Let's all just roll over and buy AWS! NOT!

I read a question/answer on Quora and it basically said, AWS is the only "real" choice in cloud solutions with a small sprinkle of MSFT and Google. Unfortunately this is a common opinion and also a very myopic one. Below I explain why:

• In many ways the market has just started with many newcomers and, more importantly, many powerful incumbents are gearing up to compete.
• How you compare should be based on the requirements not the convenience. Meaning, in the end I need compute, storage, data center and network solutions to run my application. I don’t “need” docker or Lambda. They just help to make it easier for certain use cases.
• Requirements go beyond the cool features: What really counts is Availability, Performance, Security, Change and Economics. Assuming “pricing doesn’t matter because it's a race to the bottom” is wrong. It's always about value which is a function of feature and price.
• Although AWS might have a large percentage of the cloud market, a lot (like 95%) of the compute and storage still reside in closets, co-locations, and data centers.

The first and last bullet point from above is where the competition is heating up because most of the “old stuff” is in management of companies like AT&T, CenturyLink, Oracle, Viawest etc etc. They will not sit by idle. They may be slow to respond but they have stamina and more importantly, they have the customer. We see a lot of movement in this space.

The other area of competition is in the cloud itself. We believe more and more specialized solution providers will emerge and AWS, who already has 28000 distinct different products in their S3 and EC2 product set, will see itself being slowed down due to its own size. Smaller more nimble solutions will start challenging the incumbent cloud providers with new technologies and business models.

If you don’t believe its happening: We at Burstorm today have 1187 product sets in our application, and added a 110 new ones in the last 12 months.

Therefore even if this comparison might be true today, it will be different a few months from now. This is exactly why we build the Burstorm application: to compare all these divergent solutions without bias, based on your specific requirements and in the context of Availability, Security, Performance, Change and Economics.

Sure AWS, MSFT and Google are leading the charge today, but don’t just blindly flock to the “Big 3” because based on other people’s needs they seem the only options today. I suggest you do your homework based on real data at Burstorm. Only then make your decision.