Zynga Taking on AWS as an IaaS Provider

Zynga may be on its way to becoming a serious competitor to Amazon’s robust Infrastructure as a Service, since the social network gaming giant will soon sell cloud IaaS to game makers in need of a hosting platform.

Zynga may not be the first company to offer cloud IaaS, but it will be the first to target game companies for their service, which could be their way of taking advantage of the booming online game industry. Oddly enough, Zynga’s current situation is similar to Amazon’s a few years ago, when the retailing giant went from just selling books to becoming an all around online retail outfit that also sells other retailers’ products, until they eventually started selling raw computing IaaS.

However, a more direct comparison for Zynga would be the New York Stock Exchange’s efforts to sell cloud services to traders, since both companies are trying to sell IaaS that are customized to the needs of their target industry.

From Reliance to Competition

It is also interesting to note that Zynga’s move into the cloud industry has now put them in direct competition with Amazon, even though they used to rely on the retail giant for 80% of their computing capacity a year ago. Since then, Zynga has changed lowered their reliance on Amazon to 20%, which should be great news to investors who are complaining about the company’s recent losses, because it could only mean that Zynga’s long term projects have taken a turn for the better.

Zynga’s Advantage as a Cloud Service Provider

Zynga’s main advantage as a cloud computing service provider is that they have extensive experience and expertise on the industry that they are targeting. Their successful online games and the length of time in which they have run means that they know the ins and outs of the industry, and can tailor their services to cater to the needs of game companies.

Zynga’s move away from Amazon also serves as glimmer of hope for enterprises, as it proves that companies can build their own private clouds and profit from its use without relying on public cloud.

It is believed that game developers will flock to Zynga’s platform since it is designed as a ready-to-use platform for online games, and this may result in a boost in the online gaming industry, as developers who were previously held back by difficulties in setting up an infrastructure can now turn to Zynga’s services and use it as a turnkey approach.

2 comments

  1. pop-ups on your blog are bordering on the annoying. you may want to moderate them a little. It woud be interesting to see what happens with Zynga. A specialty house in a market that is well into the commoditization (sp?) phase. If they did not make money on games, what makes them think that they can make money off game designers. The game business is very sensitive and changes by the minute. Many people think that a new platform will win against many other formats. Take a look at Microsoft, they sunk so much money into their game platforms, it’s hard to see how anyone else do better. On the other hand, the Wii did crazy things with a really simple design. Go figure 🙂

  2. If Zynga had better analytic tools for their AWS services like those offered by Cloudyn they may have found easier ways to save $$ very quickly rather than having to do so by creating its own IaaS service. 

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