Startups: Using a public cloud is a waste of money.

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Lead: Wired magazine's online edition, published in Thursday, "why some startups think that using cloud computing is a waste of money" (Why Some startups dour The Cloud is a waste of) says Some start-ups in Silicon Valley are abandoning the use of public cloud services from providers such as Amazon, which are more expensive than their own servers.

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Eric Frankier (Eric Frenkiel) has broken the secular abandonment of the use of public cloud services because it is too expensive!

In Silicon Valley, technology start-ups often develop their businesses through cloud services. This cloud service allows businesses to instantly get the computing power they need via the Internet, and Frankier, a memsql in San Francisco, is renting cloud services from Amazon, the cloud's originator.

But in May this year, when Memsql was created about two years later, Frankier abandoned Amazon cloud services and moved the company's operations to its own old, functioning server. Using these physical servers is much cheaper than using Amazon's virtual machines, Frankier. "I am not a staunch believer in the public cloud, and in the long run this is not an effective way," he said. ”

Frankier's experience suggests that while cloud computing is suitable for many tasks, including helping startups get started, or running a modest web site, it's not everything. When the 2012 Zynga (2.9, 0.02, 0.69%) gaming business developed to a considerable scale, Zynga made an unexpected decision to withdraw most of its operations from Amazon's cloud services and use its own data center. Today, some smaller operations are also starting to evacuate cloud services.

Like Memsql, Uber, a taxi application start-up, recently moved most of its operations out of the Amazon cloud service to use its own servers. Many other companies, including the Mobile analytics platform Mixpanel and the online apparel trading start-up company Tradesy, have made the same move.

"I don't know how many companies are running away from cloud computing, but in the IT market, public clouds are really getting more expensive, especially when they reach a certain size," says Kit Colbert, a virtual software provider VMware Engineer Kate Colbert. ”

Memsql selected Amazon Cloud services AWS three years ago to provide the computing power needed to run the company and test software products. "When it's small and just starting out, it's obviously a good choice," Frankier said. But since the beginning of the year, the cost of using Amazon Cloud Services has started to grow. Memsql's database products run on dozens of or even hundreds of servers, so a larger number of Amazon virtual servers are needed to test the product. Frankier and his company realized that cloud services could no longer be used, at least for this task.

This April alone, Memsql spent more than $27,000 on Amazon's virtual server, which means it costs $324,000 a year. If you choose to buy an entity server on your own, memsql can buy the required server in just 120,000 dollars. And even with the growth of test requirements, these servers can still be used for at least three years. Therefore, the cost is much lower than the use of Amazon cloud services.

Frankier expects to pay about 900,000 dollars over the next three years if Amazon continues to use its services. But after buying the entity server, the cost is less than 200,000 dollars. "The cost of hardware can be recovered in just four months," he said. ”

Of course, Amazon Cloud Services also have its own advantages, you can at any time to expand or reduce the size of the server. It's a good fit for a start-up startup, or a website with a traffic flow that's still unstable. However, the memsql workload has been relatively stable at any time the required amount of calculation is basically the same.

Frankier said: "If you really need flexibility, then the public cloud is a pretty good choice." However, if you have a steady amount of tasks and no longer need flexibility, it is more appropriate to use your own server. ”

John Hall, the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Tradesy, Calif., recently John Haul the same. "We've only acquired 7 servers and we've got enough computing power to be 70 times to 100 times times cheaper than cloud services," says Howe. ”

This does not mean that the enterprise will eventually move to the entity server as the task volume increases. At present, Amazon's cloud computing business is still growing, its convenience and flexibility features are advantages.

In addition, the geographical application platform Geoloqi two years ago also abandoned the Amazon, but a year later again into the embrace of cloud computing. "We need to expand or shrink the scale of computing more quickly," said Geoloqi founder Allen Parechi Aaron Parecki. ”