Eight topics that had Aussie AWS partners talking in Vegas

Here are eight topics that had Aussie tongues wagging in the Nevada desert.

Public cloud vendors no longer just provide infrastructure

"It's not infrastructure-as-a-service anymore. Everything is coming as-a-service now," said Shine Technologies head of consulting Luke Alexander.

Pictured: Amazon senior vice president of web services Andy Jassy

Channel creep by innovation?

"It's a double-edged sword [for AWS]: partners vs innovation," Shine Technologies head of consulting Luke Alexander told CRN.

"The move to services can be a worry for partners that used to provide [that service] for their customers. But at the end of the day, you have to take the attitude that, with all the resources they have, Amazon will always provide better functionality than you or your customer could ever do."

Melbourne IT executive general manager Peter Wright said that, counter-intuitively, as AWS brings out more features, the need for partners grows in proportion.

"How can a customer possibly keep up with all the products they bring out? Not even AWS staff can keep up. The partner becomes more essential to keep abreast of all the developments, especially now that in-house IT teams are shrinking," he told CRN.

Pictured: AWS channel and alliances vice president Terry Wise

Migration tools: too good to be true?

The AWS Database Migration Service, is claimed to make moving databases to the cloud faster and cheaper. Amazon's Andy Jassy said the service only takes 10 to 15 minutes to set up and can migrate a 1TB on-premises database for about US$3.

The cloud vendor also released the AWS Schema Conversion Tool, which converts a proprietary database for use in an AWS-supported open-source database engine.

Base2services chief technology officer Aaron Walker expressed some scepticism about how smoothly a such a conversion might go: "I'll reserve my judgment for [the trans-vendor] conversion."

CloudTrek lead solutions architect Mark Green agreed, but even a partially working tool would assist partners to cut down on days of labour currently spent on converting databases.

"There are always challenges going cross-platform. But even if it gets over just the first hump, it could have some benefits."

Pictured: AWS' Andy Jassy at a press conference at re:Invent

BYO Windows opens AWS to an untapped market

There are many customers with long-term and heavily discounted licensing agreements with Microsoft that are now open to conversion to the cloud. And each represents an opportunity for an AWS partner.

"Yet another adoption barrier gone," said Melbourne IT executive general manager Peter Wright.

However, more than one partner did point out to CRN that AWS would have introduced the BYO capability through gritted teeth and speculated that it would be a temporary allowance.

Pictured: thousands of partners from around the world packed in for the AWS Partner Summit keynote

"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a FedEx truck"

The suitcase-like appliance holds up to 50TB of data for uploading into the AWS cloud via a courier.

"It's cool, but will it really have a use-case in Australia? I don't know that there are that many customers that would need to move that much data," said Base2services chief technology officer Aaron Walker. "Maybe to migrate backup data to the cloud? There is also data sovereignty to think about too, as [Snowball] has to be sent back to the USA."

Other Australian partners disagreed. Shine Technologies head of consulting Luke Alexander said that it would be "useful" in Australia, especially considering Amazon's existing Import/Export upload service is not available in this country.

Pictured: AWS vice president of engineering Bill Vass

Serverless cloud is the future

"Lambda is amazing in that no infrastructure is required for an app," said Bulletproof chief technology officer John Ferlito. "More people will realise the benefit of cloud."

Shine Technologies head of consulting Luke Alexander said that serverless computing is "very exciting", while Melbourne IT's Peter Wright and Steve McCormick said that Lambda's continued development is a positive for the channel.

Pictured: AWS chief technology officer Werner Vogels

Accenture-AWS joint venture is nothing to worry about

"I wasn't shocked, especially after Accenture's acquisition of Cloud Sherpas earlier in the year," Base2services chief technology officer Aaron Walker told CRN.

Mark Green, lead solutions architect for Brisbane AWS partner CloudTrek said that the Accenture partnership would have "no direct impact" and that the move is actually a "compliment".

"It validates the work that all the AWS partners are doing."

Accenture and AWS are aiming to train 1000 staff to man the new venture within the first year, with 500 to be certified.

AWS wants to rule the world

The X1 is designed for large enterprises seeking to run in-memory databases or graphics-intensive software. The T2.Nano are low-cost instances to be used for applications such as small, low-traffic websites.

While some partners told CRN that a machine as powerful as X1 would not have any practical use for their customers, they pointed to its availability and the T2.Nano as evidence of Amazon's intent to own both small and big ends of town.

The journalist travelled to AWS re:Invent as a guest of Amazon Web Services.