Amazon's S3 storage service had a bit of a hiccup last Thursday and Friday. I came across this discussion thread on Amazon's developer forum via CNet. Rich Miller and Dan Farber have also mentioned the incident.
As frustrated as customers must have been by two days of much higher than usual latency and unpredictable errors, their reactions were surprisingly mild. And once Amazon pinpointed the problem (a batch of defective new hardware), the complaints stopped. In addition, three posters thanked Amazon for being transparent about sharing specific details.
In contrast, I've also had the misfortune of putting customers on new hardware that turned out to be faulty, and I most certainly didn't have the benefit of such patience and understanding. Why? The answer is in this video:
If you were making a 5 minute presentation on your company, how would you spend that time? You'd show lots of data center photos. You'd talk about 24/7 tech support. You might fill a slide or two with customer logos - but you wouldn't focus on what cool apps your users have built. Because chances are, you have no clue.
Jeff Barr's speech shows that Amazon is different. Have you ever heard of TV Mojo, he asks? They rock. What about SmugMug? They're so awesome that Jeff himself stores thousands of photos on their site. He succeeds in portraying Amazon as not just an ordinary vendor, but a collaborator in one exciting adventure after another. People sign up for S3 and EC2 not just for hosting, but to be where the action is. As Motorola CEO Ed Zander puts it, what customers want to buy are "cool experiences".
So don't let any technical problems Amazon might have convince you that you offer better web hosting. You're not on a two-dimensional playing field where "no glitches" is all it takes to be "better". Amazon will learn from any technical issues it comes across; it will get better. You may already have solved those challenges; you've been in the hosting market for much longer. But do your services have half the sizzle of theirs? And what are you doing about that??
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