I’ve made the argument on numerous occasions that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is essentially the quintessential cloud computing offering, particular for infrastructure.  To boil down my argument again, it’s essentially:

  • Cloud computing is an entirely new model for IT

  • This model displaces ‘enterprise computing’ (or ‘client/server’) just as that model displaced ‘mainframe computing’

  • “Enterprise clouds” are therefor just ‘virtualization 2.0’ or ‘false clouds’ as some  would call them

  • AWS growth is largely driven by next generation applications that CANNOT be serviced by enterprise clouds: big data, mobile applications, SaaS, and others with very elastic and scale-hungry workloads

  • Next generation apps are designed for the AWS-style cloud (aka ‘web scale’) where typical enterprise concerns (e.g. “I need my VM to never fail”) are immaterial

For the sake of argument, let’s assume this is all correct.  Trust me, there are plenty of people who would argue I’m wrong, but let’s just say that the above argument is correct.

In this world, what more can AWS do to help web-scale applications succeed?  They already provide infinite, or near infinite, computing capacity, storage, and networking on-demand.  They also provide a bevy of higher order services from queuing to relational databases and PaaS.

AWS is very effectively removing the need for typical IT infrastructure staff by delivering developer centric offerings.

Assuming this continues, what more can they do to enable next generation web-scale applications and the developers who are building them?  I am extremely interested in your thoughts.

For further background, please see my answer to the Quora question: “In what ways is AWS better than most of it’s competitors.”