They Forward-Deployed the Headcount, Not the Stack
Today’s news: big tech is putting forward-deployed engineers on-site at client companies, and there is even a ‘Korean-style’ version. An FDE is an engineer the vendor embeds in the client’s office, living the project from the inside. Look closely, though, and the only thing actually deployed forward is the person. The models and the data still round-trip to a public cloud somewhere else, and the on-site engineer is simply plugged into it. On-prem, in one line, means the model, the data, and the infrastructure all live inside your own building. In this setup, the only thing in the building is a person.
Source: 빅테크, 고객사 상주 시작…’한국형 FDE’는 무엇이 다를까 · bespin
▶ Animated edition: the characters speak for themselves (Korean audio, English subtitles included)
What this means for ThakiCloud
The ‘Korean-style FDE’ in the comic is closer to how we actually staff a site. Paxis places an agent on the ground instead of a person, so the line item switches from per diem to electricity. Add Metis to the same building and the equation changes: model, data, inference, and the invoice all run inside the fence. That is on-prem, and it is what ThakiCloud means by sovereignty. In an era of on-site engineers, we forward-deployed the stack instead.
An auto-generated comic riffing on this week’s industry news.