When Will AWS Move Up the Stack to Real Applications?

Everybody wants what they don't have.

I was at an AWS Summit in NYC a few years ago and got the vibe that AMZN wanted to attract an executive audience but that they got more of a technical audience. I think for the kind of companies that are in NYC, technical people are the real champions of AWS and they are in a position to decide to use new AWS services.

Business-oriented talks were easy to get into, I avoided the "big data" kinds of technical talks because the line would be too long.

The audience really didn't care when they announced Zocalo; the audience was people looking for new services like the ones AWS already offers, not for new applications or new versions of old applications.

Salesforce.com really owned the CRM system (application) and then got users to write applications for their platform, then later got into IAAS. Amazon.com has tried to go the other direction, but so far they haven't offered anything all that special.

I have wondered this too. Oracle sells their database, but they also sell ERP/CRM/other TLA applications built on top of it. Amazon could do the same thing. And I think every batch of new AWS announcements they creep a little further up and up. Their IoT platform seems like an almost-there example. It is targeting just one vertical (sort of---it depends on how big IoT becomes I guess), and it ties together other lower-level offerings. When I look at their IoT product I think "I can combine those services myself." But of course that is what programmers always think. :-)

Because that's where 10x growth might be. For every company that uses directly uses AWS, there are countless companies that don't get or need AWS directly but really need a CMS, CRM, VOIP, groupware, Helpdesk, Callcenter, etc. If anyone can build on top of Amazon's platform, it's Amazon.

Sure, just as it was for the 49ers. Your keyword there is "might". But there's a huge failure rate. It's the same statistics that VCs face. Amazon is in a place to sell premium products to nearly 100% of the market, at really low risk.

i don't think i agree. i think they're moving up the chain to plug weaknesses in their model.

1. good customers - infrastructure customers are not good customers. they are fickle and extremely price sensitive, which is tough to do on a super capital intensive business like hosting, even on amazon cloud's insanely high cost.

2. less complex products - i don't understand how there is there anything about amazon's cloud that says "less complex" to you. have you ever used it? it is automating thousands upon thousands of things you have to do by hand, and it breaks sometimes.

3. scale - every single application anyone has had success with is a sitting duck.

i think amazon is the real new microsoft, with all of the anti-trust implications that insinuates. google only delivers information, amazon delivers nearly everything in the physical world (including hosting, the ultimate "physical good" that nobody thinks is.).

good thing jeff bezos owns the washington post.