Infrastructure-as-a-service giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) has added two new tiers (a highest-priority Platinum level and a budget Bronze level) to their Premium Support offering. Amazon has also slashed prices on existing Silver and Gold plans by 50%. Developers who go with the AWS Premium Support Bronze package can pay as little as $49/month.
But for AWS Platinum support customers, Amazon is offering 15-minute response times and dedicated Technical Account Managers, according to Amazon Web Services’ blog entry. In addition, these large enterprise VIPs will get so-called “white glove” case routing to ensure incidents get routed right to the appropriate fast-response engineer. And Platinum customers can even get help planning their cloud infrastructure needs and deployments.
On the flip side, Bronze support only guarantees 12-hour response times, and doesn’t include any kind of phone support or guarantee of 24 by 7 support availability. And don’t even ask about any of those other Platinum perks.
In the middle are the existing Silver and Gold plans. The Silver plan is like Bronze but drops the guaranteed response time to four hours. And, in turn, Gold is like Platinum, but you don’t get the cloud planning, case routing, or Technical Account Manager access.
With one move, Amazon Web Services has made their offering more attractive to small businesses and global enterprises alike, with support options to match their needs – even if you’re using AWS for free.
Bottom line: While Amazon Web Services appears to be a $500 million-plus business for Amazon, the company has been criticized by some skeptics who think it’s difficult to reach Amazon support. In stark contrast, service provider Rackspace has built its entire businesses around the Fanatical Support concept. TalkinCloud wonders if the latest Amazon moves are an effort to close the support gap with Rackspace.
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Wondering if Amazon is looking to close the support gap? Nothing to wonder about, in my opinion. No matter how easy AWS (and other providers) make their self-service provisioning and management capabilities, there are still large numbers of potential customers who simply are not comfortable using a service unless they are confident they’ll be able to speak to a knowledgable person if they have a question or a problem.
Bill: I agree with you 100%. I respect Amazon’s efforts and there’s certainly a customer base for Amazon Web Services. But there’s a huge group of small, midsize and large businesses who want their cloud service provider to pick up the phone on five rings or less.
Speaking purely in terms of our own company, we’ve never worked with a hosting provider or cloud service provider that didn’t have 24×7 rapid support for all issues.
-jp
You both make great points. Bill’s right about the “easy” part and Joe’s spot on about the level of comfort the business owner/manager needs to feel secure and self reliant.
There’s also the problem of a real lack of user comfort and familiarity with wearing “the toolbelt”. I’m in and out of most of the major provider’s control panels all week. Finding comfort with the interface and nomenclature and descriptors can be daunting – especially to the average IT admin with basic functional skills in Windows server. OK, it may not rocket science, but it IS a bit like taking a novice driver and swapping their car dashboard out for a jet cockpit.
We have a few clients who love Amazon and pay them directly for services but us to admin their Amazon assets for them. It gives them the best of both worlds. For us, it’s just another service to manage. We let them fly the plane but we’re their navigator and co-pilot.
I think we’re (thankfully) still a ways away from the average business manager or internal IT geek having the skills to setup and run their own cloud stack. Amazon’s next move is to do full provisioning, deployment and contract management. I’ll sleep less well when they start doing that. Until then, pass the Grey Poupon.
Chris, our own business sounds a bit like your current cloud customers.
We poke around in the system a bit. Make some site changes. But ultimately, we depend on our Web integrator to really manage our set-up with our cloud service provider. We respect the cloud service provider. But we truly depend on the Web integrator for advice, optimization, integration, etc.
We’ll never be smart enough to optimize everything on our own. Nor do we want to be in that business. So there will always be a need for solutions providers like you.
-jp