LAS VEGAS — There is a famous story from the early days of Google that goes something like this: When a group of New York media big shots heard about the huge efficiency of search advertising, which could hurt their own businesses, the memorable reaction of one of them was a more vulgar take on “You’re fussing with the magic!”
Amazon Web Services just did much the same thing to the multibillion-dollar business of corporate computing by going after the legacy customers of companies like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft.
A legacy business consists of current customers who use a company’s databases and software applications, and can generally be counted on to buy the new versions. They fund new development, by providing a reliable cash stream.
Coming off legacy stuff is complicated for customers. For something like an Oracle database, that software has all the financial information and is all but impossible to leave behind. When Oracle introduced its cloud and fast data analysis products, they were aimed primarily at those virtually locked-in legacy customers.
All that now looks shaky. At its annual customer conference, Amazon on Wednesday introduced new features and services aimed at offering legacy customers on all sorts of computing systems not just easy ways to get off the old technology, but also better and faster ways their old data can work on A.W.S.
Among the most notable, there was a 47-pound data storage device that A.W.S. would ship to a customer, and for $200 would suck down 50 terabytes of data, incidentally converting it from an older system to a more modern one. There was a service called Database Migration, which takes data in proprietary systems and converts their schema to open-source products.
As if the message weren’t clear, Andy Jassy, the head of A.W.S., showed a barely disguised picture of Lawrence J. Ellison, the longtime head of Oracle and now its executive chairman, as a symbol of the “old guard” companies that abused their customers with onerous terms.
There was a partnership with Accenture to move companies onto A.W.S. and a rules engine that could handle security and regulatory compliance, formerly handled at great cost in legacy systems. And there was a business analytic service that could look at the newest data and make charts in real time. For this last product, Mr. Jassy lampooned Cognos, a business intelligence product from IBM.
There was more besides, including a new database and a way to stream large amounts of data right into A.W.S. in real time.
Previously, old-guard enterprise companies dismissed A.W.S. and cloud computing, then grudgingly ceded them a place for start-ups and new applications. But with about three-quarters of information technology spending going to maintaining legacy systems, they could afford to.
Wednesday, Amazon went after the rest of their business.