Amazon and Its Fast Moving Cloud
January 3, 2011
Several years ago, I noted that Google’s technical papers described features and functions that were evident in Amazon’s actual services. At that moment, I realized the Google had lost its chance for a cloud utility play. Now the GOOG may come roaring back, but with the legal friction increasing, Amazon has some clean air through which to float its big, fast cumulus cloud. Sure, Rackspace is a competitor to Amazon, and every vendor is yammering about the cloud. But right now, the Amazon has a big PR push underway. Now, to be fair, the Amazon cloud generated a nasty storm with its hardware crash the other day. Not good.
That’s why the PR guns are firing. You can see two examples of “good news”. Navigate first to the “I love Amazon” sky writing from Netflix. “Why We Use and Contribute to Open Source Software” and “Netflix Touts Open Source, Ignores Linux.” Netflix, of course, is flying in the Amazon clouds. The other PR example is a bit of a downer for library types who expect books to be available. Point your browser thing at “Amazon Erases Certain Books on Kindle Due to Content.”
But despite the good and bad PR, Amazon managed to pull of an interesting and useful technical coup. “Announcing VM Import for Amazon EC2” said:
VM Import enables you to easily import virtual machine images from your existing environment to Amazon EC2 instances.
Useful for many applications. Crash recovery. I think so.
Net net: The others in the cloud race need to kick into a different gear. Google? A question, “Can you get that airplane aloft?” Storm clouds rushing in.
Stephen E Arnold, January 3, 2011
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