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When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

98 points by rokhayakebe 10y ago

jarcoal 10y ago
Haven't they already started with Chime? https://chime.aws/ https://chime.aws/ EDIT: Looks like this article was written Feb 3rd, and Chime was announced 10 days later.
- cherioo 10y ago
  And before that, they had WorkDoc and WorkMail. I think the line can be hard to draw: is RDS application? What about RedShift? Quicksight? Echo?
  - simplehuman 10y ago
    WorkMail is DoA. Horrible product.
- intrasight 10y ago
  And AWS Connect. Certainly the are headed up the food chain.
  - scrollaway 10y ago
    Connect is an interesting thing. Much like MTurk, Amazon is turning humans into auto-scalable infrastructure. It's up the stack, but it's still very much lego pieces as someone else was saying elsewhere in the thread.
crabasa 10y ago
As a shareholder, hopefully never. Building infrastructure and platforms has three wonderful benefits: * Good customers, where good is defined as smart and willing to spend money. Going up the stack means dealing making sacrifices on both of those dimensions. * Less complex products that stay relevant longer. Amazon builds legos and leaves the task of putting them together to others. The assembly can create value, but also adds complexity that becomes difficult to manage over time. S3 was launched in 2006 (!) and I'd bet will outlast high-order products like Box and Dropbox. * Scale. Building apps means targeting smaller sets of customers. At Amazon's size, it's not clear what kind of application software would be a better use of their resources than simply continuing to solve platform problems.
- iamacynic 10y ago
  i don't think i agree. i think they're moving up the chain to plug weaknesses in their model. 1. good customers - infrastructure customers are not good customers. they are fickle and extremely price sensitive, which is tough to do on a super capital intensive business like hosting, even on amazon cloud's insanely high cost. 2. less complex products - i don't understand how there is there anything about amazon's cloud that says "less complex" to you. have you ever used it? it is automating thousands upon thousands of things you have to do by hand, and it breaks sometimes. 3. scale - every single application anyone has had success with is a sitting duck. i think amazon is the real new microsoft, with all of the anti-trust implications that insinuates. google only delivers information, amazon delivers nearly everything in the physical world (including hosting, the ultimate "physical good" that nobody thinks is.). good thing jeff bezos owns the washington post.
  - placeybordeaux 10y ago
    It feels like amazon's fundamental strength is dealing with price sensitive customers and running margin business with extremely thin margins.
    - nebabyte 10y ago
      That's one of their strengths - a company as large as Amazon can easily spread itself into multiple concerns without endangering its core business. They can even shut out competition by adding new Prime benefits for various services. Even the risk is mostly offloaded to existing companies. All Amazon has to do is wait to see what is viable/sustainable, figure out how to undercut their competition (likely their own customers on AWS), and essentially reach out and take "the rest of the pie" from those customers. It's brilliant.
      - deepnotderp 10y ago
        But high level applications customers aren't usually price sensitive, if Amazon tries to compete with its customers and fails, then they'll leave, to someone like Google cloud.
guimarin 10y ago
I'm guessing they won't move very far up the stack for the time being. It seems to me that once a process is able to be software-itized at least two things happen. One it comes under that old adage that any computing program/application can be done for half the resources/time every 18 months. The second is that producer surplus (profit) that emerges from an information asymmetry becomes consumer surplus when that asymmetry is able to be defined in software. All supply side economies of scale seem to be disappearing and what we're left with are companies that have a monopoly on some raw input or a demand side economy of scale (network effect).
michaelbuckbee 10y ago
I think Amazon QuickSight is probably a good example of the types of "real" applications they'll be launching more of in the future. Services slightly further up the stack that reinforce the value of their infrastructure services. For example, I could see them launching a competitor to ESP/Marketing automation services (reinforcing AWS SES).
- reilly3000 10y ago
  Quicksight fell short for us in a number of ways. We ended up using Looker with their app hosted on our AWS account. Amazon wins either way. That being said, after this and equally disappointing WorkDocs it will be a while before I look at their products as a first choice.
- sciurus 10y ago
  Also Workmail, Connect, etc...
qeternity 10y ago
Why would they want to? Levi Strauss didn't get rich prospecting. Let Amazon sell the jeans and pick axes (both digitally and physically in their case) to the modern day prospectors.
- arkitaip 10y ago
  Because that's where 10x growth might be. For every company that uses directly uses AWS, there are countless companies that don't get or need AWS directly but really need a CMS, CRM, VOIP, groupware, Helpdesk, Callcenter, etc. If anyone can build on top of Amazon's platform, it's Amazon.
