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It is intersting to watch Amazon's strategy as they improve existing cloud computing services and add new services. The way they are going, it looks like Amazon

by dood 18y ago

It is intersting to watch Amazon's strategy as they improve existing cloud computing services and add new services. The way they are going, it looks like Amazon will totally dominate the market. I expect this will have huge importance to the web, and computing more generally, in the next 5 years or so. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes as important, or even more important than their traditional business.

ashot 18y ago
I don't agree. Though I think its great and technologically the next step forward this will never be a high margin business and will quickly turn into a race to the bottom as the switching costs are zero.
- rjurney 18y ago
  If you look at what they're doing, they've gone from offering raw storage and computers by the hour to offering DNA analysis as a service. They will keep building more sophisticated offerings. They're not racing to the bottom, they're racing to the top.
  - ashot 18y ago
    dna analysis is a niche, this is a service which by its nature is very easy to commoditize. To be useful it has to be invisible, and to be invisible it must have zero switch cost
    - rjurney 18y ago
      DNA analysis is a niche, and they chose it because it is a commonly executed algorithm with a Hadoop implementation lying around. The point is that by including it they are showing that they will be offering more and more such algorithms for execution as implementations become available. First it was just machines, now they're running specific software and specific jobs on that software for you. The stack just keeps getting taller and nobody else's stack comes close. The more advanced the service you run, the more they are charging. Amazon is winning by building more and more sophisticated services on top of their infrastructure to sell more and more use of the basic services. I hate to sound repetitive, but everything about it is a race to the top, not the bottom.
      - ashot 18y ago
        how much of that stack is proprietary?
        rjurney 18y ago
        Every single technology they've built on here is open: 'PC hardware', Xen, Linux, Java, Hadoop, HTML, SOAP, Javascript, Web Services. The unique components are their grid technology and interface and that they have wrapped it all as a reliable, easy to use and all around great product. Thats why Amazon is so incredibly smart: they maximumize use of open source to create unique and valuable offerings that solve fundamental pain. Last week doing hadoop computes was a pain in the ass. This week its not. Value. This is the most amazing thing going, Amazon is leading the market and continuously innovating, and you don't buy it because of 'switching costs.' Tell me the truth: do you have or are you studying for your MBA?
        ashot 18y ago
        thats my point, its all based on an open stack. so while innovative and important (i no longer use my regular host) its reproducible. In fact there are already several players converging on this space (slicehost et al, appengine). Long term this business is analogous to the hosting business: low margin and commoditized. is it a market? yes. Is it a big market? no. Why? because there is no lock-in. If you can't understand this consider the scenario where 5 or 10 years from now Amazon is providing the infrastructure for 20% of the web, taking in 20% margins above the cost to operate the data centers and making a hefty profit. What stops Microsoft or Google or any other player for that matter from getting in on the action by undercutting them in price? If you look at any (amazon scale) money maker online there is some sort of lock-in involved which is central to their business. Most often its a network effect of some kind. Go ahead, go down the list of the top 10 web companies and take a look yourself. Just because something is technologically cool does not mean its going to make enough money to be significant to amazon's bottom line. Also don't insult people if you can't grasp what they are saying.
