How Amazon Is Going After Microsoft's Cloud Computing Ambitions (bloomberg.com) 11
Amazon is the driving force behind a trio of advocacy groups working to thwart Microsoft's growing ambition to become a major cloud computing contractor for governments, a Bloomberg analysis shows. From the report: The groups -- the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), the Coalition for Fair Software Licensing and the Alliance for Digital Innovation -- want to convince policymakers that Microsoft has improperly locked customers into Azure, its cloud computing service, choking off its rivals and hindering the advancement of technology within the government and beyond. These groups have dozens of members. But Amazon is the biggest funder for two of them and the largest company, measured by revenue, that funds another.
Spokespeople for the groups say no single company determines their agendas. But according to a Bloomberg News review of tax filings, documents and interviews with people familiar with the three groups' operations, Amazon Web Services plays a direct role in shaping their efforts in ways that would boost the cloud giant. Through aggressive lobbying of policymakers, these groups want to ensure that customers can use popular Microsoft products like Office Suite or Windows on any cloud computing system -- and, in particular, on Amazon Web Services, the world's number one cloud infrastructure provider and the retail giant's top profit driver.
To hammer that message, they've filed complaints, lobbied regulators and sought to shape the views of policymakers probing the cloud market. In one case, an Amazon executive is listed as the author of a public comment to the Federal Trade Commission, as well as testimony and letters to Congress on behalf of the group, according to an analysis of the documents' metadata, revealing the tech giant's role in the lobbying campaign. (The group says the documents reflect the consensus position of its members.) Amazon denied it authored statements for the group.
Spokespeople for the groups say no single company determines their agendas. But according to a Bloomberg News review of tax filings, documents and interviews with people familiar with the three groups' operations, Amazon Web Services plays a direct role in shaping their efforts in ways that would boost the cloud giant. Through aggressive lobbying of policymakers, these groups want to ensure that customers can use popular Microsoft products like Office Suite or Windows on any cloud computing system -- and, in particular, on Amazon Web Services, the world's number one cloud infrastructure provider and the retail giant's top profit driver.
To hammer that message, they've filed complaints, lobbied regulators and sought to shape the views of policymakers probing the cloud market. In one case, an Amazon executive is listed as the author of a public comment to the Federal Trade Commission, as well as testimony and letters to Congress on behalf of the group, according to an analysis of the documents' metadata, revealing the tech giant's role in the lobbying campaign. (The group says the documents reflect the consensus position of its members.) Amazon denied it authored statements for the group.
Cloud Wars Episode II (Score:2)
Re:Cloud Wars Episode II (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft is doing a lot more in this space than updating Windows. Microsoft has GCC [microsoft.com] and GCC High [microsoft.com] environments, essentially, segmented cloud instances for Government agencies and defense contractors. I've worked in these environments. A lot of it is regulatory box checking but there is a better security posture (including delayed feature updates; GCC runs behind the rest of Microsoft's ecosystem on new features) and you tend to talk to more knowledgable folks at Microsoft and its subcontractors than you get in the regular ecosystem. I've worked with development teams at Microsoft when troubleshooting problems that arose in the GCC environment. Good fucking luck getting that far on a support ticket in the non-GCC ecosystem.
As far as I can tell, Amazon is just butt hurt that Microsoft got a head start on them in this space. As the administrator, I don't see much practical difference between Azure and AWS. I lean towards the former because I need other (e.g., Office) Microsoft products anyway, but I can and do work with both. Just different ways to skin the same cat.
Re: (Score:1)
including delayed feature updates; GCC runs behind the rest of Microsoft's ecosystem on new features)
What type of delay are we talking? Is it long enough for you to give you time to prepare work-arounds for the inevitable slew of bugs with each update? Or do they try to work those bugs out before spinning to GCC? This may come off as sarcastic, but I'm genuinely curious if it's a legitimate attempt to create a more stable environment, or just a chance to catch your breath between beatings.
Re: (Score:2)
Security updates still happen. It's feature updates they delay. You can opt out of the delay if you want (see here [microsoft.com] for the relevant options vis-a-vis Office) but the idea is to not risk the introduction of new bugs -- some of which may be security bugs -- for the sake of feature enhancements. Let the people and organizations with smaller targets on their back test out the new software.
Let's mandate free software (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Let's mandate free software (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you want to push people with such a horrible cloud experience?
OpenStack has been consistent garbage since it was released.
Re: (Score:2)
Same brag. & need a GUI standard (Score:2)
Haven't they been trying this for a decade already? How is this Eat Microsoft campaign different from their other 7?
One thing they can do to eat into MS is work with other big IT co's to form a state-ful GUI markup standard* so people can have desktop-like apps over HTTP without going thru the convoluted bloated buggy JS libraries over DOM. DOM wasn't meant to do GUI's and force fitting it has proven to be a bloated failure. (Yes, the art can be perfected, but the learning curve to tame JS gui's is unrealis
Azure allows hybrid and private clouds (Score:4, Insightful)
and is one of the only two clouds that allow it (the other being OpenStack). Amazon offers a faux-private cloud (so does Google cloud) called outpost that, while located at your premises, is completely and utterly managed by amazon.
Amazon has a plethora of propiertary services, but so does microsoft, so they are on equal footing on that front.
So, unless they complaint is about contractual terms and conditions, from a technical perspective, amazon locks customers into their clouds even more than microsoft does
Bribe customers, not politicians (Like Azure does) (Score:1)