[HN Gopher] Nigerians are building affordable alternatives to AW...
___________________________________________________________________
Nigerians are building affordable alternatives to AWS and Google
Cloud
Author : NDAjam
Score : 94 points
Date : 2025-02-27 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| How fast are cost per unit compute of state-of-the-art
| datacenters going down? There is the construction cost and the
| running cost.
|
| When does it become feasible for poorer countries to start
| building them?
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| Is there a reliable modular datacenter construction technique
| that allows for easy scaling/expansion?
|
| Seems that could have a dramatic impact on bringing these
| within reach.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Racks.
| kjs3 wrote:
| Sun had their 'modular data center' concept[1], which was a
| self contained DC in a standard shipping container. You could
| chain them together. It wasn't obscenely expensive relatively
| speaking as I recall. I'm not sure if Sun was 'first', but
| these days there are all sorts of companies that do the same
| thing (I was recently in one from Delta). I don't know if
| they are applicable to the reality on the ground in Nigeria.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Modular_Datacenter
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| Very interesting. Yes, this is along the lines of what I
| was thinking.
|
| Seems you could calibrate the size of each unit according
| to anticipated growth and the max a site could sustain,
| area-wise (i.e. go larger to balance number of containers).
| Then, prep the site with easily extensible cabling for
| power/networking between units.
|
| It _seems_ (completely intuiting here) that if the reality
| on the ground could accommodate full data centers, then
| this would be possible.
|
| And according to the article, the cost was 1% of
| traditional data centers.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Very cool. Huwawai also made a similar thing [1], called
| the FusionModule1000A All-in-One Container Data Center. But
| interestingly (as far as I can tell) without any compute,
| just power, cooling, safety etc. Presumably costs about a
| million USD [2].
|
| [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170709195517/https://e.hu
| awei....
|
| [2] https://www.finditprice.com/index/it_product/search.htm
| l?pro...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| >> _She would pay AWS in dollars even as Okra earned in naira
| because American cloud providers did not accept payments in local
| currency at the time. The payments to AWS gradually skyrocketed
| as the naira depreciated around 70% against the dollar between
| 2020 and 2024._
|
| So this is really a forex hedging problem.
|
| Although there's an interesting twist with the local colo et al.
| competition who presumably have capital costs still denominated
| in foreign currencies (e.g. servers, generators, etc).
|
| What should a foreign-currency-denominated cloud pricing do, when
| a customer's local currency depreciates?
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It should be really not that hard to price in local
| denominations. Netflix charges different subscription costs in
| different countries and they have their infra built on other
| cloud providers.
|
| Cost of hardware is constant. And the generator, fuel, local
| electricity, wages etc. CAN be denominated in local currency if
| the datacenter is local. Obviously if you're using a server in
| the US region while sitting in Nigeria, you have no other
| discourse than pay USD, but for other regions, you should be
| able to charge in local currencies.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Ultimately, pricing is what the market will bear.
|
| So if AWS prices in naira, and the naira loses 70% against
| the dollar, does AWS change their pricing? Or just take a 70%
| haircut on their Nigerian revenue?
|
| I get local businesses want cost stability, but it seems like
| inflation will happen both ways: it'll just take longer to
| cascade through the supply chain with local-owned, local-
| priced providers.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| The operator could hold a large stock of Amazon gift cards.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > She would pay AWS in dollars even as Okra earned in naira
| because American cloud providers did not accept payments in local
| currency at the time.
|
| > The payments to AWS gradually skyrocketed as the naira
| depreciated around 70% against the dollar between 2020 and 2024.
|
| > Combine that with Nigeria's economic challenges -- rising
| inflation and forex volatility
|
| > Ashiru took things into her own hands, and Okra set up cloud
| infrastructure with servers in data centers in Nigeria and South
| Africa in 2024
|
| But the servers will also be priced in a more stable currency
| than the naira, so I'm not sure what the win is. I also googled
| "nigeria electric grid" to learn if they'd see how much pricing
| would be driven by inflation, but before I got there, saw that
| the national grid had 12 collapses in 2024. Generators and fuel
| are also priced in more stable currencies.
|
| The data sovereignty argument is interesting. I know there are EU
| companies that only use EU data centers. We might see (if it's
| not already a thing) AWS have a nominally independent EU
| subsidiary that can ignore US regulators.
| BoardsOfCanada wrote:
| 12 collapses seems incredibly generous, I don't think I ever
| had fewer than five blackouts in a day for the few months that
| I stayed there. Maybe it's better for data centers than hotels
| but I really don't believe that there's a big difference.