        18y ago
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  Obviously, failing to look ahead is a mistake. But it is also a mistake to project too far ahead. Remember Keynes' famous aphorism: "In the long run, we are all dead." You're thinking in equilibrium terms. Yes, it's easy to imagine that one day this business will reach a low-margin equilibrium. Though that doesn't guarantee it will happen in our lifetimes. (An example of a factor that mitigates against it: Monopolies. Get a monopoly, and you can keep margins artificially high.) And just because something will eventually be commoditized doesn't mean it will never be a high margin business. Margins can be quite high at the beginning. And, if you stay out of the business because you're afraid of what will happen in ten years, you miss out on all that money that's on the table now. Just imagine if Microsoft had been unwilling to release Windows 95 because it was obvious that in ten years we'd all be trying to switch to Unix. The electronic component industry knows all about this curve. Component manufacturers race to ramp up early production of a new part, because the part sells for higher margins when it is first to market. Within a year or two other manufacturers will clone your part, or invent alternatives, and your margins will drop to tiny levels. But by then you'll hopefully have ramped up something else. The business has worked that way for a long time. In the case of this new Amazon service... I have never heard of Hadoop before. By releasing a turnkey service with big fanfare, Amazon will grow the market to include people like me. Because we have no clue what we're doing at first, they can charge us high margins for a standardized, widespread service with a relative wealth of documentation and buzz and (perhaps) some tech support. Eventually the market will stop growing, the customers will be educated and start hunting for bargains... and Amazon will move on to something else.
- aswanson 18y ago
  switching costs are zero Amazon has my purchase history and preferences (about 10 years worth) as well as my trust and approval. Switching costs are not zero, in my case, at least.
wheels 18y ago
I feel like Amazon doesn't get nearly the mind-share they deserve for doing really awesome stuff. They've been up on the front of so many technology curves it's silly. We kind of take for granted what they do since, you know, it's a store. But they're in search, they're heavy into data analysis, they've innovated in interfaces, payment processing, they've had community generated content since before we called it that, they've pulled off one of the most effective infrastructure platforms, they're redefining publishing and content distribution. And they have a great reputation for customer service. Another thing I like about Amazon is that I have a pretty good idea of what they're collecting all of my data for and it's something that I'm pretty comfortable with. I feel like they kind of get left out a lot of times when people are thinking about serious online innovation.
- rjurney 18y ago
  How many companies do something totally amazing... twice?
  - delano 18y ago
    Amazon has done it more than twice. They do it consistently and across their three core businesses.
    - rjurney 18y ago
      I just mean in a general sense: e-commerce and now the cloud.
      - wheels 18y ago
        But they're both sides of the same coin for Amazon. They had to build up this infrastructure for their own use, and that's why they can do cloud hosting so efficiently. It's like when they had a9, which was a pretty cool search engine (I used it for a while); they've naturally got a really hard-core search engine in house that works on rich data just for their own mountain of data. It's the same for most of the other stuff that they've done. I really think Amazon parallels Google in innovation, but they've somehow stayed much less sexy in the hacker world. I suppose it's that Amazon hasn't needed to make "we're smart people" one of their selling points.
lpgauth 18y ago
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.” —John Gall
jdavid 18y ago
I like that this is one race where Google has to catch up to Amazon.

