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AWS Outposts brings hybrid cloud support -- but only for Amazon

AWS hybrid cloud support has arrived with the release of Outposts, but Amazon takes a different tack on multi-cloud and forbids co-branding partners from so much as using the term.

Chris Kanaracus
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Published: 03 Dec 2019

LAS VEGAS -- AWS controls nearly half of the public IaaS market today, and based on the company's rules against use of the term 'multi-cloud,' would be happy to have it all, even as rivals Microsoft and Google make incremental gains and more customers adopt multi-cloud strategies.

That's the key takeaway from the start of this year's massive re:Invent conference here this week, which was marked by the release of AWS Outposts for hybrid clouds and a lengthy keynote from AWS CEO Andy Jassy that began with a tongue-in-cheek invite to AWS' big tent in the cloud.

"You have to decide what you're going to bring," Jassy said of customers who want to move workloads into the public cloud. "It's a little bit like moving from a home," he added, as a projected slide comically depicted moving boxes affixed with logos for rival vendors such as Oracle and IBM sitting on a driveway.

"It turns out when companies are making this big transformation, what we see is that all bets are off," Jassy said. "They reconsider everything."

For several years now, AWS has used re:Invent as a showcase for large customers in highly regulated industries that have made substantial, if not complete, migrations to its platform. One such company is Goldman Sachs, which has worked with AWS on several projects, including Marcus, a digital banking service for consumers. A transaction banking service that helps companies manage their cash in a cloud-native stack on AWS is coming next year, said Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who appeared during Jassy's talk. Goldman is also moving its Marquee market intelligence platform into production on AWS.

Along with showcasing enthusiastic customers like Goldman Sachs, Jassy took a series of shots at the competition, some veiled and others overt.

"Every industry has lots of companies with mainframes, but everyone wants to move off of them," he claimed. The same goes for databases, he added. Customers are trying to move away from Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server due to factors such as expense and lock-in, he said. Jassy didn't mention that similar accusations have been lodged at AWS' native database services.

Jassy repeatedly took aim at Microsoft, which has the second most popular cloud platform after AWS, albeit with a significant lag. "People don't want to pay the tax anymore for Windows," he said.

But it isn't as if AWS would actually shun Microsoft technology, since it has long been a host for many Windows Server workloads. In fact, it wants as much as it can get. This week, AWS introduced a new bring-your-own-license program for Windows Server and SQL Server designed to make it easier for customers to run those licenses on AWS, versus Azure.

AWS pushes hybrid cloud, but rejects multi-cloud

One of the more prominent, although long-expected, updates this week is the general availability of AWS Outposts. These specialized server racks provided by AWS reside in customers' own data centers, in order to comply with regulations or meet low-latency needs. They are loaded with a range of AWS software, are fully managed by AWS and maintain continuous connections to local AWS regions.

The company is taking the AWS Outposts idea a bit further with the release of new AWS Local Zones. These will consist of Outpost machines placed in facilities very close to large cities, giving customers who don't want or have their own data centers, but still have low-latency requirements, another option. Local Zones, the first of which is in the Los Angeles area, provide this capability and tie back to AWS' larger regional zones, the company said.

Outposts, AWS Local Zones and the previously launched VMware Cloud on AWS constitute a hybrid cloud computing portfolio for AWS -- but you won't hear Jassy or other executives say the phrase multi-cloud, at least not in public.

In fact, partners who want to co-brand with AWS are forbidden from using that phrase and similar verbiage in marketing materials, according to an AWS co-branding document provided to SearchAWS.com.

"AWS does not allow or approve use of the terms 'multi-cloud,' 'cross cloud,' 'any cloud, 'every cloud,' or any other language that implies designing or supporting more than one cloud provider," the co-branding guidelines, released in August, state. "In this same vein, AWS will also not approve references to multiple cloud providers (by name, logo, or generically)."

An AWS spokesperson didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.

The statement may not be surprising in context of AWS's market lead, but does stand in contrast to recent approaches by Google, with the Anthos multi-cloud container management platform, and Microsoft's Azure Arc, which uses native Azure tools, but has multi-cloud management aspects.

AWS customers may certainly want multi-cloud capabilities, but can protect themselves by using portable products and technologies, such as Kubernetes at the lowest level with a tradeoff being the manual labor involved, said Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research in Cupertino, Calif.

"To be fair, Azure and Google are only at the beginning of [multi-cloud]," he said.

Meanwhile, many AWS customers have apparently grown quite comfortable moving their IT estates onto the platform. One example is Cox Automotive, known for its digital properties such as Autotrader.com and Kelley Blue Book.

In total, Cox has more than 200 software applications, many of which it accrued through a series of acquisitions, and the company expects to move it all onto AWS, said Chris Dillon, VP of architecture, during a re:Invent presentation.

Cox is using AWS Well-Architected Framework, a best practices tool for deployments on AWS, to manage the transition.

"When you start something new and do it quickly you always run the risk of not doing it well," said Gene Mahon, director of engineering operations. "We made a decision early on that everything would go through a Well-Architected review."

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