Alistair Croll is “interviewing” Werner Vogels in Fireside chat. Some of the conversation points:
AC: Where all are the enterprise use cases?
WV: Talks about enterprise IT challenges – thousands of enterprise application, cost, time to value. Then, potential cloud benefits: cost, agility. Says enterprises are doing small, or quiet, pilots right now. Will we hear more in the future? Yes, but it is early.
Now, talking about (well documented) Nasdaq example. Point is that team was able to innovate and experiment without any upfront capital expenditure. Storage delivered by Amazon. Compute delivered by customer desktops. Application is successful. But had it not been, investment lost would have been minimal.
AC: Cost of running Amazon server for entire year is higher than on-premise. [Reference to McKinsey report, I think]
WV: Need to look at total cost of ownership, including server/business resilience. Not just one server. It’s security, reliability, scale, time of acquisition, ability to end investment (scale down).
Another example, not enterprise, but certainly cyclical is Indy 500.
AC: Speak to Amazon’s Cloud Offerings in respect to Amazon retail business.
WV: In our heart, Amazon is technology company. Did the work for the retail business, and for other retail tenants (Target, Marks & Spencer, etc). [This story has been well documented, and I’ve blogged on it before as well].
Werner won’t give out $$$ savings now that developers no longer hoard compute resources (scale up & down), but does share that 70% of time that was previously spent on infrastructure work has been removed.
WV: Talking now about using “other’s technology”. Amazon does still use some traditional database technology. Important thing is to use these products in the same way everyone uses them. Use as intended. Innovate with your own stuff. [Architectural safety, don’t get trapped]
Also points out that not everyone has Amazon’s scaling requirements. It is feasible for some companies to run vendor software (applications and application infrastructure) as-is in the cloud.
AC: Google offers platform, we’ll protect you from yourself. Amazon gives customer what they want, the components for enterprises to build solutions.
WV: Choose is important for developers. Can make the best decision for the problem being solved. Amazon won’t offer a substrate (e.g. Google AppEngine). Don’t believe in locking. Can mix AWS stuff with others. "Anything is possible, including shooting yourself in the foot. That is the exciting part of IT”.
There are ecosystem built/supplied platform services. Wouldn’t be possible if Amazon built higher level abstraction.
AC: Asking about Amazon’s investment in ecosystem players, and also, risk to ecosystem players that Amazon might create new offering that competes with ecosystem player’s product. [The latter must refer to Amazon’s new Cloud Watch offering and Rightscale]
WV: IT guy, doesn’t know investment rationale. However, get new requirements from customers, developers, trolling and participating in forums etc.
[Now they are talking about system integrators and AWS, no news, bit of a commercial. Also, more Nick Carr references, Big Switch & IT Doesn’t Matter – portion of IT that is commodity]
WV: Cloud & SOA, not big fuzzy SOA, but constructs of SOA (service orientation), standard set of protocols, agreements to deliver service/value.
New set of challenges, beyond cost and agility. With cloud, enterprise can become service provider as well. Think telco or this conversation I had with SOA Consortium members. Enterprises adding services to cloud will lead to a whole new level of applications (and business innovation) that is possible. Sounds like a big opportunity to create new and/or more optimized business processes.
Audience Question: Business-driven technology is great, but how do you hedge? How can I be confident that this won’t flop?
WV: Business-driven technology is important. Solving real problems, not bottoms-up technology creation. Amazon has long-term commitment to deliver these services. Many companies relying on it today, and plan to in future.
Audience Question: is better Security a driver to move to cloud? [typically, folks cite security as reason to avoid cloud]
WV: Yes, many firms are moving to cloud computing for better security. Amazon grade security at physical (data center) level and network level. Mentions Amazon’s own requirement for credit card security. Also, speaks to having the ability to configure / assign which pieces of the solution (resources) can communicate with each other.
Audience Question: Roadblocks with regulatory compliance and cloud computing adoption?
WV: Sarbanes Oxley, process level compliance. Developer (consumer) needs to write controls for SOX compliance for their applications. HIPAA – strictest – how data flows through systems. There are companies on AWS who are HIPAA certified. Again, it’s about understanding the flow, and ensuring data storage, flow and access is in compliance. Examples are Healthcare Records, Healthcare Imaging, and more. Cites whitepaper available here (pdf).
Points out that while Amazon is PCI compliant for retail business, Amazon does not provide PCI compliance for AWS consumers. Responsibility (burden) is at application level, not IaaS.
AC: What does enterprise of future look like? One that has completely embraced cloud computing?
WV: Not the guy to answer this. Not a futurist (business and technology). Does state this is just the beginning. The future will evolve from customer needs / experiences. Intent is to solve real problems today.
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