5 ms·

Wow, I thought you were joking, but you really weren't. From the homepage it took me 7 clicks to drill-down into information about a specific compute service a

Wow, I thought you were joking, but you really weren't. From the homepage it took me 7 clicks to drill-down into information about a specific compute service and see pricing, and it leads to their generic contact form page: https://www.stackit.de/en/contact https://www.stackit.de/en/contact They're really missing that these big digital movements / transformations typically start out as a single person investigating / fiddling around with the service on some trial account or with a $10 provisioning spend as part of a few hours long Jira ticket on a Friday afternoon. By inserting humans in the middle of this process (and the delay and back-and-forth which is incurred from having to formally give all that company information and implementation planning information and have it vetted) they're going to turn off a really significant number of potentially lucrative clients who will go elsewhere because they don't have to mess around with humans until they're sure of what they want.

rmoriz 4y ago
I guess Lidl targets German Mittelstand and DAX40 companies that already have outsourced to other cloud vendors or are in trouble with their legacy infrastructure. How many of the startups you have in mind didn't switch their infra once they grew? I know not a single one.
- oblio 4y ago
  Yeah, but the thing is, why would they switch away from AWS/Azure/... unless forced to by regulation? Existing cloud providers can scale to planet sized businesses.
  - yayachiken 4y ago
    The press releases by the Schwarz Group never even mention AWS, only indirectly by pointing out "digital sovereignty" when using a Germany-based company instead of a "foreign cloud hoster". Calling Stackit an "AWS competitor" is most likely just editorialization by the 3rd party media. The target customer are companies which are just barely moving away from self-hosted hardware.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    Same reasons some folks in US have US-first mentality. On top of obvious reason everybody knows damn too well - any US 3-letter agency doesn't give a nanofraction of a f*k about privacy and will use any data to gain any advantage, and specifically treats non US-citizens as subhumans when it comes to several human rights. Geolocation is only theoretical guarantee when stakes are so high. Some are OK with that, some are not.
oblio 4y ago
Germany is generally quite corporate. Yes, there is a large number of small, family owned, niche, businesses, but those don't really play in the IT space that much. Outside of that, it's just the Deutsche Banks, Daimlers, Bosches and Bayers of the world. And those are in general much more rigid than the equivalent US companies. Which in the field of software is suicide. There's a reason we call it "software".
- krab 4y ago
  A bit more than half of the added value in Germany is created by companies with less than 500 employees and less than €50M yearly turnover (Mittelstand). There is in fact a lot of specialized machinery vendors providing significant value. Not sure what are their IT needs, but I guess the larger SMEs are the target market for this service.
  - arinlen 4y ago
    > Not sure what are their IT needs, but I guess the larger SMEs are the target market for this service. I'd argue that SMEs are the ideal market for cloud services. Small shops with even smaller teams comprised of jack-of-all-trades are willing to pay a hefty premium for managed services that allow their teams for get things done without having to do everything themselves. Once your company grows beyond the definition of a SME, its able to roll their own infrastructure and do their thing in more cost-effective ways that don't involve handing over their core business to external and even foreign companies.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      At the beginning, then they hire the likes of HCL, Infosys, Wipro, TCS,.... because IT isn't their core business, and C levels see it as a cost center and distraction. Eventually the few devs left get "sold" to the contracting company, with the architects left as management for the contractors. Have seen this happening already several times since 2007.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Which is why most of them hire consulting shops, as they see IT as a pure cost center.
Havoc 4y ago
>From the homepage it took me 7 clicks to drill-down into information about a specific compute service and see pricing, and it leads to their generic contact form 7 clicks? I count a single click to basic prices and two clicks to full pdf pricelist? https://www.stackit.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/220601_STACKIT_Preisliste_EN_Version-1.0.2_A4.pdf?x22668 https://www.stackit.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/220601_STA...

rmoriz 4y ago

I guess Lidl targets German Mittelstand and DAX40 companies that already have outsourced to other cloud vendors or are in trouble with their legacy infrastructure. How many of the startups you have in mind didn't switch their infra once they grew? I know not a single one.

oblio 4y ago
Yeah, but the thing is, why would they switch away from AWS/Azure/... unless forced to by regulation? Existing cloud providers can scale to planet sized businesses.
- yayachiken 4y ago
  The press releases by the Schwarz Group never even mention AWS, only indirectly by pointing out "digital sovereignty" when using a Germany-based company instead of a "foreign cloud hoster". Calling Stackit an "AWS competitor" is most likely just editorialization by the 3rd party media. The target customer are companies which are just barely moving away from self-hosted hardware.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Same reasons some folks in US have US-first mentality. On top of obvious reason everybody knows damn too well - any US 3-letter agency doesn't give a nanofraction of a f*k about privacy and will use any data to gain any advantage, and specifically treats non US-citizens as subhumans when it comes to several human rights. Geolocation is only theoretical guarantee when stakes are so high. Some are OK with that, some are not.

oblio 4y ago

Germany is generally quite corporate. Yes, there is a large number of small, family owned, niche, businesses, but those don't really play in the IT space that much. Outside of that, it's just the Deutsche Banks, Daimlers, Bosches and Bayers of the world. And those are in general much more rigid than the equivalent US companies. Which in the field of software is suicide. There's a reason we call it "software".

krab 4y ago
A bit more than half of the added value in Germany is created by companies with less than 500 employees and less than €50M yearly turnover (Mittelstand). There is in fact a lot of specialized machinery vendors providing significant value. Not sure what are their IT needs, but I guess the larger SMEs are the target market for this service.
- arinlen 4y ago
  > Not sure what are their IT needs, but I guess the larger SMEs are the target market for this service. I'd argue that SMEs are the ideal market for cloud services. Small shops with even smaller teams comprised of jack-of-all-trades are willing to pay a hefty premium for managed services that allow their teams for get things done without having to do everything themselves. Once your company grows beyond the definition of a SME, its able to roll their own infrastructure and do their thing in more cost-effective ways that don't involve handing over their core business to external and even foreign companies.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    At the beginning, then they hire the likes of HCL, Infosys, Wipro, TCS,.... because IT isn't their core business, and C levels see it as a cost center and distraction. Eventually the few devs left get "sold" to the contracting company, with the architects left as management for the contractors. Have seen this happening already several times since 2007.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Which is why most of them hire consulting shops, as they see IT as a pure cost center.

Havoc 4y ago

>From the homepage it took me 7 clicks to drill-down into information about a specific compute service and see pricing, and it leads to their generic contact form 7 clicks? I count a single click to basic prices and two clicks to full pdf pricelist? https://www.stackit.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/220601_STACKIT_Preisliste_EN_Version-1.0.2_A4.pdf?x22668 https://www.stackit.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/220601_STA...