亚马逊有一个奇怪的新战略来应对云业务的威胁

亚马逊有一个奇怪的新战略来应对云业务的威胁

Online retailing giant Amazon has a new strategy for dealing with threats to its cash-cow cloud business: Pretend they don’t exist.

在线零售巨头亚马逊(Amazon)制定了一项新战略，以应对其现金流云业务面临的威胁:假装这些威胁不存在。

At the Seattle-based company’s annual conference to promote its cloud business in New York in July, the tech giant imposed restrictive new rules on participating companies by forbidding them to talk about the competition, The Post has learned.

据《华盛顿邮报》了解，在7月于纽约举行的ibm云业务推广年会上，这家科技巨头对参与的公司实施了限制性的新规定，禁止它们谈论竞争。

Companies with booths at the event who dared to name Amazon’s cloud competitors, like Microsoft or Alibaba, had to either remove the offending language or see it covered up with tape, sources told The Post.

消息人士告诉《华盛顿邮报》，在活动中设立展台的公司，如果胆敢说出亚马逊在云计算领域的竞争对手，如微软或阿里巴巴的名字，就必须删除这些冒犯性的语言，否则就会被贴上胶带。

It’s not just the names of the competition that got scrubbed. Amazon also banned any language suggesting Amazon’s cloud business isn’t the only digital data storage provider in town by barring phrases such as “multi-cloud,” “any cloud,” or “every cloud,” according to sources and marketing guidelines obtained by The Post.

不仅仅是比赛的名字被抹去了。根据《华盛顿邮报》获得的消息来源和营销指南，亚马逊还禁止使用任何表明亚马逊的云业务不是当地唯一数字数据存储提供商的语言，禁止使用“多云”、“任何云”或“每云”等短语。

“They reviewed everything that will be shown at our booth in terms of any PowerPoints, any presentations, any demos, even swag,” one attendee of the Javits Convention Center conference said.

“他们审查了我们展位上展示的所有东西，包括任何幻灯片、任何演示、任何演示，甚至是swag，”一名参加Javits会议中心会议的人士说。

Amazon reviewed the designs for all the swag items, including giveaway mugs, ball caps and T-shirts, ahead of the conference — and then again when the vendor arrived at the Javits Center to prepare the booth, the attendee said.

参加会议的人说，在会议之前，亚马逊审核了所有赠品的设计，包括免费赠送的马克杯、球帽和t恤，然后当供应商到达Javits中心准备摊位时，亚马逊又审核了一次。

When an Amazon inspector discovered references to other cloud providers in the attendee’s slide show, the inspector demanded they be changed “on the spot,” the source said. “And then they came back an hour later to make sure it was gone.”

该消息人士称，当一名亚马逊检查员在与会者的幻灯片中发现了对其他云提供商的引用时，他要求“当场”更改这些引用。“一小时后，他们又回来了，确认钱包不见了。”

Another source witnessed summit workers going around the show floor and placing tape over mentions of other cloud providers on booth materials and posters.

另一位消息人士称，峰会工作人员在会场里走来走去，在展台材料和海报上粘贴其他云提供商的名字。

The crackdown comes as the e-commerce giant faces growing competition to its cloud business, Amazon Web Services, or AWS, which sells its computer-processing power to government agencies and major companies, such as video-streaming service Netflix and digital scrapbook Pinterest.

此举出台之际，这家电子商务巨头的云业务亚马逊网络服务(Amazon Web Services，简称AWS)正面临日益激烈的竞争。AWS将其计算机处理能力出售给政府机构和主要公司，如视频流媒体服务Netflix和数字剪贴簿Pinterest。

Since starting AWS as a side business in 2006, it has grown to be the biggest cloud provider on the planet — and a major source of revenue for Amazon. Amazon’s cloud business currently contributes to more than half of the larger company’s profits, helping to support founder Jeff Bezos’money-losing delivery business.

自2006年AWS作为副业成立以来，它已成长为全球最大的云提供商——也是亚马逊的主要收入来源。亚马逊的云业务目前贡献了这家大公司一半以上的利润，帮助支撑了创始人杰夫·贝佐斯(Jeff Bezos)亏损的快递业务。

But growth is slowing. Revenue grew just 34.7 percent in the past quarter — a dip from the previous quarter’s 37 percent clip.

但增长正在放缓。上一季营收仅增长34.7%，低于上一季的37%。

Rivals, meanwhile, are chipping away, with Alibaba’s Aliyun and Microsoft’s Azure growing steadily in popularity. Microsoft last month beat out Amazon to secure a $10 billion Pentagon contract to power the Defense Department’s cloud, a significant coup for the Windows-maker and a blow for Amazon.

与此同时，随着阿里巴巴的阿里云(Aliyun)和微软(Microsoft)的Azure的受欢迎程度稳步上升，竞争对手也在逐渐减少。上个月，微软击败了亚马逊，获得了一份价值100亿美元的五角大楼合同，为美国国防部的云计算提供动力，这对windows制造商来说是一个重大的成功，对亚马逊来说也是一个打击。

“They think they can police it by not showing people what’s going on. But it’s too late to put the genie back in the bottle,” Holger Mueller, principal analyst at Constellation Research, told The Post.

“他们认为他们可以通过不向人们展示正在发生的事情来监督它。但是现在把精灵放回瓶子里已经太迟了。”星座研究公司的首席分析师Holger Mueller告诉《华盛顿邮报》。

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives pointed to Microsoft’s recent win of the Pentagon contract as fueling Amazon’s insecurity about the longevity of its dominant position in the cloud.

Wedbush分析师Dan Ives指出，微软最近赢得了五角大楼的合同，加剧了亚马逊对其在云计算领域的统治地位的不安全感。

“As we get into this next phase of cloud, it’s going to be a lot more competitive,” Ives said. “In a multiple cloud environment, that’s not a positive for Bezos and Amazon.”

“随着我们进入云计算的下一个阶段，竞争将会更加激烈，”艾夫斯说。“在一个多云的环境中，这对贝佐斯和亚马逊来说不是件好事。”