| OJFord wrote:
| Maybe 'the national grid' versus lots of local substations,
| i.e. all hotels might see 5 a day, but not necessarily at the
| same times.
| Etheryte wrote:
| The AWS bill comes once a month whereas you buy servers maybe
| once a year or w/e and then you own them. This alone means that
| buying servers hedges you against inflation at least to some
| degree. If inflation is around 20% a year, those savings could
| be considerable.
| baranul wrote:
| The data sovereignty argument is likely more than just
| interesting, but can be essential to their startups surviving
| in the future. Who can look at and do what with the data, can
| be the difference between a country or region keeping a
| thriving infrastructure or having to outsource an entire
| related chain to somewhere else that can dictate terms or not
| be in their best interest.
|
| Just as EU companies have the option of using only EU data
| centers, African countries can make the same argument for
| equivalent options, where AU companies (African Union) do the
| same.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| That last part has been announced, but not released yet. Amazon
| calls is AWS European Sovereign Cloud, see here for details:
| https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/aws-plans-to-invest-e7...
| Gys wrote:
| There is no link in the article and Nebula is a very common cloud
| hosting name, but must be this one: https://usenebula.io/
| https://usenebula.io/pricing
|
| Does not seem cheap though by the first of it.
| Nyr wrote:
| They sell an alternative to AWS, but their website is hosted at
| AWS.
|
| Also, pointing the MX record to smtp.google.com will not help
| with receiving email.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > While setting up a data center can cost millions of dollars,
| small Nigerian teams have found a workaround to this with
| "colocation"
|
| Isn't that what everyone does when starting up a hosting company?
|
| Looking at the websites of those companies, I also wouldn't
| characterize them as AWS or Google Cloud competitors. They offer
| Virtual Private Servers, FTP storage, maybe an S3 equivalent and
| Kubernetes. Maybe we can talk about S3 and Kubernetes being AWS-
| like, but those that offer only Virtual Servers and FTP space are
| competitors to "boring" web hosting services, no matter how often
| they use the word cloud.
|
| It's cool that these services also exist in Nigeria, and I think
| it's right that Nigerian websites use Nigerian infrastructure.
| But the article does a poor job talking about it
| kjs3 wrote:
| Yeah...you're not really building an 'AWS' until you're
| building a hyperscaler and leveraging massive economies of
| scale. This is more "we're building a service that addressed
| local reality with local solutions", and that's a pretty
| awesome thing just in itself.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _you 're not really building an 'AWS' until you're building
| a hyperscaler_
|
| AFAICT there's no claim that they're "building an AWS" (or
| attempting to). The title is "Nigerians are building
| affordable alternatives to AWS and Google Cloud".
|
| So, these are alternatives and a skim of the article seems to
| follow.
|
| I think we've been cloud-indoctrinated here (until recently)
| to believe viability means fullly-scalable cloud
| infrastructure.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't see the real difference between saying this and
| saying a Raspberry Pi is an alternative to AWS.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| You're correct that there's an analogy continuum here
| that starts at "ridiculous" and ends with "nearly
| indistinguishable".
|
| I suppose like many things, it's down to a reasonableness
| test.
| sepositus wrote:
| We're pretty far into the "ditching cloud" hype cycle at the
| moment. While I think both sides have valid arguments, I think
| the whole drama tends to lead to unhelpful titles like this
| one.
|
| Using this same criteria, I'm "building an affordable
| alternative to AWS" in my house by deploying an HA instance of
| Proxmox.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| I don't think revenue numbers reflect that we are in a
| ditching the cloud hype cycle, particularly given emerging
| political risks.. At any given time there is hype for every
| possibility with controversy or ramifications and the
| software market is so much larger than what many of us were
| used to that any group seems large enough to be most of the
| market.
| sepositus wrote:
| Oh, I agree entirely with you. When I say hype, I mean
| there's a lot of positivity around these "We left the
| cloud" blog posts. I sit in a position within my company
| where I make these types of decisions (how our
| infrastructure is provisioned), and every few weeks or so
| for the past year I've gotten sent some blog post about X
| company moving off the cloud and reaping Y benefits.
|
| I estimate that many of these cases were self-inflicted
| with a general misunderstanding of the cloud pricing model.
| Amazon has a literal pipeline (AKA certificate program) to
| maximize its revenue. It's so bad that I now include
| interview questions trying to suss these individuals out
| (design me X system, and the given solution uses 15
| different AWS services).
