Amazon mooches from Tomcat as it bets on Java in the cloud

The fact that Amazon.com selected the open source Apache Tomcat as the Java application server powering Amazon.com’s entry into the Java platform-as-a-service market came as little surprise to Java vendors and industry watchers. Amazon.com’s pricing strategy, on the other hand, will surely surprise some vendors and IT decision makers. Additionally, Amazon.com’s apparent lack of contributions to the Apache Tomcat project should be considered as you make your Java cloud-platform selection decisions.

Betting on Java in the cloud

Amazon.com’s newly announced AWS (Amazon Web Services) Elastic Beanstalk beta cloud offering is being positioned as proof that Java is alive and well. Sacha Labourey, CEO at CloudBees, a Java cloud platform provider, writes: “This is great news as it reinforces the message that the future of Java is in the cloud, not on premises.” (I’d adjust Labourey’s comment to read: “the future of Java is in the cloud and on premises.”)

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Amazon.com’s Jeff Barr explains AWS Elastic Beanstalk as follows:

AWS Elastic Beanstalk will make it even easier for you to create, deploy, and operate Web applications at any scale. You simply upload your code, and we’ll take care of the rest. We’ll create and configure all of the AWS resources (Amazon EC2 instances, an Elastic Load Balancer, and an Auto Scaling Group) needed to run your application. Your application will be up and running on AWS within minutes.

When the de facto public cloud provider, Amazon.com, launches a Java-based cloud platform offering ahead of another language such as Ruby, it speaks volumes about Java’s future.

Amazon.com‘s loss-leader pricing for AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Although AWS Elastic Beanstalk is seen as a good turn for Java, Amazon.com’s pricing strategy may not be welcome news for some Java vendors.

Why? Consider this: Amazon.com’s Barr mentions, almost in passing, “PS — I almost forgot! You can build and run Elastic Beanstalk applications at no charge beyond those for the AWS resources that you consume.” Amazon.com has effectively set the price for the operating system, Web server, Java runtime, and application server software components of a public Java cloud platform at $0.00 per hour.

Aside from these software components, the functionality to monitor a running environment, as well as proactively provision and scale resources to meet service-level agreements would be considered key elements of a cloud platform.

Amazon.com offers these capabilities through Amazon Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling, the latter being a feature of the Amazon.com CloudWatch monitoring service. Elastic Load Balancing costs 2.5 cents per hour per elastic load balancer, while Auto Scaling is available at no charge for an every-five-minute monitoring cycle frequency and for 1.5 cents per instance-hour if an every-one-minute monitoring cycle is required. When these costs are added into the picture, Amazon.com’s Java cloud platform, excluding hardware, storage, and bandwidth charges, costs as little as 4 cents per instance-hour, including one load balancer. Over a year, this setup would cost about $350.

Amazon.com’s loss-leader pricing strategy poses a challenge for emerging cloud platform providers to offer equivalent function at such a low price. As a result, such cloud platform vendors will try to differentiate themselves from Amazon.com’s offering, thereby hoping to defend a higher price for their offerings.

The price could also affect established open-source-based Java providers that have grown due to the value proposition of a lower cost of acquisition. Enterprises drawn to these providers for a departmental or less-business-critical application could become enamored with Amazon.com’s $350-per-year price. After years of telling IT buyers to make purchase decisions for certain projects based on acquisition cost alone, these open source vendors may have to face the stark reality of their buyers agreeing with that sentimment — and using Amazon.com’s Java cloud offering as a negotiation tool.

Is Amazon.com taking more than it gives to open source?

What’s more troubling for customers is Amazon.com’s willingness to take seemingly an order of magnitude more from the open source commons than it contributes.

For example, while relying on the adoption and brand awareness of Apache Tomcat, Amazon.com is not even a current sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation. Additionally, it appears Amazon.com is not an active contributor to the Apache Tomcat project.

Amazon.com is not duty-bound to sponsor or contribute to Apache simply because it’s using Apache-developed code. However, if Amazon.com’s Java cloud service is wildly successful or even successful enough to lower the price customers are willing to accept for a public Java cloud service, then vendors that fund Apache Tomcat development — and must now compete with Amazon.com’s low Java cloud service price — will have to reconsider their investments in the Apache Tomcat project.

Declining vendor-sponsored contributions to the Apache Tomcat project would be of concern to the many customers who use Apache Tomcat either directly or indirectly, whether in a cloud environment or not. Amazon.com could choose to contribute resources into the Apache Tomcat project to offset the declining contributions from the existing vendors in the Apache Tomcat community. This would, however, add to Amazon.com’s cost structure for AWS Elastic Beanstalk, and it could require a price increase or force Amazon.com to accept lower profit margins.

Advice for IT decision makers

IT decision makers interested in deploying public cloud workloads should start considering Amazon.com’s AWS Elastic Beanstalk. However, do so with the understanding that Amazon.com’s current pricing may not fully reflect the true costs of developing and delivering a Java cloud service to customers. Amazon.com can rely on the contributions of a community while competing with the main contributing vendors to that community for only so long. Also, don’t be surprised if Java cloud service vendors, whether established or emerging, are unwilling to compete at Amazon.com’s price and instead try to offer extra value for a higher price. That value could be well worth the cost.

Follow me on Twitter at SavioRodrigues. I should state: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies, or opinions.”

This article, “Amazon mooches from Tomcat as it bets on Java in the cloud,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Savio Rodrigues’ Open Sources blog and follow the latest developments in open source at InfoWorld.com. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.