As the cloud technology industry consolidates around a few key players in the computing space including Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure, enterprises are hard pressed to extract as much value as possible from their solution offerings.

“All of a sudden, you have to think about how you are going to architect it, how am I going to write the code, how am I going to deploy that code? All of that stuff is a little different than when you had 20 servers. … We need to be educating people about how to do that,” said Aaron Newman (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of CloudCheckr Inc.

Newman spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this week’s AWS Summit in New York City. They discussed how CloudCheckr is helping businesses configure their cloud deployments, including AWS and Azure environments and then manage them to maximize cost, security and automation, as well as how AWS is reshaping the cloud market. (* Disclosure below.)

Cost-effective deployments of AWS

Newman made an analogy between a data center and an old-fashioned power plant. Once power plants became centralized for everyone to use, people started turning their attention to best practices for cost reduction and savings, he explained.

“Now I need to start putting in a meter and turning off the lights at night, energy efficient windows and insulation … we’re in the same situation. Yes Amazon is cheaper, but if you don’t meter it, you don’t understand it, you don’t try to put insulation on. But you have to do those things in the cloud. … It’s complicated, but you’re going to save a lot of money if you do it right,” Newman said.

Newman also explained the general fear surrounding consolidation: As the industry consolidates, pricing models will start to favor vendors rather than customers, he explained. AWS has already started to offer more competitive pricing in response to market shifts, he pointed out.

“AWS are the smartest people out there; they know when they need to change and pivot. Somehow they are a billion-dollar company, and they can still pivot,” Newman concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is an unpaid media partner for AWS Summit. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE