7 ms·

This is nearly a "no true Scotsman" definition of cloud revenue, where if Amazon doesn't have a product in a market segment it shouldn't count. Google and Micro

by cwyers 8y ago

This is nearly a "no true Scotsman" definition of cloud revenue, where if Amazon doesn't have a product in a market segment it shouldn't count. Google and Microsoft both have offerings in the cloud SaaS office suite market segment, and it's a real liability for Amazon that they do not.

tekno45 8y ago
they do. https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/ https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cwyers 8y ago
  That's a slice of the stack. It's not a replacement for Word/Excel -- Google has Docs for that. That said, I think that's evidence that this fits in the cloud revenue stream.
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    A more relevant AWS service is WorkDocs: https://aws.amazon.com/workdocs/ https://aws.amazon.com/workdocs/
dcolkitt 8y ago
Not really. When people buy Office 365, they're primarily purchasing a the MS Office product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery. That doesn't really make this cloud revenue. Imagine if MS was forced to "unbundle" Office 365. Consumers could purchase a license to run MS Office on any platform. On of which might be hosted Azure. What percent of the Office 365 revenue would accrue to the products division compared to the cloud division. Sincere guess: 90%+. Another hypothetical scenario. Imagine if Apple offered a deal on iPhones. Get an iPhone for free as long as you sign up for a grossly overpriced $1000 iCloud contract. All of a sudden Apple would have hundreds of billion in "cloud revenue". But no reasonable person would all of a sudden say that they're now the biggest cloud provider in the world.
- txcwpalpha 8y ago
  >Not really. When people buy Office 365, they're primarily purchasing a the MS Office product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery. And when people buy Amazon RDS, they're primarily purchasing a database product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery. Imagine if Amazon was forced to "unbundle" Amazon RDS. Consumers could purchase a license to run the database on any platform. On of which might be hosted AWS. What percent of the Amazon RDS revenue would accrue to the products division compared to the cloud division... -- Yes, this is the literal definition of a "no true scotsman" fallacy.
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    Amazon RDS is literally just a hosted offering of an off-the-shelf database server (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server). There isn't really anything there to "unbundle". Amazon Aurora does appear to be a somewhat unique offering, but it appears to be tightly coupled to their infrastructure; I doubt that it could be unbundled without major rearchitecture.
  - addicted 8y ago
    But there are unbundled DBs that people run. PostgreSQL, mongo, MySQL and the majority of those are run on the AWS cloud. There is clearly a distinction here. For example, I don’t know if the word Azure is even mentioned when I go to buy an O365 license.
    - amf12 8y ago
      > But there are unbundled DBs that people run. PostgreSQL, mongo, MySQL And people can still buy standalone Office installations. > For example, I don’t know if the word Azure is even mentioned when I go to buy an O365 license. How does this matter? Microsoft includes this as Cloud revenue and not Azure revenue.
  - kurtisc 8y ago
    I don't think this is that fallacy. It's also fallacious to dismiss something as wrong if an argument in its favour uses a fallacy. If something is described as 'cloud' but uses a definition most people don't recognise or describe as 'cloud', that's at least worth noting. It's arguably prescriptive linguistics.
duskwuff 8y ago
Amazon does have a cloud SaaS office suite, actually -- Amazon WorkDocs / WorkMail / WorkSpaces. I've hardly ever heard of businesses using them, though; Office 365 and Google Apps have the market pretty well locked down. I feel like there is a fundamental distinction to be made between infrastructure services (like AWS S3, EC2, RDB, etc) and end-user services (like Office 365). Combining the two doesn't make a lot of sense; procurement for the two typically happens separately, and businesses frequently mix-and-match vendors for infrastructure and end-user services.
- vl 8y ago
  Do Amazon employees use these tools themselves?
  - bepotts 8y ago
    I was an engineer at Amazon for a couple years (left about a year ago) and I've never heard of anybody using these services. It's possible that some of the services that we used internally were simply frontends for those AWS services. Having an internal frontend for an AWS service was common.
