So acknowledging that – and given the different nature of other cloud events this week – the event may have been disappointing at first – but then it had considerable punch, too. Here are my top 3 takeaways:
- Breadth and Depth are the message – Through the keynote I kept picking up how Jassy keep pointing to the experience, track record and success of AWS – here are all the themes we picked up:
- AWS is turning 8 – definitively the older sibling to some of the toddlers [adding for clarification – Google] and newborns [Cisco] of this week.
- AWS is the market leader – The Gartner magic quadrant and customer logo slides transported that message.
- AWS is secure – Look at all our government security certificates (here is the latest from the US DoD).
- AWS ships product – WorkSpaces available to all customers.
- AWS keeps innovating – On track to beat the number of enhancements of 2013 already now. And AWS keeps bringing out new instance types for lower cost and better enabling next generation apps (HS1 and R3 instances).
- AWS is most comprehensive – The almost 5 minute build up walking through the AWS tech stack served that message. And smart to put people services – with training – on top of it all.
- AWS stays price competitive – AWS reduce prices the 42nd time – not a one-time move.
- AWS works well with your private cloud – More options to peer your private could with VPC.
- Enterprise is the battle, private cloud is the target – Needless to say that AWS showed good examples on the startup side using their products. Flipboard was certainly a great showcase for rapidly demanding massive scale and AWS enabling that.
But in my view the coupe was certainly to have Infor CEO Charles Philips on stage. Most of the audience was not familiar with Infor and for many attendees if was even a questionable choice (Infor who?) – but I am sure back on the web decision makers were listening up: When the 3rd largest ERP vendor pulls a NetFlix [to speak AWS crowd language] that is certainly remarkable. Basically Infor is running its next generation applications, CloudSuite on AWS. It’s already using Redshift for analytics. But now critical enterprise resource data and processes will run on AWS. A huge departure from test, development and trial systems we have seen before. The SaaS by accident phenomena is now becoming real for enterprise processes running on AWS. But it makes sense as Philips pointed out – by average enterprise software systems are only utilized around 20%, perfect showcase for the cloud.
- The other key message for the CIOs out there, was that AWS is getting more and more friendly to co-exist with the private and hybrid cloud. With many AWS competitors playing both on the private and public side it is clear that AWS does not want to give up that space all too easily and it was good to see how the private cloud segment gained in length from re:Invent. Of course price reductions are a favorable argument, too – not sure how many CIOs had to revisit their cost assumptions for their private cloud operations and plans. But I don’t think it was a few. When cost can no longer be a justification for private cloud, it will be for sure security concerns that will be raised – but AWS did a good job addressing these better, too.
- Price matters – Of course AWS lowered prices, it’s 42nd price reduction. And they are and were pretty substantial. But by now they are expected. Back at re:Invent an excited attendee crowd burst into applause – not so much today in San Francisco. How substantial they are and if AWS can keep its cost leadership position is unclear right now, we will see the analysis of that in the next days. But it was good enough to let existing AWS clients stay where they are and it certainly ensures AWS is a very attractive platform to build and run software on.
MyPOV
The cloud wars are only to start and AWS as the market leader is playing a smart game. Ignore what the competition has done the same week – hold the course. Do what you have been doing – innovate (AppStream, WorkSpaces and Kinesis were mentioned), deliver to the public (WorkSpaces is available to all customers) and reduce prices. Just stress a little more how established and what a safe choice AWS is – something Jassy and AWS certainly have pulled off today. An 8 year track record certainly helps. And signing up Infor is a huge confidence point for enterprise IT – and the backdoor to get in the enterprise.And even as Jassy did not mention any competition – a good move in my view – I am pretty sure that the retailer DNA of Amazon has a keen eye on what the competition does.
For customers this is all great news. Compute resources have never been so cheap and they can expect for them to get cheaper. The revolution is now happening around long term procurement of these resources. Decision makers should take a hard look at compute procurement, as consumption based models have gotten dramatically more attractive in just… the last 24 hours. It will be hard for the vendors that sell compute resources on premises to react quickly on this. Too much margin is at play, if you are purchasing compute resource now – question that margin not once, but at least twice.
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Because of actual events - check out my take on Google Cloud Platform live here.
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