Still, in general partners say they understand why AWS enforces these rules, and customers can still check if their products run on other clouds.Attention Amazon Web Services conference attendees: You are no longer forbidden from using the words "multi-cloud" or "hybrid cloud."
But unlike in years past, Amazon will now tolerate the use of words and terms — in certain circumstances — that allude to the existence of other clouds beyond AWS. Amazon removed its rule forbidding "multi-cloud," "any cloud," "cross cloud," and "every cloud" from its branding guide for partners, as of October.
"AWS has been very successful for a long period of time in part because they adapt to the market quickly and aggressively," said Bailey Caldwell, vice president of cloud solutions engineering at Flexera. "It's not surprising that they would do the same with their branding guidelines. It's a multi-cloud world, we're just living in it."
Amazon is not the only company that restricts partners from mentioning rivals, but Caldwell notes that it gets more flack about it because of how it has disrupted other businesses – for example, AWS launching a database competitor to"They will always control the message about what they're doing and why they're doing it," Caldwell said. "They're not alone in the space.
"They have event police walking around and making sure you're following their rules," Herring said. "Even though we might all think they're crazy rules, they definitely enforce it.", recalls putting together talks for re:Invent, but he had to change his slides because he mentioned there were multiple clouds. For example, he had pictures showing AWS and Microsoft Azure, and he had to remove all references to Azure.
Amazon Web Services previously did not allow terms like "multi-cloud," "cross cloud," "any cloud," or "every cloud" – language that implies supporting more than one cloud provider. But according to documents from October, this rule is no longer there.Industry veterans say that the reality is, customers are going to go for multiple clouds, and AWS removing its ban on the term "multi-cloud" reflects that.