DISQUS

pretherford · 1 year ago

James, I like your history of the iterative build out of AWS. Agree they are the gold standard now for IAAS.

re: "and using "special" Linux images (the core Amazon Machine Images) that don't provide root access, etc."

They do provide root access to the virtual instance.

re: "messaging as a barrier" mTurk was in existence very early, and based on workflow principals, so I tend to link it to SQS, although I have no information to support this theory.

Amazon might be pre-announcing some of the new features to keep the attention of certain segments of the cloud ecosystem, but I'm not sure they're looking over their shoulders at the competition.

My _guess_ is they are simply "packaging" (i.e providing production-ready APIs for) services that largely exist but are crucial for developing distributed applications. And they're rolling them out in a logical order based on customer feedback. It will be interesting to see if they add any UI influenced features to the the APIs. e.g. JSON output for monitoring calls.

Keep up the good work!
-Paul

jamesurquhart · 1 year ago

Paul,

Thanks for the kind words and great insight. I'll correct the root access reference.

Re: the "packaging" of services, I tend to thing "interactive AWS management console" (from Jeff's post) is a GUI. Would you agree? Does that not hint at the types of APIs you suggest?

James

pretherford · 1 year ago

James, you're right, the management console bullet mentions "a
point-and-click web interface". I missed that. On one level, I am a little
concerned that Amazon is crossing a line that might shrink the opportunity
for other providers in the AWS ecosystem.
Looking forward to your "Wall Mart" post! -Paul

Wes Felter · 1 year ago

Of course, competitors can read the complaints in the EC2 forums to help prioritize their development. Or just do a diff between the EC2 feature list and the VI3.5 feature list. :-)