Google Cloud accidentally deletes UniSuper’s online account due to ‘unprecedented misconfiguration’
www.theguardian.com
Super fund boss and Google Cloud global CEO issue joint statement apologising for ‘extremely frustrating and disappointing’ outage

A week of downtime and all the servers were recovered only because the customer had a proper disaster recovery protocol and held backups somewhere else, otherwise Google deleted the backups too

Google cloud ceo says “it won’t happen anymore”, it’s insane that there’s the possibility of “instant delete everything”

  • RegalPotoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    6 months ago

    Because accountants mostly.

    For large businesses, you essentially have two ways to spend money:

    • OPEX: “operational expenditure” - this is money that you send on an ongoing basis, things like rent, wages, the 3rd party cleaning company, cloud services etc. The expectation is that when you use OPEX, the money disappears off the books and you don’t get a tangible thing back in return. Most departments will have an OPEX budget to spend for the year.
    • CAPEX: “capital expenditure” - buying physical stuff, things like buildings, stock, machinery and servers. When you buy a physical thing, it gets listed as an asset on the company accounts, usually being “worth” whatever you paid for it. The problem is that things tend to lose value over time (with the exception of property), so when you buy a thing the accountants will want to know a depreciation rate - how much value it will lose per year. For computer equipment, this is typically ~20%, being “worthless” in 5 years. Departments typically don’t have a big CAPEX budget, and big purchases typically need to be approved by the company board.

    This leaves companies in a slightly odd spot where from an accounting standpoint, it might look better on the books to spend $3 million/year on cloud stuff than $10 million every 5 years on servers

    • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      6 months ago

      Excellent explanation, however, technically it does not constitute an “odd spot.” Rather, it represents a “100% acceptable and evident position” as it brings benefits to all stakeholders, from accounting to the CEO. Moreover, it is noteworthy that investing in services or leasing arrangements increases expenditure, resulting in reduced tax liabilities due to lower reported profits. Compounding this, the prevailing high turnover rate among CEOs diminishes incentives for making significant long-term investments.

      In certain instances, there is also plain corruption. This occurs when a supplier offering services such as computer and server leasing or software, as well as company car rentals, is owned by a friend or family member of a C-level executive.

    • kcuf@lemmy.world
      0·
      6 months ago

      I read OPs comment as being a question about using a company with a reputation like Google rather than using a cloud service, but I could be wrong.