Wednesday’s announcement by Amazon Web Services Inc. that it would introduce an on-premises data center model that mirrors its own cloud operation will likely cause major heartburn for hybrid competitors, and could lead to a major shift in strategy by companies in the same space.

“What Amazon is doing with Outposts is they’re putting the exact same hardware that Amazon uses in its data centers and allowing customers to put that in their data centers,” Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, said during theCUBE’s Wednesday keynote analysis at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas. “That move is going to even further extend Amazon’s lead in hybrid.”

Vellante was joined at the conference by co-host John Furrier (@furrier), and they discussed the impact of the many announcements released by Amazon, the potential impact on competitors, and insights offered by the day’s keynote remarks.

Leveraging AWS resources for data center

In the announcement made on Wednesday, AWS indicated that customers will be able to connect from Outposts to other applications within AWS or other AWS services. The move will allow companies to use the vast array of AWS resources in a virtual private network.

“It’s the final nail in the coffin behind the strategy,” Furrier said. “You’re going to put Amazon on-premises with a hardware device that’s going to connect with the cloud and all the innovation.”

The release of Outposts was one of a multitude of announcements made this week at the AWS gathering. Industry analysts were provided with background on 62 planned releases earlier this week, according to Vellante.

The sheer volume of news-making moves by AWS creates a more challenging landscape for its competitors. “By introducing new services faster, that keeps the pace and that’s what’s hard to copy,” Furrier said. “The only play for the competition, like Google and like Microsoft, is to change the goalposts. They’ve got to change the playing field on Amazon.”

The analysts also noted that AWS Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy spent a good deal of his keynote remarks on Wednesday focused on the context of the cloud computing market.

“He’s very sensitive to people misinterpreting growth,” said Vellante, who pointed out that AWS holds a significant lead in the infrastructure as a service market with more than 50 percent. “They’re a $26 billion to $27 billion business exclusively focused on infrastructure as a service, and they’re totally transparent about the size of that business. The absolute number in terms of revenue growth is much higher for Amazon.”

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s wall-to-wall coverage of AWS re:Invent:

Photo: AWS