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A generation of cloud architects, developers, and systems engineers has stayed loyal to AWS over nearly two decades in part because of its reputation for supporting anything it launched that was used by a customer to build their infrastructure. That commitment appears to be changing.
After a series of layoffs, strategy shifts, and leadership changes, AWS is sending a strong message to customers that they can no longer expect it to support everything it has ever launched over, as company executives like to say, the fullness of time.
Over the last several weeks, AWS began notifying customers that it plans to stop letting new customers sign up for several services that have been part of its arsenal for years. After a lot of customer confusion regarding the future of those services, AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr confirmed Tuesday evening that seven services — S3 Select, CloudSearch, Cloud9, SimpleDB, Forecast, Data Pipeline, and CodeCommit — will remain active but frozen in time, and the company will "support migrations to other AWS or third-party solutions better aligned with your evolving needs."
Of the more than 200 services available from AWS, it's safe to say those seven aren't among the most popular or profitable tools on its product list. For example, CodeCommit is a code repository that never made anyone at GitHub sweat, and CloudSearch fell by the wayside after AWS decided to fork the Elasticsearch open-source project and introduced OpenSearch.
However, a generation of cloud architects, developers, and systems engineers has stayed loyal to AWS over nearly two decades in part because of its reputation for supporting anything it launched that was used by a customer to build their infrastructure. For comparison, Google Cloud has spent years trying to win the same level of trust from the technical community after killing services that people had used at the core of their products with insufficient notice.
In 2019 Ben Kehoe, a longtime AWS user who is now a distinguished engineer at Siemens, posted "I think AWS keeps SimpleDB alive as a canary, demonstrating their commitment to their services. It will be an important signal if they ever do shut it down." He reposted that sentiment Wednesday after Barr confirmed SimpleDB — which is exactly what it sounds like, a simple database launched in 2007 — was among the products that will no longer be updated or support new users.
After this story was published, AWS provided a statement: "After careful consideration, we decided to close new customer access to a few services so we can focus on delivering the innovation that customers value most. These services will remain available to existing customers, and we will continue to make security, availability, and performance enhancements, however we do not plan to introduce new features. We will continue to support our customers, whether they continue to use these services, or they migrate to other AWS offerings or alternative third-party solutions."
It's not hard to see a shift in AWS's strategic thinking after Matt Garman became CEO in June.
Garman told employees in May to expect "some organizational adjustments" as he settled into the new role, and this is one of the first visible changes to AWS's product strategy since then. AWS will continue to provide security updates for the seven services and will keep them up and running for now, but it's only a matter of time before that support ends.
As cloud computing exploded and customers sought cloud-hosted replacements for everything they could run in their own data centers, AWS launched dozens of "good enough" services that in many cases were clear imitations of other popular third-party services. Like its parent company, AWS has long thought of itself as "the everything store," and like a lot of retail stores it introduced many store-brand services that were cheaper than the name-brand alternatives but more or less got the job done.
But after years of layoffs and tight budgets, which produced the best AWS margins in a decade last quarter, it looks like the company is being forced to make choices about where and how it should allocate its resources. Tech companies have long talked about the need to put "more wood behind fewer arrows" as they mature and can no longer chase every opportunity under the sun, and longtime enterprise companies like Microsoft lay out a clear end-of-support calendar for customers to encourage them to move to newer versions.
After spending the last two years throwing itself headlong into the generative AI boom to an almost nauseating degree, AWS has an opportunity under Garman to reset its relationship with its core constituency. The services sent to purgatory this week were not a big part of anyone's tech strategy, but the way those deprecations were communicated to customers shows that AWS has some work to do if it is entering a new, more focused era.
This post was updated Friday 8/2 with a statement from AWS.
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