by dood 18y ago

ashot 18y ago

I don't agree. Though I think its great and technologically the next step forward this will never be a high margin business and will quickly turn into a race to the bottom as the switching costs are zero.

rjurney 18y ago
If you look at what they're doing, they've gone from offering raw storage and computers by the hour to offering DNA analysis as a service. They will keep building more sophisticated offerings. They're not racing to the bottom, they're racing to the top.
- ashot 18y ago
  dna analysis is a niche, this is a service which by its nature is very easy to commoditize. To be useful it has to be invisible, and to be invisible it must have zero switch cost
  - rjurney 18y ago
    DNA analysis is a niche, and they chose it because it is a commonly executed algorithm with a Hadoop implementation lying around. The point is that by including it they are showing that they will be offering more and more such algorithms for execution as implementations become available. First it was just machines, now they're running specific software and specific jobs on that software for you. The stack just keeps getting taller and nobody else's stack comes close. The more advanced the service you run, the more they are charging. Amazon is winning by building more and more sophisticated services on top of their infrastructure to sell more and more use of the basic services. I hate to sound repetitive, but everything about it is a race to the top, not the bottom.
    - ashot 18y ago
      how much of that stack is proprietary?
      - rjurney 18y ago
        Every single technology they've built on here is open: 'PC hardware', Xen, Linux, Java, Hadoop, HTML, SOAP, Javascript, Web Services. The unique components are their grid technology and interface and that they have wrapped it all as a reliable, easy to use and all around great product. Thats why Amazon is so incredibly smart: they maximumize use of open source to create unique and valuable offerings that solve fundamental pain. Last week doing hadoop computes was a pain in the ass. This week its not. Value. This is the most amazing thing going, Amazon is leading the market and continuously innovating, and you don't buy it because of 'switching costs.' Tell me the truth: do you have or are you studying for your MBA?
        ashot 18y ago
        thats my point, its all based on an open stack. so while innovative and important (i no longer use my regular host) its reproducible. In fact there are already several players converging on this space (slicehost et al, appengine). Long term this business is analogous to the hosting business: low margin and commoditized. is it a market? yes. Is it a big market? no. Why? because there is no lock-in. If you can't understand this consider the scenario where 5 or 10 years from now Amazon is providing the infrastructure for 20% of the web, taking in 20% margins above the cost to operate the data centers and making a hefty profit. What stops Microsoft or Google or any other player for that matter from getting in on the action by undercutting them in price? If you look at any (amazon scale) money maker online there is some sort of lock-in involved which is central to their business. Most often its a network effect of some kind. Go ahead, go down the list of the top 10 web companies and take a look yourself. Just because something is technologically cool does not mean its going to make enough money to be significant to amazon's bottom line. Also don't insult people if you can't grasp what they are saying.
        18y ago
mechanical_fish 18y ago
Obviously, failing to look ahead is a mistake. But it is also a mistake to project too far ahead. Remember Keynes' famous aphorism: "In the long run, we are all dead." You're thinking in equilibrium terms. Yes, it's easy to imagine that one day this business will reach a low-margin equilibrium. Though that doesn't guarantee it will happen in our lifetimes. (An example of a factor that mitigates against it: Monopolies. Get a monopoly, and you can keep margins artificially high.) And just because something will eventually be commoditized doesn't mean it will never be a high margin business. Margins can be quite high at the beginning. And, if you stay out of the business because you're afraid of what will happen in ten years, you miss out on all that money that's on the table now. Just imagine if Microsoft had been unwilling to release Windows 95 because it was obvious that in ten years we'd all be trying to switch to Unix. The electronic component industry knows all about this curve. Component manufacturers race to ramp up early production of a new part, because the part sells for higher margins when it is first to market. Within a year or two other manufacturers will clone your part, or invent alternatives, and your margins will drop to tiny levels. But by then you'll hopefully have ramped up something else. The business has worked that way for a long time. In the case of this new Amazon service... I have never heard of Hadoop before. By releasing a turnkey service with big fanfare, Amazon will grow the market to include people like me. Because we have no clue what we're doing at first, they can charge us high margins for a standardized, widespread service with a relative wealth of documentation and buzz and (perhaps) some tech support. Eventually the market will stop growing, the customers will be educated and start hunting for bargains... and Amazon will move on to something else.
aswanson 18y ago
switching costs are zero Amazon has my purchase history and preferences (about 10 years worth) as well as my trust and approval. Switching costs are not zero, in my case, at least.

wheels 18y ago

I feel like Amazon doesn't get nearly the mind-share they deserve for doing really awesome stuff. They've been up on the front of so many technology curves it's silly. We kind of take for granted what they do since, you know, it's a store. But they're in search, they're heavy into data analysis, they've innovated in interfaces, payment processing, they've had community generated content since before we called it that, they've pulled off one of the most effective infrastructure platforms, they're redefining publishing and content distribution. And they have a great reputation for customer service. Another thing I like about Amazon is that I have a pretty good idea of what they're collecting all of my data for and it's something that I'm pretty comfortable with. I feel like they kind of get left out a lot of times when people are thinking about serious online innovation.

rjurney 18y ago
How many companies do something totally amazing... twice?
- delano 18y ago
  Amazon has done it more than twice. They do it consistently and across their three core businesses.
  - rjurney 18y ago
    I just mean in a general sense: e-commerce and now the cloud.
    - wheels 18y ago
      But they're both sides of the same coin for Amazon. They had to build up this infrastructure for their own use, and that's why they can do cloud hosting so efficiently. It's like when they had a9, which was a pretty cool search engine (I used it for a while); they've naturally got a really hard-core search engine in house that works on rich data just for their own mountain of data. It's the same for most of the other stuff that they've done. I really think Amazon parallels Google in innovation, but they've somehow stayed much less sexy in the hacker world. I suppose it's that Amazon hasn't needed to make "we're smart people" one of their selling points.

lpgauth 18y ago

“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.” —John Gall

jdavid 18y ago

I like that this is one race where Google has to catch up to Amazon.