A lot of noise about how Dropbox saved $75M over two years by moving off AWS. Most are missing that Dropbox has over $1.1B in revenue. That means that they're saving around 3% of their revenue annually. Much less impressive in context.

@cleverdevil one of the suggestions in Dollars and Sense is not to think in percentages, but in actual dollars spent. $75M is a lot of money, even if a small %. It's a shift in thinking about money I personally struggle with.

@kitt totally fair! Its real money. I just call into question what Dropbox would look like if they hadn't made the transition. Would they have been able to improve their product/platform more? Create new, innovative products?

@cleverdevil As a corp exec that isn’t how we look at it at all. If I can save $5M somewhere that is actually $5M I can use to invest in the business to drive growth or customer satisfaction or etc. In a business “saving” money often isn’t like a person banking money.

@ronguest sure, and as an exec myself, I totally understand that angle. Its real saved money, but I also know that every additional responsibility that is taken in-house creates drag / distraction. Its more complex than it seems on the surface, and has long-term implications.

@cleverdevil Sure, at least I do not know all the considerations. They could have good of bad reasons for doing it. But AWS is not zero friction either. I’m just saying it is not obvious they made a mistake based on what I have seen.

@ronguest totally agree. To me, the issue with the narrative is that it was a slam dunk based purely on two year cost savings. Its way too early to tell that! Its a bet that is paying off in raw dollar savings in the first few years, but full TCO remains to be seen.