AWS is quietly killing off services under its new CEO

Updated July 31 10:20 BST with more comment from AWS.

AWS is quietly thinning out its myriad services – to a mixture of praise and deep concern at how the service deprecations are being communicated. 

Among those no longer allowing new customers to spin up resources is AWS CodeCommit, the hyperscaler’s managed source control service.

The hyperscaler quietly stopped onboarding new customers on June 6. (Although details of this move published in response to a customer question on the AWS re:Post forum was subsequently deleted.)

On July 25, AWS published a blog with guidance on how to migrate to an alternative Git provider service like Microsoft’s GitHub, or GitLab. (The blog notably does not mention the future of CodeCommit in any form.)

CodeCommit was launched in 2015 to let users host Git repos. Customers included online car retailer Edmunds.com which was (at least in 2016) using it to host “application code, XML files, metadata for videos and photos, and Chef files in private repositories with no size limits…”

“AWS continues to invest in security, availability, and performance improvements for AWS CodeCommit. You can rely on AWS Support to continue assisting you with any questions you may have about AWS CodeCommit. However, we do not plan to introduce new features to AWS CodeCommit, except for security and availability updates” an AWS staffer responded to a confused customer in a (now deleted) re:Post response.

Among the services also no longer onboarding new customers are CloudSearch, Cloud9, Workdocs, Snowmobile, Amazon QLDB and apparently a handful of still-being-discovered others; a pruning that also follows a double-digit set of service deprecations last year. 

UPDATED: Early July 31 AWS's Jeff Barr confirmed that S3 Select, CloudSearch, Cloud9, SimpleDB, Forecast, Data Pipeline, and CodeCommit" are the services that are discontinuing access to new customers.

Worried customers noted that services like AWS Amplify, a front-end app development suite, have a "pretty strong dependency" on CodeCommit – although it now also supports Bitbucket, GitHub, and GitLab.

See also: 119 new AWS services and features in 30 words each

AWS’s way of communicating that it would not continue to accept new customers for these services (typically with a customer email and a short note at the top of a service page) faced stark criticism.

Tracking last year’s AWS service deprecations, engineer Alex Costa noted “unfortunately, AWS does not make it easy to find this information in a centralized place”; AWS security expert Scott Piper was also unimpressed.

He told The Stack: "This is chaos and a bad look for AWS to be killing services like this by not announcing it. Currently, I don't believe AWS is breaking environments immediately, because for existing users, they still are able to use the services. New accounts cannot, but there is a message in the console with the errors saying they can get access by asking support. However, in a year, AWS will be shutting down QLDB, and likely these other services. So customers are going to have to migrate. It's especially ironic for QLDB, as the selling point of that service is that it's immutable (ie. the data cannot change), but now customers are being forced to change to something else."

With regard to CloudSearch, a blog post by two product managers from OpenSearch notes that AWS “continues to support CloudSearch and continues to invest in security and availability improvements.” (AWS is not onboarding new users and is encouraging a move to OpenSearch.)

The AWS deprecations come under new CEO Matt Garman who was anointed in May 2024 – having first joined AWS as an MBA intern in 2005.

His appointment was welcomed by many. As AWS watcher and cloud economist Corey Quinn wrote at the time: “AWS is in dire need of a shakeup – from moving past the GenAI hype and the problematic practice of launching confusing, costly secondary services rather than improving the originals, to addressing the internal power struggles reminiscent of ‘The Battle of Conway’s Law’  playing out across their product catalog. 

“Installing a CEO who has been with the company since his internship might just be the fresh start AWS needs” Quinn posted. 

AWS service deprecations: Separating the wheat from the chaff?

AWS has released a frenzy of products and services over the years. Not all have seen wide adoption and the deprecations had some supporters.

“AWS is deprecating the things no one uses. It needs to happen and it needs to happen ASAP. They need their best people on building the best fundamentals” said Randall Hunt of AWS consulting partner Caylent on X – later updating this comment to emphasise that when it comes to the CodeCommit deprecation "this needs to be reversed immediately and appropriate notices need to be provided. I agree with CodeCommit's deprecation. However, 100s of your own projects reference and depend on this."

Joseph Ruscio of VC firm Heavybit added: “This was unfortunately predictable and a problem years in the making. It became two(-pizza team) easy for any ambitious PM at AWS to launch any random service if they could make a barely plausible case for it” he posted on X. 

An AWS spokesperson told The Stack: "After careful consideration, we decided to close new customer access to a few services so we can focus on delivering the innovation that customers value most. These services will remain available to existing customers, and we will continue to make security, availability, and performance enhancements, however we do not plan to introduce new features. We will continue to support our customers, whether they continue to use these services, or they migrate to other AWS offerings or alternative third-party solutions."

Not everyone agreed. “One of the things I loved about AWS was that when they released something, you could build on it confidently for years and know that it’d be supported. In [sic] doesn’t take much to shake that assumption, so these recent EOL’s are worrying” posted one engineer.

AWS has made significant cuts in recent years, like many large technology companies, with Amazon making 27,000 layoffs over 2022 and 2023. 

It also faces arguably sharper competition from the likes of a rejuvenated Google Cloud and indeed Oracle Cloud than it did a few years ago.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said of AWS on the company’s last earnings call, defending a slowdown in growth: “We remain very bullish on AWS. We're at $100 billion-plus annualized revenue run rate, yet 85% or more of the global IT spend remains on-premises. And this is before you even calculate GenAI, most of which will be created over the next 10 to 20 years from scratch and on the cloud. There is a very large opportunity in front of us.”

But the cuts have worried many, not least given AWS’s historical reputation for continuing to support even ageing offerings with few users.

As Vadym Kazulkin, Head Of Development at ip.labs, put it on LinkedIn: “Companies constantly face a pressure to invest huge efforts into maintenance (like upgrading RDS database to the newest supported version, or upgrading code to the supported version of the Lambda managed programming language or, upgrading to the supported (non backwards compatible) AWS SDK programming language version). 

“But now we face an additional huge pressure to migrate the AWS entire services to the new alternatives (outside of AWS). I totally understand that services/products have lifecycles, and it demands very tough business decisions. But I at least expect the proper communication by AWS to that the customers keep trust. What will come next? Price increase for the existing (core) AWS services? It's really worring [sic] when I also see how many smart people at Amazon recently quit their job.... Coincidence?”

Scott Piper added: ""Clearly AWS has made a change of direction this year from their historic position of keeping services and features around forever. We've seen a few services getting killed off this year, but this week is a slaughter, and AWS is doing this without any public notification, so now customers are getting scared. When you see a blog post or console message about migrating to another service, is that because AWS is being helpful to give you more options, or is that because they are killing the service."

Have views on how the AWS deprecations have been communicated, concerned at breaking changes, or delighted at the focus? Drop us a line.