  - qeternity 10y ago
    Sure, just as it was for the 49ers. Your keyword there is "might". But there's a huge failure rate. It's the same statistics that VCs face. Amazon is in a place to sell premium products to nearly 100% of the market, at really low risk.
    - nebabyte 10y ago
      If Amazon had governed its growth by deciding just to stay at where it "is", it'd still just be an online bookseller. And you'd be asking "why should they move into digital services? They're in a unique position to sell books online with low risk." Amazon has the potential to distupt nearly any service it wants to. The "risk" analysis and assessment is something they can handle - besides, the "riskier" applications they can just bide their time on and see how/whether they pan out for competition. Anything Amazon can undercut by having a wider service available on its platform, is just another bag of money they'd be leaving sitting on the table. And Amazon doesn't leave money on the table.
      - qeternity 10y ago
        AWS was already low risk, since they started with idle platform capacity that they needed to have for holiday shopping bursts. You're proving my point. They go for very asymmetric return profiles. Selling books online is exactly the same. Using expensive retail space to sell goods that have few good substitutes between them is a really dumb proposition. The market for books was well established, so that wasn't risky. Don't get me wrong, it's brilliant thinking and opportunity seeking. But it is not moonshot behavior.
hackerews 10y ago
I think - somewhat controversially - that business/productivity apps will make or break AWS. Assuming Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure can reach AWS feature parity and prices, most everyone will likely move their infra to where their apps are. Two (of many) reasons: 1) Biz/productivity apps are better when they connect directly to your infrastructure (eg query and viz features between Google Sheets + BigQuery, etc), and 2) Infrastructure is better when already integrated into your biz apps (eg Google Analytics auto push to BigQuery, etc). More here: https://twitter.com/pavtalk/status/822539127568658436 https://twitter.com/pavtalk/status/822539127568658436
- jessaustin 10y ago
  That integration doesn't seem that hard... the reason we don't see more of it may just be that it's not that valuable? You're never going to move all your BigQuery data to a Google Sheet. You might very well move some transformation of it, but that would be nearly as easy to do across IaaS vendors as within one...
whack 10y ago
> "It would be interesting to see Amazon actually start producing algorithms and application software on behalf of customers, moving itself even further up the stack and deeper into IT departments." Sounds more like consulting than Amazon's current business model. Is consulting really all that great a business, as compared to what Amazon is currently doing? Writing personalised software offers extremely low customers:engineering-effort ratios, as compared to infrastructure level services which are more one-size-fits-all. I'm sure Amazon will make AWS more and more high level, in an effort to attract customers who want high level solutions as opposed to low level solutions. But I can't imagine Amazon going full throttle into the consulting business.
- PaulHoule 10y ago
  I think it is competition for "software product delivered as a service providers", such as Salesforce.com, Basecamp, etc.
adrianratnapala 10y ago
Isn't amazon.com a real application? It seems to be working quite well for them. I'm not sure why they want to write applications for other people.
- nebabyte 10y ago
  Because if one works well, why stop there? Amazon isn't some tech startup with only a few hackers to focus on supporting their core product. They can easily maintain support for their core offerings while building out/up. As to why: why not? In this day and age, why let anyone have a slice of something you have the recources and reach to do far better and cheaper than them?
  - brianmurphy 10y ago
    One reason: Focus. Anybody who has tried to launch a SAAS app knows that launching the software is not enough. The sales and support infrastructure has to be there as well. I'm not saying they can't do it. They certainly have the money to throw at the problem. The question is if they really want to.
    - reilly3000 10y ago
      They are practically offering support-as-a-service now. It's a clear segment of their core business they are leveraging by creating services around it. They are giving it the same focus and support as they do logistics, an area where they are also an indisputable leader.
PaulHoule 10y ago
Everybody wants what they don't have. I was at an AWS Summit in NYC a few years ago and got the vibe that AMZN wanted to attract an executive audience but that they got more of a technical audience. I think for the kind of companies that are in NYC, technical people are the real champions of AWS and they are in a position to decide to use new AWS services. Business-oriented talks were easy to get into, I avoided the "big data" kinds of technical talks because the line would be too long. The audience really didn't care when they announced Zocalo; the audience was people looking for new services like the ones AWS already offers, not for new applications or new versions of old applications. Salesforce.com really owned the CRM system (application) and then got users to write applications for their platform, then later got into IAAS. Amazon.com has tried to go the other direction, but so far they haven't offered anything all that special.
