You’ve given a good description of IBM for most of the 80s through the 00s. For the first 20 years of that decline “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” was still considered a truism. I wouldn’t be surprised if AWS pulls it off for as long as IBM did.
I think that the worst thing that can happen to an org is to have that kind of status ("nobody ever got fired for buying our stuff" / "we're the only game in town").
It means no longer being hungry. Then you start making mistakes. You stop innovating. And then you slowly lose whatever kind of edge you had, but you don't realize that you're losing it until it's gone
Unfortunately I think AWS is there now. When you talk to folks there they don’t have great answers to why their services are behind or not as innovative as other things out there. The answer is basically “you should choose AWS because we’re AWS.” It’s not good.
