{"id":660128,"date":"2013-05-24T15:19:51","date_gmt":"2013-05-24T19:19:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=649145"},"modified":"2013-05-24T15:19:51","modified_gmt":"2013-05-24T19:19:51","slug":"how-amazons-cloud-competitors-are-trying-to-find-cracks-in-awss-armor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/660128","title":{"rendered":"How Amazon\u2019s cloud competitors are trying to find cracks in AWS\u2019s armor"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not exactly shocking that Amazon cloud competitors are polishing up their PR talking points about the benefits of hybrid cloud. And turning up the volume on their pitches.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why: As Amazon Web Services keeps churning out services, support offerings and certifications to appeal to corporate and government users (the latest being FedRAMP accreditation<\/a>), other cloud vendors need to show that they offer value above and beyond AWS. Hybrid cloud, which pairs local processing power with outside cloud resources as needed, is one area that they see as a weakness for Amazon.<\/p>\n

AWS versus everyone else<\/h2>\n

While none of these rivals refer to themselves as AWS killers <\/a> (smart move), they all see Amazon as the #1 cloud player and the top threat to their own cloud ambitions. When pressed, VMwarez senior vice president Matthew Lodge acknowledged that \u201ceveryone is competing for the same IaaS dollars.\u201d Everyone meaning Amazon and the rest of the cloud contenders.<\/p>\n

VMware, which saw, um, limited uptake of the vCloud Director<\/a>\u00a0that it pushed service providers to use as the basis for their own clouds,\u00a0said its new\u00a0vCloud Hybrid Cloud Services<\/a>\u00a0will compete with AWS on price, at least in some cases, but offer other enterprise-worthy goodies.<\/p>\n

Said Lodge: when you factor in \u201chidden costs\u201d in Amazon\u2019s dedicated instances, the playing field levels out. \u201cThey charge for I\/O and we don\u2019t. They charge for VPN endpoints, load balancers and firewalls and we don\u2019t,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Rackspace president Lew Moorman has a similar message. \u201cNow that public cloud is 3 to 4 years old in reality, applications are bigger and more complex and people are starting to see tradeoffs to using public cloud only,\u201d Moorman told me Thursday.<\/p>\n

\"Structure<\/a><\/p>\n

Structure 2012: Lew Moorman \u2013 IT Cloud Lead, Intel Corporation<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWhen public cloud came out and you could suddenly provision a server in a minute when it used to take 3 months, those were intoxicating advances \u2026 you get drunk on them but when things settle in there are tradeoffs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For examle, what\u2019s great for test-and-dev environments is not always optimal for production workloads, where public cloud costs quickly add up.<\/p>\n

Once someone hits the $25,000-a-month milestone, \u201cit\u2019s time to rethink all-public-cloud deployment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Joyent trumpeted a similar message <\/a>this week when it announced a raft of new compute instances it says will be \u00a0competitive with AWS. \u00a0Joyent<\/a>, like Rackspace, offers public, private and hybrid cloud options.<\/p>\n

Corporate cloud purchases are about more than price and technology<\/h2>\n

Having said all that, almost every cloud vendor alive will also add that\u00a0price isn\u2019t the compelling reason to move to cloud.<\/a>\u00a0Face it: when it comes to IT-sanctioned technology purchases, it\u2019s not just about the price or the technology. IT departments have established procedures and guidelines for deployment and cloud providers will have to accommodate them.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost public clouds \u2014 AWS etc. \u2014 don\u2019t\u00a0offer enterprise-class security, compliance or performance SLAs to users,\u201d said Rodney Rogers, CEO of Virtustream<\/a>, which positions itself as an enterprise cloud provider.\u00a0\u201dSome public clouds offer supplemental services that dedicate equipment to enterprises\/government, but\u00a0they\u00a0are generally not multi-tenant \u00a0and so deliver less efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

That means they remain suited for test and dev, for backup, SaaS apps and apps with no performance criteria, Rogers said via email.<\/p>\n

Is Amazon\u2019s head start insurmountable?<\/h2>\n

Granted all of this is self serving talk, but having sat through a raft of CIO panels<\/a> this week, it is clear to me that some of these points ring true with this constituency. \u00a0But, if we\u2019ve learned anything from the past 6 years of its existence, AWS won\u2019t stand still. It now offers\u00a0several services<\/a> of its own and through an alliance with Eucalyptus<\/a> that break down some barriers between a customer data center and its cloud. But until you can run AWS instances on your own infrastructure, AWS will remain a public cloud provider in a world where more workloads could flow to a hybrid model.<\/p>\n

\"Structure<\/a><\/p>\n

Structure 2010: Werner Vogels \u2013 CTO and Vice President, Amazon<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

AWS has a huge head start and lots of customers. But we\u2019re early in the cloud era. IDC says less than 5 percent of the world\u2019s total IT budget is now devoted to public or private cloud. That leaves a lot of upside for Amazon and its competitors.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s time for Amazon to offer more hybrid options and for rivals to catch up. It\u2019ll nothing if not an interesting market over the next few years.<\/p>\n

Who wants to bet that this topic of hybrid vs. public cloud deployment will come up at Structure 2013<\/a> next month where both Moorman and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels will take the stage?<\/p>\n

Pretty safe money, I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:<\/strong>
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial<\/a>.<\/p>\n