I saw this post that Om Malik reposted.
CIO Magazine: IBM Will Win the War With Amazon
Rob Enderle has been analyst for too long and has mostly been wrong about his favorite target, Apple. And now he has turned his guns on Amazon (Web Services) and points out that IBM is going to win the war with AWS. I think we all have a different definition of winning, especially considering the troubled cloud effort by IBM. Anyway read the piece, if nothing, for a chuckle!
Talk about two different approaches. IBM’s business is built on relationships with the CxO to deliver IT services. Amazon.com is retailer who uses technology the way no other retailer does. Departments are pulling out their credit cards to use AWS to build IT services that are assumed to be at a lower cost and faster time to market. In this rush to push out IT services, there are probably many mistakes made from a compliance perspective. The types of mistakes that can get you fined or in the middle of a lawsuit.
Amazon offsets this by bypassing IT and selling directly to employees. However, IT retains the responsibility for compliance; given enough ammunition, IT generally can block access to any vendor seen as unreliable or unsecure. Expect IBM to start providing IT with the evidence to provide this block and with cost-effective alternatives that IT can use instead.
The CIO article says IBM is ready for a fight.
Don't Bet Against the Old Dog in the Fight
IBM learned early on that fights in any market are often won and lost on perception. The company allocates staff and resource accordingly. In these battles it comes down to who has the most resources and knows the battlefield best. On all vectors, this should be IBM. Amazon may, as the first mover, have the tactical advantage, but IBM has the strategic advantage. At the end of the day, this is IBM's battlefield. It has the best weapons and the appropriate skills.
Here is the current state of IBM’s Cloud website. 270,000 more websites than amazon is on IBM’s cloud.