pjungwir 10y ago
I have wondered this too. Oracle sells their database, but they also sell ERP/CRM/other TLA applications built on top of it. Amazon could do the same thing. And I think every batch of new AWS announcements they creep a little further up and up. Their IoT platform seems like an almost-there example. It is targeting just one vertical (sort of---it depends on how big IoT becomes I guess), and it ties together other lower-level offerings. When I look at their IoT product I think "I can combine those services myself." But of course that is what programmers always think. :-)
- jensvdh 10y ago
  Doesn't Amazon already "sell" DynamoDB?
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    Yes but parent's point was they could also sell something that works on top of DynamoDB. For example a Salesforce clone (not saying that's a good example just an example). Oracle sells their own DB as well as software that runs on top of the very same database.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
milesrout 10y ago
Yeah they could build a shopping platform on top of it or something.
- jeffbarr 10y ago
  I'll get on that right away. Great idea!
- 824ueirwfjd 10y ago
  hello down there at the bottom :D the funny thing is there was no "aws" until Amazon wrote their "app"
nebabyte 10y ago
The amount of denial in this thread is hilarious. Any level at which profit is made, you can assume Amazon will reach. They already have several large offerings at the application level, and there's no reason for them not to build or acquire further applications. You didn't think that "growth potential" of theirs' was going to stay in the corner selling books, did you?
- adventured 10y ago
  I agree. They've already done it over and over and over again with AWS. The article is casting a premise that has never been the case: AWS has always been in the real application business. Practically every expansion of AWS has involved adding real applications. Even Prime storage is a 'real application,' that sits on top of AWS, that competes in part with Dropbox and others. All tech platforms devour the surrounding territory if they can. The last 40 years of tech history is littered with the corpses of formerly successful niche products/companies/services that were wiped out by expansive platforms. Just go down the list of AWS services: CDN = real application Database products = several real applications (just ask Oracle, who is spooked by AWS) DNS service = real application Analytics = several real applications Chime, Workdocs, WorkMail = real applications Messaging = several real applications And on it goes. So what, they won't get into CRM? Of course they will. Amazon will use AWS to push into high margin enterprise software, specifically designed to target Oracle, Salesforce, et al. Because why not, the margins are there to be attacked. Anything that AWS gets near is a target in the next decade.
stonewhite 10y ago
AWS created its partner network exactly for this. They just supply their technology and consulting partners with building blocks so they can do the tailoring. The author apparently didn't do proper due diligence before typing down this article.
- michaelt 10y ago
  Amazon retail has a reputation for allowing marketplace sellers onto their site then cloning things that sell well [1]. If they'll do it for their marketplace sellers, why shouldn't they do it with their technology partners? [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot-seller-on-amazon-prepare-for-e-tailer-to-make-one-too https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot...
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Buying a pair of shoes from another reseller doesn't make a difference. It doesn't work for technologies. Changing systems is a huge cost and effort.
vinceguidry 10y ago
Amazon.com isn't an application? Less flippantly, why would Amazon want to expend more resources to make less money? They can comfortably keep pushing down the stack for a good long time, swallowing up more and more *aaS segments until they're well bigger than both Google and Apple. That's what the world needs from Amazon. Not Yet Another Productivity Suite. In the meantime they can do like Google, and disrupt segments where entrenched business interests are getting in their way.
lj3 10y ago
Do video games count? Because this company[0] has been offering cloud gaming for a while now. If I'm not mistaken, some others here on HN have also tried the same technique with video editing software with some success. [0]: https://parsec.tv/ https://parsec.tv/
iainmerrick 10y ago
This is a really weirdly-written post! I think it needs some serious editing before it's worth reading. This sentence jumped out at me: "This is natural enough for all IT suppliers, which triple their revenues when they start going up the hockey stick curve, than then they double revenues for a while, then it cools down to maybe 80 percent growth and then 50 percent growth and then 25 percent growth and then the rate of change gradually slows until it matches the overall rate of spending in the IT sector overall." All the stuff between "triple their revenue" and "gradually slows" is redundant waffle.

