[talk] AWS Marketplace

[Pete Wright]

On 1/25/25 10:27, James E Keenan wrote:
> Way back in the Before Times, we had a NYCBUG presentation by Ike Levy 
> with the title "Infrastructure in a Post-Cloud Era" (https:// 
> www.nycbug.org/index?action=view&id=10648).  The high concept for that 
> talk could be described as, "Go Cloud or Colo?"  The larger subject 
> matter could have been described as "the Business of High Tech."
> 
> I thought of that talk today when reading a post on Matt Stoller's 
> Substack blog called Big (https://www.thebignewsletter.com/), which 
> "focuses on the politics of market power and antitrust." The specific 
> post I was reading (https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/did-a-private- 
> equity-fire-truck-roll) is actually a guest post, but down near the 
> bottom (search for "P.S. I got a lot of good feedback") Stoller reports 
> on an email he got from a reader who describes the evolution of cloud 
> computing into a financial platform, taking as prime example the case of 
> AWS Marketplace as a place where software licenses can be bought and sold.
> 
> Being out of employment for years now, this was the first I had heard of 
> AWS Marketplace or its peers run by Microsoft and Google.  It would be 
> interesting to hear from readers of this list how the growth of these 
> platforms has changed working in Tech in the past decade.

It's been pretty interesting to watch first hand the evolution of AWS 
going from Amazon realizing they could monetize their excess capacity, 
to the finance company that happens to also lease computer time today.

I personally think the biggest impact AWS has had on tech is the change 
of mindset where many companies now look at their tech stack as an OpEx 
rather than a CapEx investment.  Its changed how products are developed 
at many places, and has allowed people to blow through investor money 
without any serious thought to design and architecture of systems.  I 
think there is probably some good and bad with this change like all things.

Also, for anyone who works in a large'ish AWS shop I'm sure you are 
familiar with their Enterprise Discount Program, this is what you 
describe about the Marketplace James but on steroids - basically they 
push you to move as much of your vendor contracts to AWS Marketplace as 
possible.  Basically for a discounted AWS bill, where you commit to 
certain AWS spend for the year, they get to insert themselves as your 
channel partner for all your SaaS vendors since Marketplace spend counts 
towards your quota.  When I did this AWS added no value other than 
having a consolidated bill - it's pretty smart from their perspective. 
The kicker though is EDP discount rates are a joke considering the 
commits they want.

-pete

-- 
Pete Wright
pete at nomadlogic.org