Bezos doesn't want AWS customers to feel 'trapped'

Dive Brief:

Though cloud computing can often lead to a vendor "lock-in," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Amazon Web Services works hard to prevent customers from feeling "trapped" in its services, speaking at the annual shareholder meeting last week, reports GeekWire.
However, Bezos pointed out that adopting another cloud provider after already implementing one because of the time and money invested in the process can be costly. Developers taking time to learn application programming interfaces (APIs) is what directs many businesses to maintain a singular cloud vendor instead of "managing two different systems," Bezos said.
But AWS was a founding name in cloud vendors, leading many companies that adopted the cloud early on to rely heavily on AWS's ecosystem. However, other vendors are gaining traction by offering more adaptable services than AWS. Portable containers brought Amazon to AWS Fargate, which enables running containers "without having to manage servers or clusters," according to the company.

Dive Insight:

Amazon is reigning champ of Gartner's Service Magic Quadrant, but customers don't only exist on the AWS cloud.

Experts say AWS has the best partner ecosystem and is often regarded as the "safe choice" when debating which provider is the best fit. However, its shortcomings are actually in the partner ecosystem. With so much choice, Gartner raises the question, could quality become a second thought.

Additionally, AWS requires companies to have in-house experts to manage its portfolio. But, having talent reserved for the cloud is a necessity for 21st century IT.

And yet, companies are already reliant on more than one cloud provider. More than 80% of organizations use a multi-cloud strategy. The average use is a mix of 4.8 private and public clouds that enable experimentation.

Though it is possible for AWS to undergo "growth erosion" as companies like Microsoft and Google continue to mature, the company has made moves to set itself apart from competitors.

CEO of AWS Andy Jassy said last year that the company gives up "hundreds of million of dollars" in favor of maintaining relations with customers through its "trust advisor" program. AWS contacts customers who are under-using the platform to stop unnecessary spending on services they aren't using to full potential.