  - virtuallynathan 8y ago
    Yes, WorkDocs is used extensively for document sharing. Chime is the go-to chat/meeting/VC app. People use WorkSpaces when they need a Windows or Linux test machine.
potato1234 8y ago
But if that's the case why not consider Google search under cloud reveneue and call it a day?
- milesward 8y ago
  exactamundo
- Scarbutt 8y ago
  Because you don't pay a fee to use Google search.
  - potato1234 8y ago
    Advertisers definitely pay.
briffle 8y ago
I'm not really sure how my copy of Excel and Word running on my work laptop (and subscribed to monthly) should qualify as "cloud revenue".. We do host our email on their cloud servers, but according to their own sales team, that is worth $5/month per subscriber for email only. Yet we pay $20/month per user for the full office suite installed on their systems. (and more for people with other tools like Microsoft Visio and Project) Its not a "no true scotsman" its that many of their products have no cloud component at all.
- cwyers 8y ago
  The copy of Word and Excel on your laptop have cloud integration. You can do collaborative document editing a la Google Docs through the desktop copies or the web app versions.
- metafizikal 8y ago
  Microsoft gloms together the pay-per-use/subscription part that totally doesn't need "the cloud" (Office apps) along with the other bits that do (email, Skype/Teams, OneDrive, etc.). It makes sense that they do from a financial reporting perspective, because they sell them and you buy them as one thing. How exactly should they split out the email or OneDrive component from Word or Excel of your $10-20/month? I don't think there's really a sensible way to do it without overcomplicating things.
jsight 8y ago
Its not so much "no true Scotsman" as, "what is a cloud and what is useful to track?". For comparing infrastructure offerings, it would be really misleading to include things like Amazon Music or MS Office (both of which are cloud offerings).
Dylan16807 8y ago
When someone is directly comparing Amazon and Microsoft "clouds", I absolutely assumed they meant Azure vs. AWS. To the exact generic definition I shouldn't have done that, but when it's specifically up against Amazon, well, things can be true but also misleading.
Spooky23 8y ago
I would disagree, it's not a "no true Scotsman" argument. Microsoft is actively competing against AWS IaaS and PaaS services, and leveraging embedded product features and license terms to force the issue with enterprise customers. Microsoft's spin is that those embedded relationships will compel customers to just join Azure. (Example: Windows 10 and Azure AD dramatically simplify PC management. How receptive is the market to that proposition? (I don't know, btw)) If they aren't getting heavy traction with their millions of existing enterprise customers adopting cloud services, they are doing something wrong that Amazon is doing right. Additionally, the fact the Microsoft can sell Office and Exchange is a known, irrelevant fact -- they've been extracting a toll from every business since like 1995. What isn't clear is if they have the ability to compete toe to toe with AWS (the market leader in IaaS/PaaS).
hcg 8y ago
Disagree, it's just not an apples to apples comparison when you add in revenue from a largely unrelated SAAS offering.
mr_toad 8y ago
On premis SQL server is clearly not cloud. Frankly, Microsoft are coming off desperate.
owaislone 8y ago
I think there is another perspective here. Consumer vs Developers. When we speak of the ongoing cloud vendor wars between AWS, Google, Azure and the likes of Digital Ocean, we mean cloud platforms for others to build and host things on, not consumer apps delivered through the cloud. If that was the case, we would have to count something like Dropbox or Google Photos as well, right? To me cloud provider in this context means a vendor that provides cloud platform for others to develop on top of. RDS counts, Office doesn't. That's how I look at it and I'm sure that's how MS looks at it. Certainly they wouldn't be blinded by Office revenue and think Azure is close to beating AWS. Office competes with Google Work Suite which isn't even part of GCP (even though it's linked).
- amf12 8y ago
  > To me cloud provider in this context means a vendor that provides cloud platform for others to develop on top of. RDS counts, Office doesn't. I completely agree with you on this one. However all the cloud providers include their SaaS subscription services revenue in cloud revenue. So when comparing market, revenue and stocks, that's what we should compare them on. But here we are in this thread looking at their "cloud revenue" to figure out which is a bigger "cloud vendor". That's like comparing Apples and Oranges.

