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I am all for unbundling AWS, but I think it's different from Craigslist. Craigslist is a consumer facing app, which is much easier to "unbundle" than something

I am all for unbundling AWS, but I think it's different from Craigslist. Craigslist is a consumer facing app, which is much easier to "unbundle" than something like AWS which faces enterprises. Even if some "unbundle wannabe" starts getting traction, I think Amazon will simply catch up by lowering the price as much as possible and putting more resources into improving the developer experience for the corresponding service. But if anyone has some great insight, please share. I would love to see this "great unbundling of the AWS" happen.

taylorwc 7y ago
Author here. You are completely right. There are a million ways the analogy breaks down: consumer vs enterprise, marketplace vs IaaS... It was more just that looking at the console jogged my memory in a visual way and I do believe there are axes on which AWS doesn't compete well in the long run, i.e., offerings where price is not the primary consideration.
- tech_man7 7y ago
  good article. Have you seen what Golem (https://golem.network/ https://golem.network/) has done in terms of crowdsourcing compute power and creating a marketplace?
zxcmx 7y ago
A frequently overlooked aspect in enterprise is billing, accounting and supplier agreement overhead. In enterprise, Joe developer can often add / use more AWS services and it just goes on the giant enterprise bill, no questions asked. If you want to use a third party service, waay more work. Supplier assessment needs to be done (by the department that does that) looking at security, company stability, data sovereignty etc. Procurement get involved to negotiate supplier agreement with the vendor and your project needs a specific budget line item which might require a trip to accounting. To get signoff and justify your vendor selection you might also have to do a stupid internal evaluation thing / bakeoff (even though of course you know the thing you really want) where you build feature matrix and carefully adjust the rows so your preferred vendor gets the most ticks. All this paperwork can take weeks or months. While a lot of the AWS service offerings are sub-par compared to alternatives, the technical work of papering over this is usually less risky than dealing with all the internal departments which will delay your project if you try to use another vendor. I think this is a big driver towards bundling being a win for them.
- user5994461 7y ago
  >>> While a lot of the AWS service offerings are sub-par compared to alternatives If you try to get some services in an entreprise, maybe a physical server or get a database, you may easily find that it takes months of paperwork and waiting. Then it's poorly operated and broken half of the time (why are they provisioning a hundred databases on a single shared host? or using a shared NAS as storage?) AWS services may not be perfect but it's miles ahead from the shitty services you get in an enterprise.
- caseymarquis 7y ago
  Heck, I work at a 20 person company and this is still generally true. No one is stopping me from using a new service, but using AWS means no new paperwork and no questions. Actionable advice on this would be: If you're B2B, have an option for yearly billing via invoice. Billing yearly via invoice vs a monthly direct debit means our finance people deal with payment, and just ask Engineering once a year if they should pay this weird bill they got. Billing via direct debit means I have to do paperwork every month. I don't enjoy things like paperwork. I do enjoy things like building a single customer MVP version of your service on AWS in a couple hours. You can guess which I'm going to choose if you don't offer yearly billing.
  - fierarul 7y ago
    Seems a bit risky to wait a whole year to collect what's due. I don't believe I ever heard of yearly invoicing like this. Of course, if your small company would like to pre-pay towards an approximation of your early invoice I'm pretty sure some company would be accommodating.
    - caseymarquis 7y ago
      I figured paying for a year up front was implied.
      - iakh 7y ago
        Not sure how that could work since most services are based on consumption
tempsolution 7y ago
AFAIK, I can't remember an instance where AWS raised prices. So if they were to undercut someone in prices, they would not be able to raise them again, so I find this scenario unlikely to happen.
halbritt 7y ago
Historically, AWS hasn't done this. They haven't lowered prices on RDS, Elasticsearch, etc. There are far superior options available. The lock-in on billing explains the adoption of these services, but there a tremendous number of accounts of folks struggling to make any of the secondary services scale worth a damn.

taylorwc 7y ago

Author here. You are completely right. There are a million ways the analogy breaks down: consumer vs enterprise, marketplace vs IaaS... It was more just that looking at the console jogged my memory in a visual way and I do believe there are axes on which AWS doesn't compete well in the long run, i.e., offerings where price is not the primary consideration.

tech_man7 7y ago
good article. Have you seen what Golem (https://golem.network/ https://golem.network/) has done in terms of crowdsourcing compute power and creating a marketplace?

zxcmx 7y ago

A frequently overlooked aspect in enterprise is billing, accounting and supplier agreement overhead. In enterprise, Joe developer can often add / use more AWS services and it just goes on the giant enterprise bill, no questions asked. If you want to use a third party service, waay more work. Supplier assessment needs to be done (by the department that does that) looking at security, company stability, data sovereignty etc. Procurement get involved to negotiate supplier agreement with the vendor and your project needs a specific budget line item which might require a trip to accounting. To get signoff and justify your vendor selection you might also have to do a stupid internal evaluation thing / bakeoff (even though of course you know the thing you really want) where you build feature matrix and carefully adjust the rows so your preferred vendor gets the most ticks. All this paperwork can take weeks or months. While a lot of the AWS service offerings are sub-par compared to alternatives, the technical work of papering over this is usually less risky than dealing with all the internal departments which will delay your project if you try to use another vendor. I think this is a big driver towards bundling being a win for them.

user5994461 7y ago
>>> While a lot of the AWS service offerings are sub-par compared to alternatives If you try to get some services in an entreprise, maybe a physical server or get a database, you may easily find that it takes months of paperwork and waiting. Then it's poorly operated and broken half of the time (why are they provisioning a hundred databases on a single shared host? or using a shared NAS as storage?) AWS services may not be perfect but it's miles ahead from the shitty services you get in an enterprise.
caseymarquis 7y ago
Heck, I work at a 20 person company and this is still generally true. No one is stopping me from using a new service, but using AWS means no new paperwork and no questions. Actionable advice on this would be: If you're B2B, have an option for yearly billing via invoice. Billing yearly via invoice vs a monthly direct debit means our finance people deal with payment, and just ask Engineering once a year if they should pay this weird bill they got. Billing via direct debit means I have to do paperwork every month. I don't enjoy things like paperwork. I do enjoy things like building a single customer MVP version of your service on AWS in a couple hours. You can guess which I'm going to choose if you don't offer yearly billing.
- fierarul 7y ago
  Seems a bit risky to wait a whole year to collect what's due. I don't believe I ever heard of yearly invoicing like this. Of course, if your small company would like to pre-pay towards an approximation of your early invoice I'm pretty sure some company would be accommodating.
  - caseymarquis 7y ago
    I figured paying for a year up front was implied.
    - iakh 7y ago
      Not sure how that could work since most services are based on consumption

tempsolution 7y ago

AFAIK, I can't remember an instance where AWS raised prices. So if they were to undercut someone in prices, they would not be able to raise them again, so I find this scenario unlikely to happen.

halbritt 7y ago

Historically, AWS hasn't done this. They haven't lowered prices on RDS, Elasticsearch, etc. There are far superior options available. The lock-in on billing explains the adoption of these services, but there a tremendous number of accounts of folks struggling to make any of the secondary services scale worth a damn.