In the evolution of the Amazon Cloud, Wednesday’s news of a trial service designed specifically for the core applications of large companies seems to mark a watershed.
So far, the Amazon pitch has mainly been directed at smaller companies, or at bigger ones looking for somewhere to host high-volume Web services. It is now trying to take things one step further.
This is a service targeted directly at IT managers in big companies. The pitch: if you are running out of capacity for some of your internal applications, ease the pressure by renting space in Amazon’s datacentres. Using a VPN link, companies will eventually be able to connect directly to all the various components of Amazon Web Services (starting with the EC2 compute service) to handle their overflow, applying all their existing security and other management policies.
Others have tried to attack this market in their own way, from IBM to Rackspace. But as Technology Business Research analayst Ezra Gottheil points out, Amazon brings the perspective of an online retailer to bear on the problem: that means a mass-market, self-service, flat-fee approach that is easy for new customers to trial and has the potential to scale fast.
When it comes to mission-critical applications, however, the IT manager is a cautious beast, and for good reason. The biggest nut Amazon will have to crack concerns guarantees over service levels. Offering a one-size-fits-all service may make life simpler, but it may not appeal to IT managers who have their own very specific requirements when it comes to service availability.
Eventually, says Mr Gottheil, Amazon is likely to offer higher guaranteed service levels at premium rates. For now, the Virtual Private Cloud is a clear sign of its intention to play in the mainstream enterprise technology markets.