by cwyers 8y ago

tekno45 8y ago

they do. https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/ https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cwyers 8y ago
That's a slice of the stack. It's not a replacement for Word/Excel -- Google has Docs for that. That said, I think that's evidence that this fits in the cloud revenue stream.
- duskwuff 8y ago
  A more relevant AWS service is WorkDocs: https://aws.amazon.com/workdocs/ https://aws.amazon.com/workdocs/

dcolkitt 8y ago

Not really. When people buy Office 365, they're primarily purchasing a the MS Office product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery. That doesn't really make this cloud revenue. Imagine if MS was forced to "unbundle" Office 365. Consumers could purchase a license to run MS Office on any platform. On of which might be hosted Azure. What percent of the Office 365 revenue would accrue to the products division compared to the cloud division. Sincere guess: 90%+. Another hypothetical scenario. Imagine if Apple offered a deal on iPhones. Get an iPhone for free as long as you sign up for a grossly overpriced $1000 iCloud contract. All of a sudden Apple would have hundreds of billion in "cloud revenue". But no reasonable person would all of a sudden say that they're now the biggest cloud provider in the world.

txcwpalpha 8y ago
>Not really. When people buy Office 365, they're primarily purchasing a the MS Office product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery. And when people buy Amazon RDS, they're primarily purchasing a database product, and the cloud just happens to be the mechanism of delivery. Imagine if Amazon was forced to "unbundle" Amazon RDS. Consumers could purchase a license to run the database on any platform. On of which might be hosted AWS. What percent of the Amazon RDS revenue would accrue to the products division compared to the cloud division... -- Yes, this is the literal definition of a "no true scotsman" fallacy.
- duskwuff 8y ago
  Amazon RDS is literally just a hosted offering of an off-the-shelf database server (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server). There isn't really anything there to "unbundle". Amazon Aurora does appear to be a somewhat unique offering, but it appears to be tightly coupled to their infrastructure; I doubt that it could be unbundled without major rearchitecture.
- addicted 8y ago
  But there are unbundled DBs that people run. PostgreSQL, mongo, MySQL and the majority of those are run on the AWS cloud. There is clearly a distinction here. For example, I don’t know if the word Azure is even mentioned when I go to buy an O365 license.
  - amf12 8y ago
    > But there are unbundled DBs that people run. PostgreSQL, mongo, MySQL And people can still buy standalone Office installations. > For example, I don’t know if the word Azure is even mentioned when I go to buy an O365 license. How does this matter? Microsoft includes this as Cloud revenue and not Azure revenue.
- kurtisc 8y ago
  I don't think this is that fallacy. It's also fallacious to dismiss something as wrong if an argument in its favour uses a fallacy. If something is described as 'cloud' but uses a definition most people don't recognise or describe as 'cloud', that's at least worth noting. It's arguably prescriptive linguistics.

duskwuff 8y ago

Amazon does have a cloud SaaS office suite, actually -- Amazon WorkDocs / WorkMail / WorkSpaces. I've hardly ever heard of businesses using them, though; Office 365 and Google Apps have the market pretty well locked down. I feel like there is a fundamental distinction to be made between infrastructure services (like AWS S3, EC2, RDB, etc) and end-user services (like Office 365). Combining the two doesn't make a lot of sense; procurement for the two typically happens separately, and businesses frequently mix-and-match vendors for infrastructure and end-user services.

vl 8y ago
Do Amazon employees use these tools themselves?
- bepotts 8y ago
  I was an engineer at Amazon for a couple years (left about a year ago) and I've never heard of anybody using these services. It's possible that some of the services that we used internally were simply frontends for those AWS services. Having an internal frontend for an AWS service was common.
- virtuallynathan 8y ago
  Yes, WorkDocs is used extensively for document sharing. Chime is the go-to chat/meeting/VC app. People use WorkSpaces when they need a Windows or Linux test machine.

