Pick n Pay moves its IT infrastructure to Amazon Web Services

ToxicBunny said:
Probably not in all honesty... the way you are peacocking around in this thread makes me question whether you have a clue about how these sorts of things actually happen.
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I am a cloud architect that looked at how the Checkers system was built. It was built badly and one of my questions was why the system was running in Ireland while there was a local Azure. There was no answer to this and nobody cared. This is just how they operate, badly.
 
Benedict A55h0le said:
I am a cloud architect that looked at how the Checkers system was built. It was built badly and one of my questions was why the system was running in Ireland while there was a local Azure. There was no answer to this and nobody cared. This is just how they operate, badly.
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And that is Checkers... you are making wild, sweeping assumptions about PnP with pretty much nothing but a fluff piece to go on.
 
Benedict A55h0le said:
I am a cloud architect that looked at how the Checkers system was built. It was built badly and one of my questions was why the system was running in Ireland while there was a local Azure. There was no answer to this and nobody cared. This is just how they operate, badly.
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You are a "cloud architect" who made a materially false statement about the industry they are supposedly an expert in.
Benedict A55h0le said:
They are probably just copying Checkers who also uses AWS. No there is no AWS data centres in SA, so everything goes offshore. The better choice would be to use Azure, but I guess they are just as dumb as Checkers.
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From my limited experience with the cloud, all decisions to use a specific hosting platform are highly application, and business specific.

For example, in the article the stuff that Pick and Pay is doing, seems to be involved with moving their SAP systems to the cloud. That seems to me to be a highly specific, application specific task. The company that Pick and Pay picked for doing this works with AWS, Azure and GCP.
https://lemongrasscloud.com/

In the absence of any other information, I think it is a bit premature to state that they made the "wrong" decision. AWS for all you know might have been cheaper for Pick and Pay, and that the risk of not having regional redundancy might not have been worth the price.
 
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konfab said:
You are a "cloud architect" who made a materially false statement about the industry they are supposedly an expert in.
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I`m not an AWS architect, I did not know AWS had a half baked data centre in SA already. No go forth and sweep up the lynch mob.
 
Benedict A55h0le said:
I`m not an AWS architect, I did not know AWS had a half baked data centre in SA already. No go forth and sweep up the lynch mob.
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You called yourself a "cloud" architect. That is a general term for designing solutions for the cloud. You set yourself up for ridicule.

Just take the L and admit you made a few mistakes and move on.
 
konfab said:
You called yourself a "cloud" architect. That is a general term for designing solutions for the cloud. You set yourself up for ridicule.

Just take the L and admit you made a few mistakes and move on.
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I'd be very concerned by a Cloud Architect who isn't aware of the generalised cloud landscape within the region they supposedly operate tbh, even in areas that aren't their "speciality"
 
Benedict A55h0le said:
Nonsense, no lambdas, what else is missing? No regional fail-over like Azure too. Azure was and still is the superior cloud choice for SA.
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Last I checked Azure doesn't have a single data centre of their own in SA...so how are they the superior choice?

More like the "also ran" cloud service.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Last I checked Azure doesn't have a single data centre of their own in SA...so how are they the superior choice?

More like the "also ran" cloud service.
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TBH, I think all offerings in SA are "also rans" in terms of their footprint, but also no one provider is 100% superior to the other, they all have pros and cons and it is stupid AF to blindly stick to one if you have the option and ability to go multi-cloud.
 
Benedict A55h0le said:
I am a cloud architect that looked at how the Checkers system was built. It was built badly and one of my questions was why the system was running in Ireland while there was a local Azure. There was no answer to this and nobody cared. This is just how they operate, badly.
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So just because something is located in Ireland it automatically equals being run badly?

There is very little need for most companies to have their stuff hosted on local shores and therefore a great many don't bother as Ireland is much cheaper at this point in time.

If anything it's run very well for not just automatically going local because it exists.
 
ToxicBunny said:
TBH, I think all offerings in SA are "also rans" in terms of their footprint, but also no one provider is 100% superior to the other, they all have pros and cons and it is stupid AF to blindly stick to one if you have the option and ability to go multi-cloud.
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For sure, but AWS has the largest and end-to-end self-managed footprint which is something a lot of people need to tick their boxes, especially the financial services types.

You don't want your stuff sitting in a co-located space without the redundancy and security boxes ticked like AWS has.

Just look at how Google shat the bed the other day with all the co-location issues.

At least we can say AWS is running 3 redundant sites that are basically nuclear proof, have their own power and redundant links from every under sea cable etc etc and are managed end to end by a single entity.

Even so we still host all our stuff in Ireland as well because it just makes more sense than at the bottom of Africa and it costs less.
 
SauRoNZA said:
For sure, but AWS has the largest and end-to-end self-managed footprint which is something a lot of people need to tick their boxes, especially the financial services types.

You don't want your stuff sitting in a co-located space without the redundancy and security boxes ticked like AWS has.

Just look at how Google shat the bed the other day with all the co-location issues.

At least we can say AWS is running 3 redundant sites that are basically nuclear proof, have their own power and redundant links from every under sea cable etc etc and are managed end to end by a single entity.

Even so we still host all our stuff in Ireland as well because it just makes more sense than at the bottom of Africa.
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Yeah, from a purely base infrastructure point of view AWS has the upper hand in SA in my opinion as well...
 
SauRoNZA said:
So just because something is located in Ireland it automatically equals being run badly?

There is very little need for most companies to have their stuff hosted on local shores and therefore a great many don't bother as Ireland is much cheaper at this point in time.

If anything it's run very well for not just automatically going local because it exists.
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My thoughts exactly.

If your offering is not hugely latency intolerant then choose the cheapest site that will provide the best experience. (in simplistic terms)
 
ToxicBunny said:
How long before they catch a wakeup and move some of it back on-prem?
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I think at this stage it's probably a bigger problem to self-source redundancy with all things electricity being a major issue that simply putting it all off-site makes a whole lot of sense and that becomes someone else's problem.

As a cloud first company we've had no on-prem anything since the very beginning other than a network stack and I don't see that ever changing in the future.

Decision that paid for itself when Covid lockdown happened and there was literally nothing to change but send people home while so many other companies shat themselves.
 
ToxicBunny said:
My thoughts exactly.

If your offering is not hugely latency intolerant then choose the cheapest site that will provide the best experience. (in simplistic terms)
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And it being what it is there's nothing that stops you running 90% of your infrastructure in Ireland and 10% in SA for what really needs to be localised.

It would be very stupid to burn money and keep everything local just for the sake of it being local.
 
SauRoNZA said:
I think at this stage it's probably a bigger problem to self-source redundancy with all things electricity being a major issue that simply putting it all off-site makes a whole lot of sense and that becomes someone else's problem.

As a cloud first company we've had no on-prem anything since the very beginning other than a network stack and I don't see that ever changing in the future.
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It does work for some entities.. and could possibly work for PnP as well... just from my experience many large corporates/enterprises realise at some point that a core of on-prem is actually cheaper than having it in the cloud for a variety of reasons.
 
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