[ucee054]

Application-level SLAs without giving up the economics of multi-tenant:

Any one who wants to both have his cake and eat it is destined for disappointment.

[Evbn]

Why? This sounds like how EC2/Heroku/AppEngine/Lithium work

[ucee054]

On EC2 you don't even have cost savings from multi-tenant, because EC2 costs more than dedicated hosting.

So let's consider the logic of the proposition instead of particular companies.

The benefits of multi-tenant come from not having to pay to dedicate a resource. We can both use it and we each only pay a fraction of the cost. However, there is trouble if we both try to use it at the same time.

The benefits of SLA or any kind of quality of service guarantee come from having a dedicated resource. You know that you can always use it because I (or anyone else) can never use it.

These two goals are not compatible.

[count]

Don't underestimate how cheap EC2 can be to a large organization, with complicated rules and structures around things like physical facilities, etc.

Especially when you buy down the rates for 'reserved' instances (or even the FFP GovCloud stuff).

[ucee054]

First, what you describe is the appearance of low cost (next to a horrible alternative), as opposed to actual low cost.

Second, the reason for this "cheapness" is not multi-tenancy but the complicated rules and structures.

The larger point is that Rodney Rogers' article asks for too much.

In fact, I believe most companies would go bust trying to fulfill his requirements. If I were to win his business I would turn it down.

I believe the best he can hope for realistically is that SAP add some more hypervisor support to their software.