In a recent post by she said "I came to the conclusion that Amazon’s willingness to share information would help vendors plan ahead in time for them to shift or expand beyond EC2 or other Amazon products".
Are you kidding me? Amazon Web Services is a company that bases their business on others who build their own businesses on Amazon's Infrastructure, yet doesn't have partner program? AWS appears to have a complete lack of interest for the ongoing success of their bread butter developer eco-system. It is a joke to say they give "time to shift". Shift to what? A business model that doesn't compete with AWS directly?
I don't mean to pick on Amazon, they've done more for moving the cloud communuty forward then just about anyone. But come on, it's been more then 7 years since Amazon launched Amazon Web Services yet they still don't have a partner program in place. Is the reason because they don't believe they need any? This seems completely contrariety for an application service provider who focuses primarily on others who develop applications on their services.
Thnk about it, AWS focuses on software developers, so why doesn't Amazon publish a product road map? I think the answer is clear, they're iterating based on what works for their ecosystem. A kind of massive market research tool. Why publish a roadmap that tells the world your plans, thus limiting any potential for users to try out potential future "AWS" revenue avenues? Sure some may point to their super secret "technical advisory board" only available for their top customers and contributors. An advisory board who's first rule is "it doesn't exist". At the end of the day, AWS can't just give notice that they're going to compete with you, they need to give more transparency by publishing a roadmap at least 6 months out. 300,000+ users need to demand this.
It's time for AWS to get a partner program in place and get a clear product roadmap. Enough said.
