1. The "support pack", né x-pack, that adds features and support, is billed per node and for a minimum of 5 nodes, adding such "optional" features as centralized authentication, and, until recently, TLS (!) and basic auth (which have been integrated in the basic product a while ago).
2. The hosting part, where Elastic-the-company hosts the service for you. This does not include the "support pack" from 1.
Now, as I understand it, Elastic's issue with AWS is the hosting part. I've never used the managed AWS ES, but if I understand it correctly, if you wanted to use any of the "support" features, you would have had to purchase the pack from Elastic.
> Elasticsearch company produced pretty great product, they wanted to earn some bucks on additional features (I think alerts were only in paid version) and cloud hosting for rather reasonable price. And here came AWS, took their product to sell it as their own. This does not sound fair.
This doesn't sound right to me. AWS never sold "Elasticsearch, the product, as their own". They've sold a hosted version of it, the same way they sell a hosted version of Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, etc (RDS — Relational Database Service). The advanced features you talked about were separate.
In this, yes, they compete directly with one of Elastic's offerings, namely "hosted Elasticsearch".
I would understand the outcry against "AWS selling Elastic's product as their own" if there had been a similar outcry for PostgreSQL, Ubuntu, or any of the myriad other services they offer.
The thing is, Elastic put out a product, Elasticsearch, as open source. Now they've put out a second product, "Elastic Cloud", based on the first, and they don't like that other companies are able to use the first product in order to compete with them on the second.
It's like if Ford introduced a "managed car" service, with a driver, and suddenly started complaining that Uber drivers should pay extra for the same Ford car. This is also kind of like the whole "licensed repair shops" thing.
Yes, a Ford car costs money to buy, but it's the same price for everyone, be it a grandma looking to cart around her grandkids once in a while, or a professional driver offering to drive people around for money every day. The price has nothing to do with it, since AWS honored the Elasticsearch license.
There are two non-free parts to ES:
1. The "support pack", né x-pack, that adds features and support, is billed per node and for a minimum of 5 nodes, adding such "optional" features as centralized authentication, and, until recently, TLS (!) and basic auth (which have been integrated in the basic product a while ago).
2. The hosting part, where Elastic-the-company hosts the service for you. This does not include the "support pack" from 1.
Source: https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions/cloud
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Now, as I understand it, Elastic's issue with AWS is the hosting part. I've never used the managed AWS ES, but if I understand it correctly, if you wanted to use any of the "support" features, you would have had to purchase the pack from Elastic.
> Elasticsearch company produced pretty great product, they wanted to earn some bucks on additional features (I think alerts were only in paid version) and cloud hosting for rather reasonable price. And here came AWS, took their product to sell it as their own. This does not sound fair.
This doesn't sound right to me. AWS never sold "Elasticsearch, the product, as their own". They've sold a hosted version of it, the same way they sell a hosted version of Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, etc (RDS — Relational Database Service). The advanced features you talked about were separate.
In this, yes, they compete directly with one of Elastic's offerings, namely "hosted Elasticsearch".
I would understand the outcry against "AWS selling Elastic's product as their own" if there had been a similar outcry for PostgreSQL, Ubuntu, or any of the myriad other services they offer.
The thing is, Elastic put out a product, Elasticsearch, as open source. Now they've put out a second product, "Elastic Cloud", based on the first, and they don't like that other companies are able to use the first product in order to compete with them on the second.
It's like if Ford introduced a "managed car" service, with a driver, and suddenly started complaining that Uber drivers should pay extra for the same Ford car. This is also kind of like the whole "licensed repair shops" thing.
Yes, a Ford car costs money to buy, but it's the same price for everyone, be it a grandma looking to cart around her grandkids once in a while, or a professional driver offering to drive people around for money every day. The price has nothing to do with it, since AWS honored the Elasticsearch license.