98 points by rokhayakebe 10y ago

Haven't they already started with Chime? https://chime.aws/ https://chime.aws/ EDIT: Looks like this article was written Feb 3rd, and Chime was announced 10 days later.

cherioo 10y ago
And before that, they had WorkDoc and WorkMail. I think the line can be hard to draw: is RDS application? What about RedShift? Quicksight? Echo?
- simplehuman 10y ago
  WorkMail is DoA. Horrible product.
intrasight 10y ago
And AWS Connect. Certainly the are headed up the food chain.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  Connect is an interesting thing. Much like MTurk, Amazon is turning humans into auto-scalable infrastructure. It's up the stack, but it's still very much lego pieces as someone else was saying elsewhere in the thread.

crabasa 10y ago

As a shareholder, hopefully never. Building infrastructure and platforms has three wonderful benefits: * Good customers, where good is defined as smart and willing to spend money. Going up the stack means dealing making sacrifices on both of those dimensions. * Less complex products that stay relevant longer. Amazon builds legos and leaves the task of putting them together to others. The assembly can create value, but also adds complexity that becomes difficult to manage over time. S3 was launched in 2006 (!) and I'd bet will outlast high-order products like Box and Dropbox. * Scale. Building apps means targeting smaller sets of customers. At Amazon's size, it's not clear what kind of application software would be a better use of their resources than simply continuing to solve platform problems.

iamacynic 10y ago
i don't think i agree. i think they're moving up the chain to plug weaknesses in their model. 1. good customers - infrastructure customers are not good customers. they are fickle and extremely price sensitive, which is tough to do on a super capital intensive business like hosting, even on amazon cloud's insanely high cost. 2. less complex products - i don't understand how there is there anything about amazon's cloud that says "less complex" to you. have you ever used it? it is automating thousands upon thousands of things you have to do by hand, and it breaks sometimes. 3. scale - every single application anyone has had success with is a sitting duck. i think amazon is the real new microsoft, with all of the anti-trust implications that insinuates. google only delivers information, amazon delivers nearly everything in the physical world (including hosting, the ultimate "physical good" that nobody thinks is.). good thing jeff bezos owns the washington post.
- placeybordeaux 10y ago
  It feels like amazon's fundamental strength is dealing with price sensitive customers and running margin business with extremely thin margins.
  - nebabyte 10y ago
    That's one of their strengths - a company as large as Amazon can easily spread itself into multiple concerns without endangering its core business. They can even shut out competition by adding new Prime benefits for various services. Even the risk is mostly offloaded to existing companies. All Amazon has to do is wait to see what is viable/sustainable, figure out how to undercut their competition (likely their own customers on AWS), and essentially reach out and take "the rest of the pie" from those customers. It's brilliant.
    - deepnotderp 10y ago
      But high level applications customers aren't usually price sensitive, if Amazon tries to compete with its customers and fails, then they'll leave, to someone like Google cloud.

guimarin 10y ago

I'm guessing they won't move very far up the stack for the time being. It seems to me that once a process is able to be software-itized at least two things happen. One it comes under that old adage that any computing program/application can be done for half the resources/time every 18 months. The second is that producer surplus (profit) that emerges from an information asymmetry becomes consumer surplus when that asymmetry is able to be defined in software. All supply side economies of scale seem to be disappearing and what we're left with are companies that have a monopoly on some raw input or a demand side economy of scale (network effect).

michaelbuckbee 10y ago

I think Amazon QuickSight is probably a good example of the types of "real" applications they'll be launching more of in the future. Services slightly further up the stack that reinforce the value of their infrastructure services. For example, I could see them launching a competitor to ESP/Marketing automation services (reinforcing AWS SES).

reilly3000 10y ago
Quicksight fell short for us in a number of ways. We ended up using Looker with their app hosted on our AWS account. Amazon wins either way. That being said, after this and equally disappointing WorkDocs it will be a while before I look at their products as a first choice.
sciurus 10y ago
Also Workmail, Connect, etc...

qeternity 10y ago

Why would they want to? Levi Strauss didn't get rich prospecting. Let Amazon sell the jeans and pick axes (both digitally and physically in their case) to the modern day prospectors.

