Away from AWS: 37signals saves 1.3 million dollars a year with its own storage
After migrating its workloads from AWS to its data centers, the S3 storage now follows. 37signals aims to save a further 1.3 million dollars a year.
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37signals has begun migrating its data from the cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) to its own on-premises storage. This was announced by CTO David Heinemeier Hansson on LinkedIn. He expects all data to be transferred to the company's own data centers by the summer. "That will be a reason to celebrate," he writes. The developer of the project management tool Basecamp and the email platform HEY will then be able to delete its AWS accounts and save around 1.3 million US dollars a year.
Own storage 87 percent cheaper than AWS S3
As early as 2022, Hansson announced his intention to leave AWS due to annual costs of 3.2 million US dollars. As a first step, 37signals moved its workloads from the AWS cloud to its own Dell servers. Despite the acquisition and operating costs of around 700,000 US dollars per year, the company saves around 1.2 million US dollars annually. However, the data initially remained in the S3 storage service from AWS, for which 37signals continues to pay around 1.5 million US dollars per year.
The migration eliminates this cost item for the software company. To this end, 37signals invested around 1.5 million US dollars in a total of 18 petabytes of its own storage space from Pure Storage. According to the article, operating the storage costs less than 200,000 US dollars per year. In addition, AWS waived fees of 250,000 US dollars for downloading the data. Once the one-off expenses have been amortized, the company saves a further 1.3 million US dollars per year.
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Hansson: "Cloud can still be a good choice"
Overall, 37signals has been able to reduce its expenditure by more than two million US dollars by switching from the cloud to its own hardware without the need for additional employees. Although companies are moving some of their workloads back from the cloud, Hansson says it is the right choice for certain purposes, such as small companies and start-ups with economic uncertainties and fluctuating needs. However, he criticizes cloud providers who invest a lot of money in advertising and PR to convince customers that there is no alternative to the cloud.
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