Whilst no-one can deny Amazon's current dominance in the cloud computing space, this position can be easily undermined by the development of an ecosystem around alternative standards.
Enter GoGrid's announcement of the open sourcing of their Cloud Center API.
Should the GoGrid API gain support and multiple providers adopt it, then Amazon could find itself on the outside of a growing ecosystem and its users facing an uncomfortable prospect of future migration to a standard.
In a straight battle between a centrally planned environment (aka an attempted monopoly) and a marketplace, the market will win. Furthermore, most businesses have enough experience of lock-in with proprietary technology to know it's best avoided.
At the infrastructure layer of the computing stack (where both GoGrid and EC2 reside), Eucalyptus is the closest thing the cloud has to an open source reference model. Whilst it currently tracks the EC2 API, this could rapidly change in the future.
The question must be whether Amazon will respond with an open source API approach or allow GoGrid to continue to gain mind-share. Whilst they might be tempted by a wait and see tactic, by the time that this open API becomes a clear threat the momentum will be unstoppable.
2 comments:
I'll throw out a provocative position: APIs are not copyrightable and thus all APIs are public domain (which is even better than open source).
Hi Wes,
My understanding is that whilst you cannot protect expressions and hence APIs by the normal routes (Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights), the surrounding documentation can be copyrighted.
Open sourcing the API (and the documentation) is more of a statement of intent and an open invitation for others to come and compete.
GoGrid's move, whilst not making any practical difference as to whether someone could use their API or not, has allowed them to create buzz. The question is whether they can capitalise on this and build a growing ecosystem around their API.
Amazon's open sourcing of their API would cost them nothing but would allow them to counter any competitor moves whilst ensuring EC2's dominance as the standard for the time being.
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