亞馬遜為何讓初創企業又愛又恨

Jeff Bezos, president and chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., listens during a meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and technology leaders at Trump Tower in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016.

You can thank Amazon and its cloud computing business for ushering a wave of fast-rising startups like Airbnb and Lyft that are upending industries like hospitality and transportation.

But while Amazon Web Services is making a big business out of selling computing resources to companies on demand, it may not fare as well as it expands to related areas like business productivity software or other document management services.

At least, that』s the belief from a few business software companies that have both benefited from the rise of AWS while facing increased competition from the retail giant as it steadily debuts new features. Additionally, Amazon's cloud computing business keeps on booming, with sales rising roughly 55% year-over-year to $3.2 billion in its third quarter.

「They probably overestimate their ability to move up the stack,」 said Okta CEO Todd McKinnon in reference to Amazon attempting to sell more software than just basic infrastructure resources like computing and storage. McKinnon made his comments during a recently panel on enterprise software and the workplace.

McKinnon praised Amazon for letting companies like Okta to rapidly build their software and jumpstart their businesses faster than the past. Additionally, with Amazon selling its computing resources for cheaper than it costs to buy data center hardware, the company has saved Okta 「tons of money,」 he said.

April Underwood, the vice president of workplace software company Slack, echoed McKinnon』s comments and said it』s 「never been easier than it was now」 for companies to build new business software services like expense reporting tools because of cloud computing companies like AWS and Google.

But selling data center infrastructure services and enterprise software are two different businesses, and just because one company is strong in one area doesn』t mean it will be strong in another, McKinnon explained. McKinnon compared Amazon』s foray into new software services to Oracle, which dominates the database the market but is considered by some analysts to be behind companies like SAP and Salesforce in its apps business.

Still, the fact that Amazon continually debuts new features like its own database services and a new service intended to reduce the mundane legwork needed to manage corporate software puts some pressure on companies that rely on AWS while competing with it.

Okta, for example, sells so-called identify management services that IT staff use to keep track of employees using multiple apps at work. Amazon sells a similar service as well as Microsoft.

It should be noted that Microsoft disinvited Okta to one of its tech conferences in March due to increased competition between their respective services. After the news became public, Microsoft then re-invited Okta back to the conference, according to Business Insider.

One thing newer software companies must do to compete with larger companies is to ensure their respective software works well with each other, said Aaron Levie, the CEO of document management company Box. Smaller companies must ensure that customers find a simple experience using multiple apps from multiple companies like they would using software from just one big company, Levie explained.

「As an industry, we need to be better at a unified front,」 Levie said.

亞馬遜總裁兼首席執行官傑夫·貝佐斯2016年12月14日（周三）在美國紐約川普大廈參加與美國總統繼任者唐納德·川普和技術高管的會面。

亞馬遜（Amazon）和其雲計算服務帶動了一批初創企業的迅速崛起，例如Airbnb和Lyft，而且這些企業為酒店和運輸等行業帶來了顛覆性的影響。人們應該對此心懷感激。

亞馬遜網路服務（Amazon Web Services）依靠向有需求的企業出售計算資源不斷發展壯大。然而，隨著它擴張到像企業生產力軟體或其他文件管理服務之類的相關領域，它的境遇可能就不會如此順利了。

至少，有一些商業軟體公司持有這樣的想法。這些公司從AWS的崛起中獲益匪淺。然而，這些公司在穩步推出新功能的同時還面臨著來自於零售巨頭的日趨激烈的競爭。此外，亞馬遜的雲計算業務依舊在蓬勃發展，其第三季度的銷售業績同比增長了約55%，達到了32億美元。

當前，亞馬遜正在嘗試銷售更多軟體，而不僅僅是提供基礎設施資源，例如計算機和存儲。Okta的首席執行官托德·麥金諾在談到亞馬遜的這一舉措時指出，「他們可能過度高估了其提供更高級服務的能力」。麥金諾在最近舉辦的有關企業軟體和職場的專題研討會上做出了上述評論。

麥金諾對亞馬遜表示了稱讚，因為在它的幫助下，像Okta這樣的公司能夠比過去更快地製作軟體和開展業務。除此之外，購買亞馬遜的計算資源比購買數據中心硬體更合算，因此，亞馬遜為Okta省了一大筆錢。

職場軟體公司Slack副總裁阿普里爾·安德伍德對麥金諾的觀點表示贊同。他指出，對於企業來說，由於AWS和谷歌（Google）的存在，打造新的業務軟體服務從來沒有像今天這樣容易，例如費用報告工具等。

麥金諾解釋說，但銷售數據中心基礎設施服務與企業軟體是兩種截然不同的業務，而且企業在其中一個領域有優勢並不意味著在另外一個領域也有優勢。麥金諾將亞馬遜涉足新軟體服務的舉措與甲骨文（Oracle）進行了對比。雖然後者在資料庫市場佔據著主導地位，但一些分析師認為，甲骨文在應用業務上仍然不及SAP和Salesforce。

然而，亞馬遜仍在推出新的功能，例如其自有資料庫服務以及一些新服務（旨在減少管理企業軟體所需的日程情報搜集工作）。這一事實讓一些依賴於AWS的公司與其競爭時感到了些許壓力

例如，Okta銷售所謂的識別管理服務，IT人員用它來跟蹤在工作中使用多個應用的僱員。亞馬遜也在銷售類似的服務，微軟（Microsoft）亦是如此。

值得注意的是，微軟並未邀請Okta參加其於3月舉行的一次技術會議，原因在於雙方服務的競爭日趨激烈。Business Insider網站稱，隨著這一新聞的曝光，微軟隨後又重新向Okta發出了參會邀請。

文件管理公司Box的首席執行官阿隆·勒維表示，要與大公司競爭，新軟體公司必須確保雙方的軟體能夠相互兼容。勒維解釋道，小型企業必須確保客戶在使用來自於不同公司的多個應用時獲得簡單明了的體驗，就像他們在使用來自於一個大公司的軟體一樣。

勒維表示，「作為一個行業，我們在統一性方面還有很多工作要做。」 （財富中文網）

譯者：馮豐