Reports of a new Amazon private cloud storage solution surfaced this week. The reports focus around an appliance based model whereby customers would keep sensitive data on premise and use the Amazon Web Service (AWS) for non-sensitive purposes. While this model may or may not be true, it is interesting to see Amazon continue to push into hybrid or private cloud solutions, arguably in an attempt to offset recent concerns surrounding public cloud vendors and their data privacy and security practices.
The obvious importance of this story is that Amazon may be positioning itself to enter a very crowded market of vendors selling a variety of cloud, appliance, and cloud/appliance solutions, and could end up disrupting this community of vendors and their MSP and reseller ecosystems. While the RMM community saw its own M&A shakeup this year, there hasn't been any consolidation of technology vendors. I will state here that what I'm writing here is pure speculation and not based on any information I possess.
I do believe, however, that vendors like Amazon, while typically late to the managed services party, often act very quickly and with purpose because they are able to assess these market segments and through acquisition and investment consolidate vendors and their respective MSP communities (for example, the AVG purchase of Level Platforms). If Amazon does offer an appliance for MSPs, then the obvious question to ask is what competitive distinction do the smaller backup vendors offer? This question, while not always relevant in managed services discussions, seems to be more relevant in the backup/storage sector, which has become somewhat commoditized in the last few years.
Again, this is purely a rumor at this point, but it will be interesting to see what Amazon has in store for the cloud and managed services community in 2014.