|
| Now, that's not an entirely fair representation of the
| problem, as I've seen genuine business cases that shouldn't
| be in the cloud, period. That's why I say both sides have
| an argument. But as I said, my opinion is that actual cloud
| revenue suggests that it's just a vocal minority group
| spinning up most of the discussions.
| redeux wrote:
| It's also funny because AWS uses (or at least used) colo
| facilities as well. They just never advertised it afaik.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _Looking at the websites of those companies, I also wouldn 't
| characterize them as AWS or Google Cloud competitors_
|
| I'd say they're more "alternatives" at this point, as the
| article's title states.
|
| But...
|
| > _They offer Virtual Private Servers, FTP storage, maybe an S3
| equivalent and Kubernetes._
|
| The number of AWS customers that could survive on these
| services alone is likely higher than we'd suspect, especially
| for small companies.
|
| Throw in an RDS-equivalent and maybe load-balancing, and the
| number rises dramatically.
|
| Of course, this also assumes the connective tissue is also in
| place (e.g. VPC, security groups, etc).
|
| EDIT: I should've said "the number of AWS customers that
| _currently_ survive on these services alone... "
| graemep wrote:
| > The number of AWS customers that could survive on these
| services alone is likely higher than we'd suspect, especially
| for small companies
|
| They could, but they will not.If your AWS is small there is
| no real motive to look for alternatives. Just stick with the
| brand you know.
|
| Even a lot of developers are very resistant to using
| something 'non-standard'.I have had "thats a weird thing to
| do" reactions to suggestions such as running Postgres on EC2
| because it would be easier than using RDS for a small DB.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| > _They could, but they will not._
|
| I intended to say "the number of AWS customers that
| _currently_ survive on these services alone... ". I've
| updated the comment.
|
| My comment was aimed more at those who assume that
| providers offering only these services would mean they're
| _technically_ non-competitive with AWS.
|
| My overall point is that these services likely represent
| what many customers are _actually_ using. If you 're in an
| enterprise shop, this may be less true. Same if you're in a
| funded startup that's convinced it needs infinite
| scalability and architects accordingly.
|
| But, I do agree that it's hard to convince people to resist
| the dogma. This may be changing as people are starting to
| question the value of Big Cloud vs its costs, but we'll
| have to wait for the dogma to follow to see any real change
| (for those who have access to Big Cloud).
| antithesis-nl wrote:
| The premise of the article seems a bit flawed: Nigerians are not
| replicating hyperscalers, but more like building local Hetzners.
| And that is a fine idea!
|
| A big problem for people doing this, however, is that peering is
| pretty much nonexistent in Nigeria (and, for that matter, most of
| Africa). So, traffic from, say, Airtel (where a lot of consumers
| are) to Globacom (which hosts a lot of major businesses), will
| not stay on the continent, but go via London or Marseille
| instead. And, also worth keeping in mind, from Lagos to those
| destinations, Joburg or Cape Town are actually double the
| distance, even though they might 'sound' closer.
|
| So, yeah, I wish everyone involved all the best, but it will be
| an uphill battle. Convenience and latency make 'big tech' pretty
| hard to avoid, and 'strong crypto' would be my bet over 'local
| facilities', but, yeah...
| everfrustrated wrote:
| Indeed Africa has some of the highest wholesale internet prices
| in the world.
|
| Having said that, there's a couple of new subsea fiber optic
| cables going live in Africa imminently. I would expect
| wholesale prices to drop substantially.
| sgt wrote:
| Yes that's crazy. I didn't know there was serious lack of
| peering in Nigeria and other countries on the continent.
|
| In South Africa however, peering is excellent and has been for
| decades. I also love using services hosted in-country. I pinged
| a service now and got 4ms RTT, try that with a London based
| server.
| kittikitti wrote:
| Amazon, which was originally planned to be named "Ruthless", will
| see this as an existential threat and use the full force of their
| Big Tech allies to make sure they have no additional competition.
| I support their cloud services and know that Big Tech collusion
| on cloud infrastructure will be nearly impossible to avoid. There
| must be more decentralized solutions and I'm proud of Nigeria for
| innovating when Silicon Valley is more worried about
| consolidating.
| ein0p wrote:
| Good for them if they can keep it up. Keeping your data on
| foreign servers is idiotic even if the cost is acceptable. Doubly
| so if it isn't.
| gunian wrote:
| i long for the day where african tech is just tech and not some
| novelty ooo look at what they are doing with less
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-27 23:01 UTC)