potato1234 8y ago

But if that's the case why not consider Google search under cloud reveneue and call it a day?

milesward 8y ago
exactamundo
Scarbutt 8y ago
Because you don't pay a fee to use Google search.
- potato1234 8y ago
  Advertisers definitely pay.

briffle 8y ago

I'm not really sure how my copy of Excel and Word running on my work laptop (and subscribed to monthly) should qualify as "cloud revenue".. We do host our email on their cloud servers, but according to their own sales team, that is worth $5/month per subscriber for email only. Yet we pay $20/month per user for the full office suite installed on their systems. (and more for people with other tools like Microsoft Visio and Project) Its not a "no true scotsman" its that many of their products have no cloud component at all.

cwyers 8y ago
The copy of Word and Excel on your laptop have cloud integration. You can do collaborative document editing a la Google Docs through the desktop copies or the web app versions.
metafizikal 8y ago
Microsoft gloms together the pay-per-use/subscription part that totally doesn't need "the cloud" (Office apps) along with the other bits that do (email, Skype/Teams, OneDrive, etc.). It makes sense that they do from a financial reporting perspective, because they sell them and you buy them as one thing. How exactly should they split out the email or OneDrive component from Word or Excel of your $10-20/month? I don't think there's really a sensible way to do it without overcomplicating things.

jsight 8y ago

Its not so much "no true Scotsman" as, "what is a cloud and what is useful to track?". For comparing infrastructure offerings, it would be really misleading to include things like Amazon Music or MS Office (both of which are cloud offerings).

Dylan16807 8y ago

When someone is directly comparing Amazon and Microsoft "clouds", I absolutely assumed they meant Azure vs. AWS. To the exact generic definition I shouldn't have done that, but when it's specifically up against Amazon, well, things can be true but also misleading.

Spooky23 8y ago

I would disagree, it's not a "no true Scotsman" argument. Microsoft is actively competing against AWS IaaS and PaaS services, and leveraging embedded product features and license terms to force the issue with enterprise customers. Microsoft's spin is that those embedded relationships will compel customers to just join Azure. (Example: Windows 10 and Azure AD dramatically simplify PC management. How receptive is the market to that proposition? (I don't know, btw)) If they aren't getting heavy traction with their millions of existing enterprise customers adopting cloud services, they are doing something wrong that Amazon is doing right. Additionally, the fact the Microsoft can sell Office and Exchange is a known, irrelevant fact -- they've been extracting a toll from every business since like 1995. What isn't clear is if they have the ability to compete toe to toe with AWS (the market leader in IaaS/PaaS).

hcg 8y ago

Disagree, it's just not an apples to apples comparison when you add in revenue from a largely unrelated SAAS offering.

mr_toad 8y ago

On premis SQL server is clearly not cloud. Frankly, Microsoft are coming off desperate.

owaislone 8y ago

I think there is another perspective here. Consumer vs Developers. When we speak of the ongoing cloud vendor wars between AWS, Google, Azure and the likes of Digital Ocean, we mean cloud platforms for others to build and host things on, not consumer apps delivered through the cloud. If that was the case, we would have to count something like Dropbox or Google Photos as well, right? To me cloud provider in this context means a vendor that provides cloud platform for others to develop on top of. RDS counts, Office doesn't. That's how I look at it and I'm sure that's how MS looks at it. Certainly they wouldn't be blinded by Office revenue and think Azure is close to beating AWS. Office competes with Google Work Suite which isn't even part of GCP (even though it's linked).

amf12 8y ago
> To me cloud provider in this context means a vendor that provides cloud platform for others to develop on top of. RDS counts, Office doesn't. I completely agree with you on this one. However all the cloud providers include their SaaS subscription services revenue in cloud revenue. So when comparing market, revenue and stocks, that's what we should compare them on. But here we are in this thread looking at their "cloud revenue" to figure out which is a bigger "cloud vendor". That's like comparing Apples and Oranges.