I came across a tweet over the weekend which showed a screen grab of the AWS product catalog (shown below) and a comment pointing out the fact that the sheer number of AWS services on offer by Amazon was part of the reason why they are doing so well.

The implication was that AWSs dominance was in part due to the fact they have what appears to be the complete product service catalog of Cloud and it provides a “simple”one stop shop

I’ve held a view for a while now that in order to go head to head against AWS Cloud Service Providers don’t need to go out of produce 1000+ cloud services…rather they should focus on keeping things figuratively simple by focusing on core strengths and doing what they do really well…really well.

Maybe I lack the impartiality to comment on this, but when I look at the AWS services page I get overwhelmed…and while from a technical point of view I can work through the configuration steps and multiple addon services…For small businesses looking to take their first steps into a hybrid cloud world AWS is not the panacea proclaimed by some. Even for small to large enterprises the simple fact AWS carries so much apparent choice should throw up some flags and be enough to make decision makers look at smaller more streamlined offerings that offer targeted solutions based on actual requirements.

AWS are massive…AWS are a juggernaut backed by seemingly endless research and development funding and enough scale to offer what appear to be cheaper services…and though they don’t market as much as Microsofts Azure they are still front of mind for most when cloud is talked about. Smaller providers such as IaaS in the vCloud Air Network can complete if the focus on delivery of a smaller subset of products and services is done with quality and reliability in mind…in my eyes, that’s enough to offer enough differentiation to compete.

So as a final thought…lets not be caught up with what customers think they might need…but what they actually require!