Want to beat Amazon in the cloud? Here are 5 tips (hint: none are cost)
March 17, 2014
Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Editorial Staff.
It’s been a little over seven years since AWS launched S3 and EC2. Back then it was exciting to spin up servers in just a few minutes without signing long-term contracts. But fast-forward to 2014: there are dozens of IaaS providers offering similar capabilities. The selling points — like self-service, zero CAPEX and elasticity — that once made the cloud look exciting are not as appealing anymore, and they are no longer the differentiating factors.
In the current context, selling cloud for its self-service capabilities is similar to Microsoft trying to sell the latest version of Windows only for its graphical interface. Both have become commodities with the customers taking those features for granted. So, how do new IaaS providers entering the market compete better with AWS, which is an undisputed market leader? Here are 5 tips to beat AWS on its own turf…
1. Keep it simple, stupid. AWS has become too complex to deal with. Not just for newbies but even for its existing customers. Customers have to choose from 36 services, 20 instance types, 6 instance families, 2 generations of instances, 3 types of billing models and 2 types of block storage options! Accurately predicting the first month bill is no less challenging. You have to guess the number of IO operations, intra-region data transfer, inter-region data transfer, and the data that will pass through the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) before you barely arrive at the monthly outflow. The AWS simple monthly calculator is not exactly simple. If you want to compete with AWS, make your offerings truly simple. Don’t overwhelm customers with too many choices. Make it easy to launch their first server and make it much easier to predict the cost. better with AWS, which is an undisputed market leader? Here are 5 tips to beat AWS on its own turf…
Read more from the source @ http://gigaom.com/2014/03/16/want-to-beat-amazon-in-the-cloud-here-are-5-tips-hint-none-are-cost/
Subscribe to the CloudCow bi-monthly newsletter @ http://eepurl.com/smZeb