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There are a handful of services out there that do this, I know because I've needed it on multiple occasions. It's nice that Amazon is providing it in house now,
by dested 8y ago
There are a handful of services out there that do this, I know because I've needed it on multiple occasions. It's nice that Amazon is providing it in house now, but it just reminds of me the last time I went to re:invent and walked through the vendor area and thought about how many of these companies are four dev cycles away from Amazon producing a baked in competitor.
Hard to make a B To B Amazon tool these days.
- scarface74 8y agoDave Winer: http://scripting.com/stories/2007/04/04/coexistingWithPlatformVend.html http://scripting.com/stories/2007/04/04/coexistingWithPlatfo... Sometimes developers choose a niche that's either directly in the path of the vendor, or even worse, on the roadmap of the vendor. In those cases, they don't really deserve our sympathy. It's almost like a game of PR, there's no way you're not going to have a fight on your hands. Further discussed by Joel Spolsky https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/06/10/platform-vendors/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/06/10/platform-vendors/
- kristianp 8y agoThanks. At the end of Spolsky's article he mentions a way to survive: "A good platform always has opportunities for applications that aren’t just gap-fillers. These are the kind of application that the vendor is unlikely ever to consider a core feature, usually because it’s vertical — it’s not something everyone is going to want. There is exactly zero chance that Apple is ever going to add a feature to the iPhone for dentists. Zero."
- scarface74 8y agoWatch next year at WWDC they integrate a feature into HealthKit that uses the FaceID sensors to tell if you have cavities.....
- ryanSrich 8y agoThat’s quite literally AWS’s playbook. Fill the vendor hall with tech, learn it, see what sticks and then crush it. This is why I’m bullish on cloud agnostic tech. These practices don’t typically fair well in the enterprise space. This is why companies like MSFT are interesting to me. They partner and rarely kill. Amazon is the complete opposite.
- benologist 8y agoYou can't even sell merchandise on Amazon without significant risk they will like your numbers enough to muscle you out: https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics/b?node=10112675011 https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics/b?node=10112675011
- clubm8 8y agoI've found anything more complex than an adapter or cable to be of inferior quality with Amazon Basics, and rarely buy those options anymore.
- wiredfool 8y agoTheir low discharge nimh batteries were/are pretty good for the money. Though, most of mine are old, so I don’t have good current data on the quality.
- degenerate 8y agoThe mini condenser microphones are actually REALLY good and on par with Yeti and other $100+ mics. https://smile.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Desktop-Mini-Condenser-Microphone/dp/B076ZSRVFQ/ https://smile.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Desktop-Mini-Condenser...
- copperx 8y agoAccording to reviews that's a lowly electret microphone capsule ($1) in a big housing. For podcasting you want a directional microphone. In defense of electrets, they sound great, but pick up everything. The shape of the microphone suggests it's a directional microphone (and if you read the reviews, people think it is directional). That's perhaps not a scam, but certainly deceptive.
- rodgerd 8y agoAmazon are like pre-lawsuit Microsoft and pre-decree IBM: you exist on their platform until you make enough money that they decide that your profit margin is their business opportunity.
- Godel_unicode 8y agoI'm always interested in the selection bias here; Amazon et al do this to plenty of companies that are not using their platform as well. It would be more accurate to say that being an AWS vendor doesn't provide you with added protection from them competing with you.
- mrkstu 8y agoNo, you are also directly providing them with metrics if you use their platform- whereas Azure/Google aren't going to turn around and start selling a competing widget if you use their infrastructure.
- bmurphy1976 8y agoI wrote a part of our product, actually invested years in it, that does a certain thing I won't say on Amazon's cloud. One day, Amazon released a competing service that does the same thing. There was a flaw in our product that had one of our customers pushing to use Amazon's offering. Turns out Amazon's service cost about 4x what it cost us to do it ourselves. It wasn't obvious at the time given Amazon's purposefully obtuse pricing. Eventually we fixed the bug, brought our customer back in line with the rest, saved some money, and have continued providing this service much cheaper than Amazon. I think it works for us because of a few reasons: 1. The service we offer is challenging enough that most dev teams won't want to do it themselves, they'll outsource it 2. Amazon has little incentive to charge less (see #1), little competition 3. We're small enough that we can still provide that face-to-face level of service and hand holding that's nearly impossible to get from a larger org Amazon/Microsoft/Google may come into a particular market, but it doesn't automatically imply that they can (or even will) do it better/cheaper/faster.
- greglindahl 8y agoI'm curious if you think that Amazon might have actually improved your business, because now you can offer anyone who buys from Amazon better service & price? If you can find them.
- jiveturkey 8y agoi’d say that is what you call an indefensible business. you pays your money and you takes your chances.
- mikedubc 8y agoMy company, Thorn Technologies, has a direct competitor on the AWS Marketplace called SFTP Gateway. We haven't seen any negative impact on sales just yet, probably because our product is much cheaper, and we think better. But only time will tell! Yeah, this is so typical of AWS to do this, and I know we're not alone.