Self-hosters vs big tech

Who or what is big tech?

Big tech refers to a small group of extremely powerful, large tech companies, also known as internet giants. This select club is not a new phenomenon, but it has evolved over the years. Companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Dell and Cisco were in control in the 1990s, but today everyone is talking about Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.

These giants have grown exceptionally quickly in a short period of time with their platforms and cloud applications. It's a successful formula, and they're not the only ones. Netflix, Uber, Booking.com, Slack, Airbnb, Spotify... All companies that stand or fall with technology. Whichever way you look at it, we have become hugely dependent on technology.

Is big tech evil?

Google man, are you there? The answer is yes. Companies like Google and Facebook know almost everything about you. Only your thoughts are still unknown to them, although this is no longer much of a difference. They measure everything and keep an extensive data profile of you. Take the test and visit timeline.google.com. Google can tell you exactly which picturesque restaurant you visited three years ago. And did you know that Google can, in theory, peek into your Gmail inbox? Frightening, but true.

On the other hand, this fact is very interesting for advertisers. Companies can use advertisements to target their audience very specifically. Age, gender, interests, job title, political preference, number of months engaged, etc. You name it, Facebook targets it. ‘If the service is free, the customer is the product,’ as our CEO Peter so aptly put it. We users have become the product of big tech companies, and you pay with your data.

In principle, these advertisements are interesting to you because they are personalised to your search behaviour and interests. It is no coincidence that social media advertisements are extremely effective. You know how it works. One day you take a look at Zalando, and the next day you see the very sweater you clicked on.

So is big tech really evil? There is certainly a lot to be said for that. Without a doubt.

Self-hosters as a counter-movement

More and more people are taking control of their own business hosting in response. Self-hosters don't want prying eyes, they don't want to give away data, so they start tinkering themselves. Thomas understands them, although he has his reservations. ‘We IT professionals are a bunch of tinkerers. That's how you learn a lot. It's fascinating to understand the technology behind it.’ However, you lose out on support and many hours of time savings, and that's worth money too.

In recent years, we have seen the opposite. Back then, the trend was that everything had to be cloud-based, regardless of whether it was actually the best option. Now, those companies are realising that working with an Amazon cloud or Azure is not always the best choice. As a result, they are still faced with the same issues: maintaining and updating machines, which often do not run (much) faster due to spare capacity, etc.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter where your server runs, as long as it's the best option. Cloud solutions are certainly not bad, but you need to have a platform that is geared towards a cloud environment. Blindly transferring what has been in your data centre for twenty years to a cloud environment will certainly cause problems. And that is what these companies often encounter now.

Why self-hosting?

Idealism: some people or companies only want to use open source (free) platforms. This allows them to build something themselves without having to pay a monthly fee. That's not a bad thing in itself. It raises awareness and encourages people to think critically, rather than simply choosing the path of least resistance. But it does have some significant disadvantages:
Paid platforms are often better built
There is often no or limited support
You have to put in a lot more effort to figure things out for yourself
It is time-consuming
Companies expect support, and you don't get that with open source
Prices: the cost of all those subscriptions adds up. You can quickly find yourself paying for dozens of services every month. Take photo collections, for example, a well-known problem. Your mobile phone is full, but you don't want to lose your photos, of course. You can store them in the cloud for free up to a certain volume, but before you know it, you're paying a monthly fee.
Passion for IT: some people love tinkering with computers. Just as there are sports enthusiasts, there are also computer hobbyists.

Can self-hosting grow larger?

Everything starts small. In the early days of Google, it also started with a single rack of homemade motherboards stacked on top of each other. Today, you can admire it in an American museum. So it's certainly possible, but it still seems unlikely.

Why? Self-hosting is not competitive enough to scale. You need a lot of time, know-how and a unique, high-quality service. Standard solutions such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google can be easily rolled out and scaled, which makes them much more competitive. Hosting companies such as Level27 should therefore not feel threatened by self-hosters for the time being.

What is the difference between public, hybrid and private cloud?

Public cloud: is a cloud solution where you use a shared, online infrastructure. These are cloud solutions offered by companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google, as discussed above.

Private cloud: you build your own specific environment for a single customer. You physically install it on site at the customer's premises. On the one hand, these are very large companies (multinationals) that usually have their own data centre, partly because of IT needs and privacy reasons. On the other hand, SMEs often have servers under their desks or in the basement. This is purely for budgetary reasons, as you can enter them in the accounts as a one-off cost that you can write off.

It is therefore mainly multinationals or companies in the medical sector (critical data that cannot be shared publicly) that opt for private cloud. For example, our education sector is not allowed to host government data on AWS, Azure or Google because our data would then go to America.

Hybrid cloud: the best of both worlds. Here, you connect your own private servers to a public cloud. This is often done as part of a company's growth strategy to enable faster response times.

Is cloud always cheaper?

Having your own server in the basement is a one-off cost that you can write off. This is therefore always the cheapest option. But people often forget about the many additional services: backup, management, maintenance, security, etc. That is why it is certainly not the best option. Hybrid cloud is therefore often the solution of choice. There will always be a new need that your private server cannot meet. With hybrid cloud, you can easily scale your capacity. You simply link your own data centre to Amazon's, for example.

Azure, AWS, Google. You can host anything with them. They try to attract you as a company, and they are successful. Just think of spot instances or on-demand capacity. Need temporary extra capacity for a specific event? No problem. Just think of ticket sales for large-scale festivals such as Pukkelpop or concert halls such as the AB. As a company, it is very interesting to go along with this.

However, you need to be careful! Solutions such as AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are very expensive. It is therefore advisable to estimate the costs in advance. Is it actually cheaper? It's difficult to say because you're not comparing apples with apples. The service costs a little more, but you save your company man-hours and get support and security in return. On-demand capacity, for example, is also much more expensive than a server that you have reserved for the long term.

What does the future hold for self-hosting?

This is very difficult to estimate because things change so quickly in the web world. Nevertheless, we expect self-hosting to lose out. Standard cloud solutions remain very easy for companies and more convenient for estimating monthly costs.

We are seeing particularly strong growth in Microsoft Azure, which is outperforming Amazon Web Services. Microsoft has already started to catch up and also has its long-standing reputation to fall back on. Windows has been on PCs for a hundred years, so to speak. Familiarity creates a perception of expertise. In addition, Google is struggling to gain market share. It is not yet as far along in the cloud world as AWS and Azure. Who knows, maybe a company like Facebook will launch a cloud service? You never know what the future will bring. Again, it's difficult to say who the winner will be in five years' time.

Our advice for web hosting

Inform yourself or seek information. Only then can you make an informed choice about what you need. It is important to take a critical look. In the past, if you bought IBM, you could do no wrong in the eyes of business leaders. That is no longer the case today. There is no absolute favourite, no clear winner. Nevertheless, hybrid cloud usually appears to be best practice. But how this is implemented in practice depends on the individual company.