Amazon has not gone far enough to acknowledge enterprises' need to make a gradual move from on-premises, data center-based IT operations to cloud-based operations. And the company?s insistence that customers go all-in could hinder progress by giving it a reputation for being too cloud-centric with a lift and shift mentality.
Amazon's rivals, including Microsoft, IBM and Oracle, are able to resonate with customers' operations teams looking to make gradual moves to the cloud, initially through private/hybrid cloud scenarios. Amazon is already at a disadvantage compared to traditional software providers with their mature professional services organizations. The company relies heavily on partners to provide customers with support for digital transformation projects that require on-premises data center support and verticalized, specific use case solutions.
Amazon needs to lower the barriers to cloud adoption by pre-building as much functionality as it can for specific use cases to the benefit of both customers and channel partners. Otherwise it will lose out to closest cloud rivals Google and Microsoft.
