For all the panic about how other cloud providers will compete with market leader Amazon Web Services, the more timely question might be: Why would they want to compete?

If the end goal of today’s virtualized cloud infrastructure is to narrow the focus of business onto applications, why not outsource the rest to Amazon.com Inc., asked Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick) (pictured, left), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio.

Showcase customer Nextdoor.com Inc. took the stage at the AWS Summit today in San Francisco to argue this point, saying that Amazon lets its team focus on making its app great by taking care of everything else.

Frick joined his co-hosts Lisa Martin (@Luccazara) (pictured, center) and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41) (pictured, right) during the Summit to discuss the AWS’s efforts to productize public cloud offerings and how rivals are attempting to encroach on AWS’s marketshare.

“How do you compete with the scale? And who wants to compete in infrastructure scale if you’re a company that’s building a web-centric or native application?” Frick asked.

Fair enough, but cloud providers Microsoft Corp., IBM Corp. and Google Inc. sure want to compete.

Google’s success story now an open book

And what application maker would not want the technology that made Google the most valuable company in the world? That’s exactly what Google is offering, as they put its “house sauce” up for sale in the form of relational database Spanner, Gilbert explained.

“Google is still building out for commercial access the services that they built internally for their own use. So you have what’s a spectacular relational database that’s globally distributed called Spanner, but it’s not actually something that commercial customers are used to,” he said. “It’s in many ways better than anything that commercial developers have access to, but it’s a bit of a migration hurdle in terms of learning.”

Amazon cleverly cuts around this learning curve, Martin stated. “Amazon is now starting to productize some of the technologies, like Amazon Connect that was announced last month, a virtual call center that they use in house,” she said.

But at least the legacy companies are still preferred for legacy apps, right?

“If you look at the legacy application space, you might think Microsoft, IBM — do they have an advantage there?” Martin asked. But even here, Amazon appears to be encroaching. Amazon’s deal with VMware may be a signal that they are equipped to bring legacy apps to their cloud, Martin stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of AWS Summit 2017 San Francisco.

Photo: SiliconANGLE