Andy Jassy, Amazon AWS Source: CNBC

At its annual customer conference in Las Vegas this week, Amazon's cloud business, Amazon Web Services, announced several new products. A few of them compete directly with smaller companies that already offer similar products running on Amazon's cloud. AWS is the world's biggest public cloud, generating $6.68 billion in revenue for Amazon in the third quarter, up 46 percent year over year. But as Amazon expands into countless new areas, from grocery stores to health care, some companies that have previously worked with Amazon have found a partner becoming the competition overnight.

Retailers that sell products to consumers have recognized Amazon's expanding role. While some continue to use Amazon as a cloud provider, others, like Gap and Walmart, have opted to standardize on clouds from other companies, like Microsoft and Google. Similarly, software providers could start to consider alternatives as Amazon's cloud business continues to widen its product lineup, even if AWS is the clear market leader.

'They're profiting from our use of resources'