arkitaip 10y ago
Because that's where 10x growth might be. For every company that uses directly uses AWS, there are countless companies that don't get or need AWS directly but really need a CMS, CRM, VOIP, groupware, Helpdesk, Callcenter, etc. If anyone can build on top of Amazon's platform, it's Amazon.
- qeternity 10y ago
  Sure, just as it was for the 49ers. Your keyword there is "might". But there's a huge failure rate. It's the same statistics that VCs face. Amazon is in a place to sell premium products to nearly 100% of the market, at really low risk.
  - nebabyte 10y ago
    If Amazon had governed its growth by deciding just to stay at where it "is", it'd still just be an online bookseller. And you'd be asking "why should they move into digital services? They're in a unique position to sell books online with low risk." Amazon has the potential to distupt nearly any service it wants to. The "risk" analysis and assessment is something they can handle - besides, the "riskier" applications they can just bide their time on and see how/whether they pan out for competition. Anything Amazon can undercut by having a wider service available on its platform, is just another bag of money they'd be leaving sitting on the table. And Amazon doesn't leave money on the table.
    - qeternity 10y ago
      AWS was already low risk, since they started with idle platform capacity that they needed to have for holiday shopping bursts. You're proving my point. They go for very asymmetric return profiles. Selling books online is exactly the same. Using expensive retail space to sell goods that have few good substitutes between them is a really dumb proposition. The market for books was well established, so that wasn't risky. Don't get me wrong, it's brilliant thinking and opportunity seeking. But it is not moonshot behavior.

hackerews 10y ago

I think - somewhat controversially - that business/productivity apps will make or break AWS. Assuming Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure can reach AWS feature parity and prices, most everyone will likely move their infra to where their apps are. Two (of many) reasons: 1) Biz/productivity apps are better when they connect directly to your infrastructure (eg query and viz features between Google Sheets + BigQuery, etc), and 2) Infrastructure is better when already integrated into your biz apps (eg Google Analytics auto push to BigQuery, etc). More here: https://twitter.com/pavtalk/status/822539127568658436 https://twitter.com/pavtalk/status/822539127568658436

jessaustin 10y ago
That integration doesn't seem that hard... the reason we don't see more of it may just be that it's not that valuable? You're never going to move all your BigQuery data to a Google Sheet. You might very well move some transformation of it, but that would be nearly as easy to do across IaaS vendors as within one...

whack 10y ago

> "It would be interesting to see Amazon actually start producing algorithms and application software on behalf of customers, moving itself even further up the stack and deeper into IT departments." Sounds more like consulting than Amazon's current business model. Is consulting really all that great a business, as compared to what Amazon is currently doing? Writing personalised software offers extremely low customers:engineering-effort ratios, as compared to infrastructure level services which are more one-size-fits-all. I'm sure Amazon will make AWS more and more high level, in an effort to attract customers who want high level solutions as opposed to low level solutions. But I can't imagine Amazon going full throttle into the consulting business.

PaulHoule 10y ago
I think it is competition for "software product delivered as a service providers", such as Salesforce.com, Basecamp, etc.

adrianratnapala 10y ago

Isn't amazon.com a real application? It seems to be working quite well for them. I'm not sure why they want to write applications for other people.

nebabyte 10y ago
Because if one works well, why stop there? Amazon isn't some tech startup with only a few hackers to focus on supporting their core product. They can easily maintain support for their core offerings while building out/up. As to why: why not? In this day and age, why let anyone have a slice of something you have the recources and reach to do far better and cheaper than them?
- brianmurphy 10y ago
  One reason: Focus. Anybody who has tried to launch a SAAS app knows that launching the software is not enough. The sales and support infrastructure has to be there as well. I'm not saying they can't do it. They certainly have the money to throw at the problem. The question is if they really want to.
  - reilly3000 10y ago
    They are practically offering support-as-a-service now. It's a clear segment of their core business they are leveraging by creating services around it. They are giving it the same focus and support as they do logistics, an area where they are also an indisputable leader.

