Amazon Launches Space Push To Drive Cloud-Computing Growth (wsj.com) 20
Amazon.com is boosting efforts to lure military and commercial space organizations as major users of its cloud-computing services, hoping to benefit from rising government spending and burgeoning private investment. From a report: The move by Amazon Web Services, the online retail giant's cloud-computing arm, comes during a multiyear surge in U.S. military and civilian agency spending on space projects, with NASA, the Pentagon and their largest contractors -- including Lockheed Martin -- benefiting from hefty appropriated or proposed budget increases. Lockheed Martin already is an Amazon customer. Capitol Hill is pouring billions of dollars into new boosters and the next generation of superfast missiles, driven, in part, by White House and intelligence community warnings about Chinese and Russian advances in space. Commercial companies are building or planning to deploy swarms of small satellites encircling the globe, though the Covid-19 pandemic has dimmed the immediate outlook for many private space projects.
Amazon is anticipating a huge increase in space-related cloud-computing contracts globally with a market size estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, said Teresa Carlson, AWS's vice president in charge of public sector business. "There's a need for a more modernized approach to this industry," Ms. Carlson said. AWS will formally announce it is establishing a dedicated segment, called Aerospace and Satellite Solutions, at an online summit focused on business with the public sector on Tuesday. The group will be run by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Clint Crosier, who, until recently, was in charge of planning to set up the Space Force, the newly created branch of the military. The initiative comes as AWS faced increased pressure from cloud-computing rivals for public sector business. Last year, AWS lost out to Microsoft in a high-profile competition to provide the Pentagon cloud-computing services. The program, known as JEDI, could be worth up to $10 billion over 10 years. Amazon has challenged the outcome.
Amazon is anticipating a huge increase in space-related cloud-computing contracts globally with a market size estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars, said Teresa Carlson, AWS's vice president in charge of public sector business. "There's a need for a more modernized approach to this industry," Ms. Carlson said. AWS will formally announce it is establishing a dedicated segment, called Aerospace and Satellite Solutions, at an online summit focused on business with the public sector on Tuesday. The group will be run by retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Clint Crosier, who, until recently, was in charge of planning to set up the Space Force, the newly created branch of the military. The initiative comes as AWS faced increased pressure from cloud-computing rivals for public sector business. Last year, AWS lost out to Microsoft in a high-profile competition to provide the Pentagon cloud-computing services. The program, known as JEDI, could be worth up to $10 billion over 10 years. Amazon has challenged the outcome.
Nothing this important should use "The Cloud" (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is just the new mainframe. Within a decade or so I expect the industry to go back to something like client/server again, then fat stand-alone client again, then whatever the new mainframe is (the Singularity?). None if it has ever been completely secure, and it's unlikely that shared resources ever will be.
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This is just the new mainframe. Within a decade or so I expect the industry to go back to something like client/server again, then fat stand-alone client again, then whatever the new mainframe is (the Singularity?). None if it has ever been completely secure, and it's unlikely that shared resources ever will be.
I agree there's a small cyclical component, but I think we're seeing a steady underlying trend towards cloud. We'll get into a future in the next few decades where low-orbit satellite internet is ubiquitous to every corner of the world, where our houses and cities and eventually countryside are flooded with tiny computers that depend upon "cloud" for the bulk of their processing and user interface.
I've been hard-core about "all my home network must be local". But I just switched to ubiquiti for my home netw
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But then, why did we moved away from mainframes in the first place?
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Local control, cheaper by an order of magnitude, flexibility, new abilities that didn't exist on mainframes, cheaper programmers, etc.
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"The Cloud" is about as secure as the rest of the Internet -- which is to say not secure in the least.
Ahh, the myths of the 2010s. Time to get over that baggage.
The cloud is as secure as you make it, just like any server. People screw up all the time and leave stuff exposed to the world, but there's never been a story here about AWS or Azure having a VPN breached or anything (and if they one day do, it's likely something that affects everyone). You can do silly stuff with your cloud servers just like you can do silly stuff with any kind of datacenter, but you can lock it down just as well.
Just like anyth
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It's not baggage if it's real and current. The track record of pretty much every corporation is shitty to say the least
That was true before the cloud, and not particularly made worse by the cloud.
you're nuts to use 'The Cloud' for anything at all.
