When Amazon.com launched Amazon Web Services a decade ago no one could have imagined that the business, viewed largely as a sideshow geared to serve the ecommerce company’s e-tailing interests, would become a significant player in corporate computing. But as CIO.com noted last week, AWS’ public cloud software, now a $13 billion business, has become a serious contender in the enterprise.
Capital One, Matson and Conde Nast among others are entrusting their computing needs to AWS. Matson has closed four data centers while Capital One is reducing its data center footprint from eight to three. “For us it came down to the recognition that we have limited bandwidth in our organization and we want to put our energy, engineering and innovation resources and leadership bandwidth into doing the things that will make a difference for us strategically in the marketplace,” Capital One CIO Rob Alexander tells CIO.com.
The monumental shift from purchasing hardware and software, including servers, storage arrays, routers and virtualization and other server management applications, has disrupted vendors who have made billions selling IT solutions. That’s a big reason why 451 Research analyst Carl Brooks says AWS threatens every sector.
“They are essentially reinventing the way IT is being done,” Brooks says. “AWS is the largest cloud service provider by an order of magnitutde but it’s one of hundreds that offer congruent servives and they’re all having a great time.” CIO.com chronicles how AWS had disrupted companies and sectors.