PaulHoule 10y ago

Everybody wants what they don't have. I was at an AWS Summit in NYC a few years ago and got the vibe that AMZN wanted to attract an executive audience but that they got more of a technical audience. I think for the kind of companies that are in NYC, technical people are the real champions of AWS and they are in a position to decide to use new AWS services. Business-oriented talks were easy to get into, I avoided the "big data" kinds of technical talks because the line would be too long. The audience really didn't care when they announced Zocalo; the audience was people looking for new services like the ones AWS already offers, not for new applications or new versions of old applications. Salesforce.com really owned the CRM system (application) and then got users to write applications for their platform, then later got into IAAS. Amazon.com has tried to go the other direction, but so far they haven't offered anything all that special.

pjungwir 10y ago

I have wondered this too. Oracle sells their database, but they also sell ERP/CRM/other TLA applications built on top of it. Amazon could do the same thing. And I think every batch of new AWS announcements they creep a little further up and up. Their IoT platform seems like an almost-there example. It is targeting just one vertical (sort of---it depends on how big IoT becomes I guess), and it ties together other lower-level offerings. When I look at their IoT product I think "I can combine those services myself." But of course that is what programmers always think. :-)

jensvdh 10y ago
Doesn't Amazon already "sell" DynamoDB?
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  Yes but parent's point was they could also sell something that works on top of DynamoDB. For example a Salesforce clone (not saying that's a good example just an example). Oracle sells their own DB as well as software that runs on top of the very same database.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

milesrout 10y ago

Yeah they could build a shopping platform on top of it or something.

jeffbarr 10y ago
I'll get on that right away. Great idea!
824ueirwfjd 10y ago
hello down there at the bottom :D the funny thing is there was no "aws" until Amazon wrote their "app"

nebabyte 10y ago

The amount of denial in this thread is hilarious. Any level at which profit is made, you can assume Amazon will reach. They already have several large offerings at the application level, and there's no reason for them not to build or acquire further applications. You didn't think that "growth potential" of theirs' was going to stay in the corner selling books, did you?

adventured 10y ago
I agree. They've already done it over and over and over again with AWS. The article is casting a premise that has never been the case: AWS has always been in the real application business. Practically every expansion of AWS has involved adding real applications. Even Prime storage is a 'real application,' that sits on top of AWS, that competes in part with Dropbox and others. All tech platforms devour the surrounding territory if they can. The last 40 years of tech history is littered with the corpses of formerly successful niche products/companies/services that were wiped out by expansive platforms. Just go down the list of AWS services: CDN = real application Database products = several real applications (just ask Oracle, who is spooked by AWS) DNS service = real application Analytics = several real applications Chime, Workdocs, WorkMail = real applications Messaging = several real applications And on it goes. So what, they won't get into CRM? Of course they will. Amazon will use AWS to push into high margin enterprise software, specifically designed to target Oracle, Salesforce, et al. Because why not, the margins are there to be attacked. Anything that AWS gets near is a target in the next decade.

stonewhite 10y ago

AWS created its partner network exactly for this. They just supply their technology and consulting partners with building blocks so they can do the tailoring. The author apparently didn't do proper due diligence before typing down this article.

michaelt 10y ago
Amazon retail has a reputation for allowing marketplace sellers onto their site then cloning things that sell well [1]. If they'll do it for their marketplace sellers, why shouldn't they do it with their technology partners? [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot-seller-on-amazon-prepare-for-e-tailer-to-make-one-too https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/got-a-hot...
- user5994461 10y ago
  Buying a pair of shoes from another reseller doesn't make a difference. It doesn't work for technologies. Changing systems is a huge cost and effort.

vinceguidry 10y ago

Amazon.com isn't an application? Less flippantly, why would Amazon want to expend more resources to make less money? They can comfortably keep pushing down the stack for a good long time, swallowing up more and more *aaS segments until they're well bigger than both Google and Apple. That's what the world needs from Amazon. Not Yet Another Productivity Suite. In the meantime they can do like Google, and disrupt segments where entrenched business interests are getting in their way.

lj3 10y ago

Do video games count? Because this company[0] has been offering cloud gaming for a while now. If I'm not mistaken, some others here on HN have also tried the same technique with video editing software with some success. [0]: https://parsec.tv/ https://parsec.tv/

iainmerrick 10y ago

This is a really weirdly-written post! I think it needs some serious editing before it's worth reading. This sentence jumped out at me: "This is natural enough for all IT suppliers, which triple their revenues when they start going up the hockey stick curve, than then they double revenues for a while, then it cools down to maybe 80 percent growth and then 50 percent growth and then 25 percent growth and then the rate of change gradually slows until it matches the overall rate of spending in the IT sector overall." All the stuff between "triple their revenue" and "gradually slows" is redundant waffle.