7 ms·

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 custom

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.
  - 013a 10y ago
    It is brilliant. But their track record doesn't seem to be all that great. They add services to Prime like Video and Music, but their competition is still around. No one is leaving Netflix or Spotify. More importantly, the main reason to pay for Prime is shipping. The rest are value-adds that might dissuade someone from unsubscribing, but I just don't think many people think "Wow, I need to pay for Prime Video!" Their SaaS offerings on AWS are the same. Do people get excited about Quicksight, WorkDocs, or WorkMail? Not that I've seen. They have customers. People use them. But compared to their crown jewels; EC2, S3, SQS, Lambda... they're nothing. Amazon will inevitably try to expand upward. But I see it being as successful as Prime Music or Amazon Cloud Drive. Its too much "can we do this" and not enough "should we do this".
user5994461 10y ago
> they are fickle and extremely price sensitive Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. There are numerous people who are price sensitive, the amateurs who are running a test app and complaining that digital ocean is cheaper, then move to the weirdest hoster they could find because that's only $2 a month. These are NOT AWS customers.
- iamacynic 10y ago
  > Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. you're out of your mind. customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. DESPERATELY. their entire business is being held hostage by amazon. jeff bezos has them by the balls and is squeezing harder and harder by the day. they have hired consultants to do the analysis, they have hired operations VPs to get them out, but they are failing. they are failing, and shoveling even more money to AWS every week, or their business goes dark. they are doing this because one side of their business (doing stuff) is outpacing their intelligence on the other side (paying for infrastructure to do stuff). this is the genius of amazon. this is why they are successful. amazon can arbitrage this opportunity better than anyone else currently. how do i know? i compete with amazon and talk to customers on a weekly basis. they are desperate. they woke up one day and are are now sending their entire profit margin to jeff bezos. every single CFO is thinking about it. how panicked are they? you could cut their bill in half and they still wouldn't do it. they're scared, like a deer in the headlights. they don't know what to do. what if they make a wrong decision? ohhhhh my goddddddddd but... let's do nothing and keep our jobs. that's the reality. meanwhile, s3 can go down for half a day, and amazon doesn't even really have to acknowledge it. becuase what are the customers going to do? MOVE? LOL! you might as well ask them to build a time machine. that is real. people live in that reality. sometimes against their will. people care about costs, and try hard, and all of those nice things, but they will soon be losers because jeff bezos is just BETTER at business than they are. jeff bezos is literally being paid by the people he is about to put out of business at the application level, and they're happy to pay him to do it. it's amazing. it truly is. here's the problem: more people know how to click a button on console.aws.amazon.com than to migrate and operate an entire site. people simply do not have the skills. they just don't. they don't know how the internet actually works, but they're operating a business on the internet. they're dumb. amazon capitalized on that, good for them. maybe the era where needing to actually knowing how the internet works is over. i don't know.
quanticle 10y ago
>i don't think i agree. i think they're moving up the chain to plug weaknesses in their model. Moving up the chain doesn't plug weaknesses. It dilutes your focus and increases the number of competitors gunning for you. The single worst business decision that Larry Ellison made was to acquire SAP. He looked at SAP's product, building on top of Oracle's databases, and thought, "Hey, that's value I can capture." The effect of that acquisition was to dilute Oracle's focus on its core product, which, in the long run, probably hurt Oracle more than its acquisition of SAP helped.
- sfdghjkl2345678 10y ago
  Oracle never bought SAP. You are WRONG.
- travem 10y ago
  Are you thinking of the acquisition of PeopleSoft by Oracle[1]? SAP are not owned by Oracle. [1] http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/017124_EN http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/017124_EN

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.
- 013a 10y ago
  It is brilliant. But their track record doesn't seem to be all that great. They add services to Prime like Video and Music, but their competition is still around. No one is leaving Netflix or Spotify. More importantly, the main reason to pay for Prime is shipping. The rest are value-adds that might dissuade someone from unsubscribing, but I just don't think many people think "Wow, I need to pay for Prime Video!" Their SaaS offerings on AWS are the same. Do people get excited about Quicksight, WorkDocs, or WorkMail? Not that I've seen. They have customers. People use them. But compared to their crown jewels; EC2, S3, SQS, Lambda... they're nothing. Amazon will inevitably try to expand upward. But I see it being as successful as Prime Music or Amazon Cloud Drive. Its too much "can we do this" and not enough "should we do this".

user5994461 10y ago

> they are fickle and extremely price sensitive Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. There are numerous people who are price sensitive, the amateurs who are running a test app and complaining that digital ocean is cheaper, then move to the weirdest hoster they could find because that's only $2 a month. These are NOT AWS customers.

iamacynic 10y ago
> Not at all. Most customers couldn't care less about money. you're out of your mind. customers at the high end care MORE about money, not less. the company spending $1 million/month on AWS is desperately looking for ways out. DESPERATELY. their entire business is being held hostage by amazon. jeff bezos has them by the balls and is squeezing harder and harder by the day. they have hired consultants to do the analysis, they have hired operations VPs to get them out, but they are failing. they are failing, and shoveling even more money to AWS every week, or their business goes dark. they are doing this because one side of their business (doing stuff) is outpacing their intelligence on the other side (paying for infrastructure to do stuff). this is the genius of amazon. this is why they are successful. amazon can arbitrage this opportunity better than anyone else currently. how do i know? i compete with amazon and talk to customers on a weekly basis. they are desperate. they woke up one day and are are now sending their entire profit margin to jeff bezos. every single CFO is thinking about it. how panicked are they? you could cut their bill in half and they still wouldn't do it. they're scared, like a deer in the headlights. they don't know what to do. what if they make a wrong decision? ohhhhh my goddddddddd but... let's do nothing and keep our jobs. that's the reality. meanwhile, s3 can go down for half a day, and amazon doesn't even really have to acknowledge it. becuase what are the customers going to do? MOVE? LOL! you might as well ask them to build a time machine. that is real. people live in that reality. sometimes against their will. people care about costs, and try hard, and all of those nice things, but they will soon be losers because jeff bezos is just BETTER at business than they are. jeff bezos is literally being paid by the people he is about to put out of business at the application level, and they're happy to pay him to do it. it's amazing. it truly is. here's the problem: more people know how to click a button on console.aws.amazon.com than to migrate and operate an entire site. people simply do not have the skills. they just don't. they don't know how the internet actually works, but they're operating a business on the internet. they're dumb. amazon capitalized on that, good for them. maybe the era where needing to actually knowing how the internet works is over. i don't know.

quanticle 10y ago

>i don't think i agree. i think they're moving up the chain to plug weaknesses in their model. Moving up the chain doesn't plug weaknesses. It dilutes your focus and increases the number of competitors gunning for you. The single worst business decision that Larry Ellison made was to acquire SAP. He looked at SAP's product, building on top of Oracle's databases, and thought, "Hey, that's value I can capture." The effect of that acquisition was to dilute Oracle's focus on its core product, which, in the long run, probably hurt Oracle more than its acquisition of SAP helped.

sfdghjkl2345678 10y ago
Oracle never bought SAP. You are WRONG.
travem 10y ago
Are you thinking of the acquisition of PeopleSoft by Oracle[1]? SAP are not owned by Oracle. [1] http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/017124_EN http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/017124_EN