Yesterday blogs and Twitter were full of opinions about the AWS-Eucalyptus partnership. I even made joke on this discussion when fellow CloudAve blogger Christian Reilly asked for a quick take.
@reillyusa First step to acquisition. Send me my $10
— Krish (@krishnan) March 22, 2012
The punditry was at the peak yesterday about the topic and since CloudAve is a blog focussed on Cloud Computing, I thought I need to show my punditry skulls, oops, skills too. Punditry is all about four (wo)men finding their way out of a dark forest with their dark sunglasses on (I don’t do a comparison to blind men and elephant because I find it as an insult to blind people). With this definition of punditry in place, let me hallucinate a bit on AWS vis a vis Eucalyptus.
In short, the press release is just a press release by two companies wanting to get more visibility in the enterprise space. But let me argue that this is not surprising because even though Amazon has its cloud vision right in the long term, it needs to act now in the hybrid cloud space because inaction is a recipe to failure. If you noticed their history on Amazon VPC, they are as much a realist while also being a visionary in the space. They understand that selling to enterprises is much different ball game than selling to customers where they can easily get around by undercutting the prices. Their moves on VPC (and eventual fallout on some of their ecosystem partners like CloudSwitch) are clearest indication that they will do whatever it takes to become a credible player in the enterprise segment. They understand that OpenStack is a potential threat for them both on the enterprise space and service provider space (federated cloud ecosystems) and they need to do something to engage the enterprise customers reluctant about going to AWS type of public cloud services right now. From the AWS POV, the press release will help Amazon sales teams engage enterprises by speaking hybrid language.
The press release doesn’t mean much except an assurance to the enterprise customers that they are sincere about API compatibility with Eucalyptus. But what is interesting for me is that what will be the impact on Eucalyptus if Amazon does a VPC kind of move at a later stage. Amazon is known to build their way into the business of ecosystem players. If Amazon takes that approach to hybrid clouds, Eucalyptus will be in deeper trouble. The only way this story can end well for Eucalyptus is by Amazon buying them in the coming months/years. Even though the above tweet was done for fun, I feel that Amazon buying Eucalyptus will be good for both companies in the long run. It will add some legitimacy to AWS while talking to the enterprises and Marten could continue building his “magic powers” 
. #endofmyfridayhallucination
PS: Some folks seems to be wondering why Amazon is not looking at Nimbula. Why would they? Nimbula is for greenfield applications and Amazon is focussed on getting the business of enterprises who don’t want to let go of their legacy applications. #justsayin
Related articles
- Amazon, Eucalyptus team up for just don’t call it a hybrid cloud (gigaom.com)
- Amazon Taps Eucalyptus as Private Cloud Partner (readwriteweb.com)
- Amazon moves freak out partners and rivals alike (gigaom.com)
- Amazon, Eucalyptus team on cloud compatibility (go.theregister.com)
- AWS deal bolsters Eucalyptus’ enterprise appeal (infoworld.com)
- Amazon Web Services reaches out to on-premise IT with Eucalyptus (zdnet.com)
Krish – I reckon there’s an important point here that you’ve left out. Regardless of what the press release meant on day one (and yes, I had some banter with Christian as well – but the reality is that nothing was ever going to change from a technology perspective on day one) the fact is that with this announcement AWS, to some extent at least, anointed Eucalyptus at least for the time being as the hybrid partner of choice.
It means EUca gets some medium term gains in terms of credibility and that AWS gets to tell a hybrid story. Of course as you suggest it also means that either EUca gets acquired (less likely) or AWS nicely and incrementally introduces all the EUca functionality within the AWS platform (more likely)
Interesting indeed….
If anything, AWS gets more credibility due to Euca than otherwise on the enterprise segment. I don’t see it as any anointment because whatever they did with VPC can happen here too. It is all temporary strategy in the big picture. The only way AWS can anoint Euca is by buying them. Nah, Marten hasn’t paid me to say this
We’ll wait and see – I’m not seeing an acquisition right now but anyway…
I am not seeing an acquisition either. I am just saying what AWS will and can do and its impact on Eucalyptus because they had bet heavily on AWS API.
i feel bad for dell that their really cool news about openstack got totally upstaged by this non event.