customers. They incentivize people to get technology certifications. It’s a win-win. The employee gets a shot at increasing skills, regardless if they pass, their skills get better arguably, but the real big thing that happens, is the business just got a huge increase in capital, because they decided to only go for certain certifications, and not spend egregiously trying to get everyone skilled up. The employees now have highly sought after skills that only a small percentage of businesses on a global scale can achieve. Cant get rich on honesty. The business looks like they can do it. In reality, there is only one person who can. <-

They pay a few thousand dollars in a single quarter, and in return, they take home hundreds of thousands every year.

Certainly, the business has to keep implementing and completing things, or the money train ceases. So they keep trying. Only no one is smart enough. Or capable enough. To do the exact same thing.

So the business is stuck, if they created a business around a single person and that person decides to leave. The impact is much larger than a few project handoffs. Revenues go down, Managed Services money is some of the best in the industry because it’s mostly consistent. It’s bound by contract and exceedingly difficult to argue liability out of court.

Keep monetizing me unfairly and I’m going to monetize you right back. No one will come out a winner.

I mentioned that the Public Cloud companies make it so any and all possible architectures for almost anything you build, end up being virtually the same price.

If I’m that large platform company, and a company widely recognized in the industry is closing in on my market share for one reason or another, it makes sense to do what I can to defend the inevitable turf war, right? Except it costs businesses billions.

Switching gears a little. I’m a much smaller company than the large platform company. I run a basic workload that deploys a web application. I use a service I’ve used for years to log information from that workload. I use the other logging system to look at the logs and everyone is happy. However, the large platform company needs to make more money. They know that like you, other smaller companies are almost identical to what you do. If they change something for one, it changes for all others, economies of scale.

I know that the typical architecture necessitates use of a specific resource. The resource’s purpose is already basic, but I need to make more money. So I change the pay rules a little. Instead of it costing money for the storage to store the logs, I instead change how much it costs to transfer the logs into the storage and “transform” them.

Now, I have “upgraded my service” to be better for the customer, I can now charge 15-20x more automatically, and they are stuck, because it’s not that easy to transition out of the current architecture. I just increased my revenue on existing customers by 10x lets say.

Small businesses now see a 30% increase in their monthly spend. gasp Oh no, what happened. They reach out to the vendor for support. Vendor says yup, things have changed, it’s because of the logging system and you need to change. Ok, you think, that makes sense, it’s more in line with the platform, and also, they’re going to give me a discount fee to set it up now.

I bring the customer back to the platform, they have to pay whatever the cost is now anyways, or I threaten to shut down their infrastructure/business consumer entry point, then I give them a discount on a fee they never had to pay before, and they now want to move their logs to my platform, thereby increasing my overall revenue and stealing market share back because I’m a monopoly. If you do not think Public Cloud Infrastructure is an absolutely core part of the way capitalism and money works, I’d ask that you please do some more research.

No one is safe. As long as there are 986 cloud services at one single Cloud platform to predominantly do the exact same 100 functions, this will be a problem. It’s smoke and mirrors. If Basic Utilities are necessary to function in this life, Public Cloud is as essential as Water. #hydrohomie

If you want to try and work around this issue, negotiate your Public Cloud Infrastructure costs with your Managed Services provider. They make 15% of whatever the list price is to resell those services. They can take a few points off to incentivize everyone, instead of side-stepping that possibility to charge you more money on purpose. This is not working for the customer. This is anti-innovation.

If the company will not work with you on this, you have two options. Find a new provider who will, or, if your monthly spend is large enough, you can possibly negotiate directly with the provider for a discount. Keep in mind though that however much deeper you get, the bigger the hole becomes. It gets much harder to get out of….

Plan your infrastructure in multiple Public Clouds and private clouds. Connect them with VPNs. Use Global Peering. Or I swear to God, I’m going to deploy my own hypervisor and run my own shit, this is ridiculous. [$Bender]