Amazon Chief Technology Officer talks about the Cloud Computing Ecosystem
At the Cloud Connect conference currently on in Santa Clara, California, Amazon Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Werner Vogels spoke about what he called the “cloud computing ecosystem.” 
By “ecosystem”, Vogels was referring to the gamut of services built upon the base of Amazon’s cloud-based platform EC2 that actually enhanced the cloud computing experience. These included those developed by Aspera, BitNami, Riverbed, Safenet, Acquira, etc.
Although these are not household names, they are instrumental in making cloud computing more acceptable to organizations worldwide, thereby creating an environment where the technology can thrive and grow. “The ecosystem is what defines the cloud, rather than the infrastructure services underneath them…..it is more important than the services themselves…it’s all about the ecosystem,” Vogels said.
He advocated a shift from the traditional cloud computing model of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS (Cloud Computing For Dummies: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS And All That Was) to everything-as-a-cloud-service ecosystem that draws from various contributors.
“We divide the world up into infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service…We actually start to think the real world is like this, but it’s just a model. All of this really restricts the way we think about it,” Vogels argued.
Having started his talk with a quote by Alfred Korzybski, the early 20th century Polish scientist who said, “The map is not the territory,” Vogels spent the rest of his time convincing the audience of the dynamic nature of cloud computing and how the boundaries were being shifted every day.
Vogels also spoke about how the technology is blurring distinction between enterprises and startups. While larger enterprises can function more efficiently, smaller startups do not face technological entry barriers as before. I had spoken about something similar in an earlier article. (Fighting Above Your Weight Class Through Cloud Computing)
Vogels described the ideal cloud computing ecosystem as one that requires little or no capital investment, reduce expenses, is scalable without limits and is maintained by service providers without need for customer intervention. He signed off with a note of optimism for the future -“It’s still day one in the cloud. There’s still a lot of innovation to come. Amazon will work hard to make sure the ecosystem continues to grow.”
By Sourya Biswas
