Is AWS Delivering on Its 3-Layer Approach to AI?

I’ve periodically made reference in a bunch of places to Route 53 being my preferred database. But I’ve only really told the story in podcast and tweet thread form. I’ve never gone in depth as to how this terrible, terrible antipattern came to be in a blog post—which is far easier to cite. Today is […]

Cloud lock-in is pernicious. It’s dangerous. And it’s already here.

The past couple of months at AWS have been consumed with “OP1.” You would be forgiven for thinking this is some form of disease. But because Amazon is a beautiful bespoke place with a language all its own, this is what they call their annual planning cycle. Big Ideas are proposed from teams and, in […]

After watching enough of his talks to recite them by heart, The Duckbill Group says “happy birthday” to Amazon CTO Werner Vogels in our own special way.

Welcome to Build re:Invent Next! The lights go down. It’s time for your preferred cloud vendor’s annual keynote to start. An inspiring video plays to what was charitably deemed “corporate dance music” but in practice sounds like a sped-up Enya on quaaludes. Satya / Andy / a robot walks on stage to welcome us all […]

There’s something going on over at Oracle Cloud, and I think the industry is missing it entirely in favor of the easy “Oracle sucks” narrative. There’s a change afoot, and I have a sneaking suspicion of what it might be. True, Oracle Cloud is a popular target for derision and mockery—and who could blame anyone? […]

When we talk about vendor lock-in, one of the most common stories we see is one of databases. The database you pick to hold your data is something you’re going to be using for a good long while; migrations are painful, expensive, time-consuming, and—in some cases —barely possible. Amazon themselves ran on top of Oracle […]

This week’s analysis on multi-cloud being a bad idea is once again pushed back by breaking news. In this case, AWS is suing a former executive, Brian Hall, under his non-compete agreement. I’ve covered my thoughts on non-compete agreements in the past—it was the driver behind my decision to decline an AWS job offer several […]

As a Cloud Economist, I spend most of my time helping companies fix their horrifying AWS bills. But it’s something of an open secret that I periodically moonlight as an industry analyst. An analysis client recently asked me about the threat of AWS moving into their market as a strategic concern, and couldn’t understand at […]

People like to ask me the same question: How do you keep up with AWS service and feature releases? I get it almost as frequently as what the hell is wrong with you? It’s a fun question, and today I’d like to take a stab at answering it in a format that goes beyond “a […]

Amazon Kendra feels like a lost opportunity to onboard AWS customers of a different stripe.

Azure’s capacity issues cast a pall over public cloud that extends well beyond just Microsoft.