Two REALLY important things happened this past week:
1. Microsoft unveiled its utility computing platform (Ray Ozzie's plans for it, at least) and it looks a lot like Amazon Web Services. Both offer not just hardware-as-a-service, but (as Simon Wardley puts it) frameworks-as-a-service.
Ozzie says Microsoft will provide "a fabric upon which online services run. Application frameworks that support a variety of app models designed for horizontal scaling. Infrastructure that manages performance optimization." And Alex Iskold calls S3, EC2 and SQS the foundation of Amazon's Web OS, which "hides complexity behind simple APIs; turns the concepts of search, storage, lookup and management of data into web services."
Bill Boebel made me realize why FaaS > HaaS. He said he's always looking to get more done faster (who isn't??). Last year he built a backup system atop S3: "We coded the storage client, not the storage server. Initially we had planned on building both. But when S3 came out our thoughts quickly shifted to 'Screw that, lets just build the client and get this thing released'." In this case he was able to leverage Amazon's Web OS. In other cases he's hired people to build stuff from scratch - but how often would he (or anyone else) choose to if it weren't necessary?
Amazon gets it. Microsoft too. I'm not sure infrastructure vendors who sell HaaS without FaaS will be able to compete. As for those who offer standalone servers (with non-interoperable storage media and device drivers!!) as units of computing capacity? All I can say is, yikes.
2. Amazon announced the ability for EC2 users to buy/sell machine images from one another. Amazon's base price is $0.10 per instance/hour. If you listed a $0.12/hour virtual appliance on Amazon's marketplace, its billing system will automatically give you a $0.02/hour credit any time the appliance is deployed.
The interesting thing about this "reseller 2.0" arrangement is, virtual appliance publishers will help EC2 reach a broader audience without reducing Amazon's profit margin. Or promising end users any more bandwidth/storage capacity than are actually available. Or hiding behind traditional reseller hosting smoke and mirrors. Instead, each will add real AND unique value to the customer experience. As Rurik Bradbury from Intermedia.NET puts it, being a traditional hosting reseller is like having fish, but the new era we're entering will require fishing skills.
The world is changing - and it's about time! Last week Takeshi Eto (now of DiscountASP.NET) and I were reminiscing about his HostSave days. Back in 1999, HostSave's $6.95 web hosting plan included 1GB of data transfer. Today, many sub-$10 hosting plans advertise 3000x more bandwidth - which EVERY provider acknowledges they can't really deliver! In the brave new Internet infrastructure world, it'll take more than empty promises to be the King of the Wild Things. And unlike Maurice Sendak's Max, we won't find supper waiting back where we came from.
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