Ahh, trying to sweep back the tide of progress. Enjoy your niche while it lasts. Meanwhile, every startup does everything in the cloud, because it's cheap. University classes do anything needing server time in the cloud, because it's cheap. Everyone entering the field sees the cloud as the normal way to do things, and the old model as just some expensive thing that Boomers use because they don't understand modern technology. M
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You must be a 'cloud' provider or something. Go shill somewhere else.
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You seem to be conflating using third-party software that "uses the cloud" with managing your servers that are hosted in AWS/Azure vs in a colo. There's just not that much difference in the latter. A server in a datacenter is a server in a datacenter.
You seem very worked up about this. Show me on the doll where the cloud touched you.
Just a logical growth (Score:4, Interesting)
This is just a logical growth from AWS Ground Station, which was launched a few years ago.
https://aws.amazon.com/ground-... [amazon.com]
AWS Ground Station is a fully managed service that lets you control satellite communications, process data, and scale your operations without having to worry about building or managing your own ground station infrastructure. . . With AWS Ground Station, you have direct access to AWS services and the AWS Global Infrastructure including a low-latency global fiber network. . . You can save up to 80% on the cost of your ground station operations by paying only for the actual antenna time used, and relying on the global footprint of ground stations to download data when and where you need it. There are no long-term commitments, and you gain the ability to rapidly scale your satellite communications on-demand when your business needs it.
With the growing market in Cubesats and small-sats many operators have a viable business model but don't have the necessary hundreds of millions of dollars to build out that infrastructure on their own. This levels the playing field to a considerable degree.
In other words, this is a pipe dream. (Score:3)
"...though the Covid-19 pandemic has dimmed the immediate outlook for many private space projects."
Uh, "dimmed" the outlook?
Well, that's certainly a rather cute way of saying "...there's no economy to pay for any of this shit."
"Amazon is anticipating a huge increase in space-related cloud-computing contracts globally with a market size estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars..."
I guess Amazon sees the value of getting the hell off this rock far more than their customer base does. I can't wait to see which group of billionaires is going to agree to pay for all of this, since the other 99% of humanity will be busy for the next decade trying to figure out how to survive another round of unchecked corruption.
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"...though the Covid-19 pandemic has dimmed the immediate outlook for many private space projects."
But it really hasn't though either. Starlink is arguably the largest private space project currently under way and it's only ramping up. Starship is also seeing huge investment and raising hundreds of millions in funds. SpaceX just launched astronauts for the first time. They're about to launch another GPS satellite.
Jeff Bezos is still sinking $1B/year into Blue origin.
Planet labs is still upgrading their fleet and just lowered it (reducing its life span) to increase resolution.
The Electron rocket is i
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"...though the Covid-19 pandemic has dimmed the immediate outlook for many private space projects."
But it really hasn't though either. Starlink is arguably the largest private space project currently under way and it's only ramping up. Starship is also seeing huge investment and raising hundreds of millions in funds. SpaceX just launched astronauts for the first time. They're about to launch another GPS satellite.
Jeff Bezos is still sinking $1B/year into Blue origin.
Planet labs is still upgrading their fleet and just lowered it (reducing its life span) to increase resolution.
The Electron rocket is increasing its launch pace.
Well, I must admit all of that sounds very impressive. There's only one problem. Humans are involved. And we are experts at making trash. 20 years ago we were tracking thousands of objects (space debris) in orbit around our planet. And that problem is only going to get more "fun" as more players are in orbit, and predicting where this will end with thousands of objects hurtling around at 18,000MPH, isn't hard.
In other words, we'll be lucky if we don't destroy everything in orbit trying to put up the wo
Morals (Score:1)
No clouds in space (Score:2)
But there's no clouds in space. :-( Terrible pun. :-(
I, for one, welcome "Amazon ASS" (Score:1)
Someday they'll learn -- as everyone else in the aerospace biz has already had to learn -- that you don't use an A-word like Aerospace or Advanced or Amazon, followed by two S-words like Satellites, Sensors, Solutions, or Systems.
Apparently today was not that day.
Mainframe/dumb terminal 2.0 (Score:1)
Who wants to go back to those bad old days? What's next, "batch processing"? Better get ready to submit huge stacks of punchcards to be processed.
Mainframe computing should be a backup, not a total replacement.