The news coming out of Amazon’s AWS Re:Invent show this week included the keynote of Andy Jassy, where he announced more than 10 new services. It was like an Apple keynote but for the cloud. InfoWorld did a great job of covering the event, so you can get a good recap here on the InfoWorld site.
What struck me as I watched the news from the event is that we’re now playing tactical games at the public cloud level—with hype-driven stuff mixed in, of course. This means a focus on price reductions, new server configurations, tactical tools to maintain the cloud-based server instances, and of course, shiny new objects such as AI, big data, and IoT features. “Alexa? Provision 100 more Linux servers.”
What does this all mean? It means the cloud is the new normal and AWS is leading the way. I’m often taken aback by the influence that AWS has over enterprises, in that most enterprises that are moving to public cloud align their strategy with what comes out of Re:Invent. Moreover, the other public cloud providers often align to what comes out of Re:Invent as well.
Is this a good thing? It is, in that most enterprises are finally getting off the dime when it comes to moving to the public cloud. They need a leader to follow, much like IBM, Microsoft, and HP led the way into new technologies in the past. AWS seems to have stepped up to that role for cloud computing. If that gets enterprises moving in more productive directions, then by all means, let’s drink the AWS Kool-Aid.
That said, the public cloud market is much larger than AWS. We’ll see market forces other than AWS begin to affect enterprise cloud adoption decisions, and influence will accelerate over the new few years as new tools and products emerge. As a result, we’ll once again be chasing a chaotic and changing market, trying to make sense of the technology and the right paths to adoption for the enterprise.
Even Amazon will have to admit that the market is getting bigger around AWS, even as AWS itself continues to grow. It will get more complex as we have more leaders challenge AWS, or, more often, learn how to work with AWS.
We’ve seen similar patterns with new technology adoption in the past. All of this feels natural and predictable to me. It should feel the same to experienced IT hands, who can use their past experience managing technology changes to manage this one.