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It's been said here many times before: if you are an AWS value-add startup, watch out. Their march up the value chain is relentless.

by jbyers 17y ago

clemesha 17y ago
AWS brings so much value to their target space that I'm willing to accept a certain amount of inherent lock-in. I've honestly never thought this about any other service, and it's a bit disturbing, but in my opinion this reflects their successful march up that value chain.
- tow21 17y ago
  The "march up the value chain" isn't about lock-in. It's about the fact there are a lot of business providing services between AWS and other services running on AWS (eg, by providing pre-packaged AMIs containing ready-to-run MySQL databases, and automatic management thereof) This is because in the early days of AWS, it offered you lots of moving parts to tweak, but you had to learn a lot to make best use of it. There was quite a lot of room in the market for paying people to take away some of the headaches in managing AWS yourself. This is becoming less & less true as Amazon provide more services - if you're still in that space, then you ought to be looking worried.
hyperbovine 17y ago
What does that mean? In particular, what does that mean for everyone's favorite baby Dropbox?
- hendler 17y ago
  Dropbox makes desktop software and a web interface to cloud storage and shouldn't be affected negatively by new cloud services.
  - kungfooey 17y ago
    I think the kind of company he's referring to would be something like RightScale.
- ssharp 17y ago
  It means that companies offering services for AWS users need to be aware that AWS is growing vertically and could easily knock them out. AWS is something I've been meaning to look at for a while now but from what I've seen, the value add services provide a easier experience. I'm not sure how else services are going to be able to differentiate. And at that, you're only going to attract small customers as larger customers are more likely to deal with any technical issues to the lower cost. Although, at that point, they may be willing to ditch AWS altogether. How AWS continues to evolve will be really interesting.
- JoeAltmaier 17y ago
  Client services should be safe for a while - that's the place to add value.
- jbyers 17y ago
  It means Amazon AWS is going to keep moving from bare VMs and storage all the way up through every component required to build on the web. And I should have been more clear. When I said relentless, I mean one should consider the possibility that they will move way beyond traditional definitions of hosting. Is it hard to imagine Amazon providing utility-priced anycast DNS? How about high volume email delivery? Why not a Ruby, PHP, or python hosting stack? Whole platforms, similar to Google Wave? Where's this leave startups? Mostly unchanged if they're looking at their markets with a very critical, paranoid eye.

It's been said here many times before: if you are an AWS value-add startup, watch out. Their march up the value chain is relentless.

by jbyers 17y ago

It's been said here many times before: if you are an AWS value-add startup, watch out. Their march up the value chain is relentless.

clemesha 17y ago

AWS brings so much value to their target space that I'm willing to accept a certain amount of inherent lock-in. I've honestly never thought this about any other service, and it's a bit disturbing, but in my opinion this reflects their successful march up that value chain.

tow21 17y ago
The "march up the value chain" isn't about lock-in. It's about the fact there are a lot of business providing services between AWS and other services running on AWS (eg, by providing pre-packaged AMIs containing ready-to-run MySQL databases, and automatic management thereof) This is because in the early days of AWS, it offered you lots of moving parts to tweak, but you had to learn a lot to make best use of it. There was quite a lot of room in the market for paying people to take away some of the headaches in managing AWS yourself. This is becoming less & less true as Amazon provide more services - if you're still in that space, then you ought to be looking worried.

hyperbovine 17y ago

What does that mean? In particular, what does that mean for everyone's favorite baby Dropbox?

hendler 17y ago
Dropbox makes desktop software and a web interface to cloud storage and shouldn't be affected negatively by new cloud services.
- kungfooey 17y ago
  I think the kind of company he's referring to would be something like RightScale.
ssharp 17y ago
It means that companies offering services for AWS users need to be aware that AWS is growing vertically and could easily knock them out. AWS is something I've been meaning to look at for a while now but from what I've seen, the value add services provide a easier experience. I'm not sure how else services are going to be able to differentiate. And at that, you're only going to attract small customers as larger customers are more likely to deal with any technical issues to the lower cost. Although, at that point, they may be willing to ditch AWS altogether. How AWS continues to evolve will be really interesting.
JoeAltmaier 17y ago
Client services should be safe for a while - that's the place to add value.
jbyers 17y ago
It means Amazon AWS is going to keep moving from bare VMs and storage all the way up through every component required to build on the web. And I should have been more clear. When I said relentless, I mean one should consider the possibility that they will move way beyond traditional definitions of hosting. Is it hard to imagine Amazon providing utility-priced anycast DNS? How about high volume email delivery? Why not a Ruby, PHP, or python hosting stack? Whole platforms, similar to Google Wave? Where's this leave startups? Mostly unchanged if they're looking at their markets with a very critical, paranoid eye.