Storytime: A while ago, #AWS outmaneuvered one of our competitors in the cloud
#AMZN isn’t just big, they can out-think you too. Wardley Maps are one of their tools. (@swardley)
Our friends made a Facial Recognition (FR) system specifically for Fraud Detection on AWS. 1/8
#AWS noticed the usage analytics and recommended using it for general user authentication (red).
Our competitor saw no problems with this – their secret sauce was the algorithm - not the UI or API.
Everything was built on EC2. 2/8
AWS then built their own version – Rekognition – just for User Authentication.
Our competitor was happy as their algorithm was “industrial strength” and won awards in “NIST Testing”. User Auth is a toy by comparison.
AWS built on the then-new ECS instead of EC2. 3/8
Rekognition got an upgrade – it could now do Fraud Detection – just not as good as our competitor.
But AWS had a trick, they had two revenue streams and decided to only charge for processing time
Our valuable, custom FR market had just become commoditized (green). 4/8
Even worse, our competitor couldn’t move to ECS yet – they weren’t just more expensive – they were *way* more expensive. (black box)
They also couldn’t do user authentication as transparently. This stream dried up. 5/8
As our friends started porting to ECS, AWS added Text/Video search (3rd rev stream) and could now do “serious use-cases”.
Key contracts were now too challenging or too expensive for our friends because AWS could couple other services and cloud pricing.
ECS work stopped. 6/8
There wasn't a master business strategy at the start.
Strategy *emerged* as AMZN could see the board more than our friends.
This is Innovate, Leverage, Commoditize in action (ILC).
It lets you target the Innovation, Efficiency and Customer Focus domains all at once. 7/8
I’m going to take a break from shitposting about the #LRT and do a talk where I apply Wardley Mapping to Information Security @OWASP_Ottawa .
I’ll talk about how we use the same methods to handle security of critical infrastructure at scale.
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.