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Elastic Amazon Dominates Global Cloud

William Chin

Amazon Web Services has strengthened its firm grip on hybrid cloud. Driven by the evolution of Internet-of-Things, we could witness a hyper-optimized, hyper-scaled future without servers where information is fed into endpoints in the AWS cloud for processing.

Elastic is the new normal.

That was the tagline from James Hamilton, VP and Distinguished Engineer for Amazon Web Services.

But what exactly does elasticity mean?

  • Does it describe the ability to scale IT infrastructure up or down on-demand?
  • Does it describe the ease with which one can move virtual servers to a third-party data center/cloud in order to realize lower operational costs?
  • Does it describe the ability to consume various services that one might not otherwise consider building on their own because it would take too long or it would be too costly?

If any or all of these suggestions sound like your definition of elasticity, then you are not wrong.

While elasticity may mean different things to different people, what it is really giving customers is agility, a quicker way to accomplish their business goals without too much up-front investment.

In its fifth year, AWS Re:Invent 2016 looked like your typical IT tech conference on the surface; however, when you’re there live, it’s more like a tech revolution. And trust me, revolution is not too strong a word for it. That was the kind of buzz being generated throughout the show.

AWS Growth Continues

And the following numbers support such elation:

  • AWS reported a 55 percent increase in annual revenue, from a little over two billion dollars to $3.2 billion.
  • Every month, Amazon attracts thousands of customers and millions of active users, defined as any non-Amazon customer that has used the platform in the last 30 days. Their customers span all major verticals and include small startups, mid-size firms, and enterprise giants alike, such as Intuit, GE, Netflix, Nokia, John Deere, FINRA, NASA, and McDonald’s.
  • Nearly 32,000 people attended the most recent AWS conference, which included over 400 live technical sessions. EMC World and VMWorld (previously considered two of the largest tech conferences) both peaked at 20,000 and 25,000 attendees, respectively. An additional audience of 50,000 listened to the livestream broadcast.
  • Over 1,000 new AWS features, updates, and services were released in 2016, including 25 new services that were announced during the conference.

The fervor is justified. AWS is making significant strides in innovation on multiple fronts.

Hybrid Cloud Vision

For me, what stood out the most was their interpretation of hybrid cloud and what they’re doing to realize the vision. Others are accustomed to thinking about hybrid cloud from a traditional enterprise perspective. The global strategy that AWS has implemented is vastly different. They are taking a completely different road towards hybrid. Services like Green Grass include embedded AWS code capable of pushing their technology further, to the remote edges of the world.

Their strategic acquisition of Annapurna Labs last year empowers their own ability to manufacture custom silica running their code. In establishing their foothold in the hybrid world, Amazon is priming (no pun intended) themselves for strategic success. This is the evolution of Internet-of-Things, hyper-optimized and hyper-scaled. We may see a future where there are no more servers; and instead, only endpoints to which information will be fed for processing. And those endpoints will live in the cloud, powered by AWS.

But with all the fanfare and hype surrounding AWS, there will always be some who continue to make their observations at arm’s length with cautious optimism.

Is Amazon getting too big and are they reaching too deeply and permeating into every aspect of our professional and personal lives?

Is there an open-source revolt in their future?

It’s well-known that the AWS platform was built on top of open-source software and that Amazon has taken this work to new heights of innovation without returning much, if any, of it back to the open-source community. “Amazon behaves a lot like a classified military agency,” a January 2014 article in The Register disclosed after listening to former employees. “This secretiveness may give Amazon a competitive edge in the short term, but… there’s evidence that it could be damaging the company in the long term.”

The Final Word

To say that AWS has put significant investment into their services and infrastructure is an understatement.

AWS continues to build, own, and operate a 100 GB network that circles the globe. They have gone so far as to lay their own transatlantic and transpacific ocean cables. The result is one administrative domain and operational control allowing AWS to provide outstanding reliability and quality of service. AWS has set their sights wider and further than their competitors. They are building the next significant global infrastructure backbone to power the world.

William Chin

William Chin, Chief Cloud Architect, CDI

William Chin, VCP, VTSP, GenXer is a general all-around avid adopter of cool tech and CDI’s resident Cloud Panther. During his almost two decades with CDI, Will has spearheaded a number of initiatives that have contributed to the firm’s growth, including the creation of the data center virtualization practice and the development of business and technology initiatives such as IaaS, DRaaS, VDIaaS and BaaS. As a technology enthusiast and gatherer of practical tools, you can find Will tinkering with the latest software or out on the town enjoying conversation about how technology is reshaping the world. Will holds a B.A. in Computer Science from New York University and his personal mantra is: encourage fellow IT folk and companies to consume technologies that increase the quality of their daily work and lives.