When we think “Amazon.com,” the first thing that comes to
our mind is purchasing CDs, books, or clothes. But after reading the article Active
in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing, it began to change my perception of
the company. Not only is it widely known for its online shopping service, but
it is also becoming more and more “active in the cloud.” According to the
article, the commonly known services that Amazon provides are soon to be a
“footnote” compared to the company’s larger goal of giving the planet access to
“an almost unimaginable amount of computing power.”
Cloud computing is the
practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store,
manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.
Take the New York Times, for example.
Without using a byte of its own processing power, the newspaper company was
able to provide free, fully searchable access to more than 15 million articles
from 1851-1922. Instead of using their own data, The Times was able to outsource and store their data by renting
storage space from Amazon. As Derek
Gottfrid, New York Times senior
software architect, says it best “if we had to do it internally, we probably
wouldn’t have done it.” Not only does this save space and cut costs, but like
Gottfrid said, it also makes things possible. Check out the video below on the potential
and promising future of cloud computing:
The article Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing,
provides us with present day applications of how this technology is being used
to benefit companies. One example that really struck me was a start-up company
by the name of Climate Corporation. See what they do in this video:
One aspect of the
company that is continuously mentioned is its immense amount of data. The near
10,000 simulations of the next two years’ weather that they perform for more
than one million location in the US would be impossible to carry out without
making a major investment in computers. And because it is such a major investment,
this start-up company would not have been able to handle the costs. As a
result, they turned to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and rented data storage and
computer server time for significantly less money. Without it, Climate
Corporation may not be able to assist thousands of farmers across the nation
like it does today.
The article Active in Cloud, Amazon Reshapes Computing
may, at first glance, give the readers a bug-free representation, but it fails
to mention downfalls such as AWS outages.
On techspot.com there was an article describing a recent outage that AWS had, resulting
in several of today’s popular web destinations and services including Netflix, Reddit,
and Pinterest. Although the outage only lasted for a few hours, it still
resulted in these websites and services being shut down, frustrating their customers.
It may not seem significant, but as an owner of Netflix, for example, it should
be concerning, as a frustrated customer might go in search of another service.
More severely, I
found an instance described on businessinsider.com where AWS had a more severe
crash. This time, an AWS customer, Chartbeat, lost approximately 11 hours of
historical data that was not recoverable as a result of the outage. Although they may have saved money by using AWS, there is no saving the data they lost, as this is the risk a customer has to take.
In conclusion, when
we discuss cloud computing, it comes down to cutting costs versus security. As
you can see with Climate Corporation, AWS saved them a significant amount of money
whereas Chartbeat, who took the same approach, ended up permanently losing data
as a result of an outage. Although the risk of losing data is low, it is
evident that Amazon fails to properly back up data, no matter what they
tell their customers. For this reason, the future for services like AWS is promising, but still a bit cloudy at this point.
Sources:
The discussion of this technology was very intriguing in class, and I am glad you researched more on this Brendan to provide us with some perspective on the business side of things. It is really hard to think that Amazon’s currently provided services could become a “footnote”, but with the money that companies are willing to spend to rent some storage space, it seems like the sky is the limit for how much Amazon can earn from these services. They are willing to spend this money because in the long run it ends up being much cheaper for them than having a database maintained and supervised. Even for consumers like me, this storage would have been a much better investment for than the $60 external hard drive I purchased before I left for college. I have barely used it and would guess that I have only used a few gigabytes of space, so with Amazon’s rate of 12.5 cents a gigabyte, I would have been much better off letting them store all of my data. As more and more companies figure this out, Amazon will get much more customers than they have now.
ReplyDeleteOne benefit that this cloud storage industry will begin to have for the general population is that many more companies that will be able to begin without having to shell out massive amounts of money for a database. The initial investment to start a business is very high, and with storing data being so important, many need to invest in a database. The sheer cost of a database can put companies in a financial hole from the start, but if they were to use cloud storage, this would no longer be the case. They could pay for what they use so it would be much more efficient for smaller businesses. For any company, the hardest part is getting up and running, so any way to cut costs such as this can really change the way things work. This technology can help companies that otherwise would not see the light of day become a reality.
One thing that worries me is how long Amazon can keep this profitable. The costs for new technologies are usually very high at first, but drop as time goes on and more competition arrives. While Amazon is charging 12.5 cents/GB now and being profitable, in 5 years what will they be charging? If they have to charge less, but still pay high salaries for employees to maintain these databases, will this affect profit margins? Of course Amazon has brilliant people working for them and I’m sure they can find a way around this. However, there is always the chance that another company will find a cheaper, more efficient way to maintain their databases, thus being able to charge less than Amazon and take away customers. As a consumer, I am not complaining about cheaper technology prices in the future, but investors and the company itself must look to the future to consider all possible threats to their business.
The discussion of this technology was very intriguing in class, and I am glad you researched more on this Brendan to provide us with some perspective on the business side of things. It is really hard to think that Amazon’s currently provided services could become a “footnote”, but with the money that companies are willing to spend to rent some storage space, it seems like the sky is the limit for how much Amazon can earn from these services. They are willing to spend this money because in the long run it ends up being much cheaper for them than having a database maintained and supervised. Even for consumers like me, this storage would have been a much better investment for than the $60 external hard drive I purchased before I left for college. I have barely used it and would guess that I have only used a few gigabytes of space, so with Amazon’s rate of 12.5 cents a gigabyte, I would have been much better off letting them store all of my data. As more and more companies figure this out, Amazon will get much more customers than they have now.
ReplyDeleteOne benefit that this cloud storage industry will begin to have for the general population is that many more companies that will be able to begin without having to shell out massive amounts of money for a database. The initial investment to start a business is very high, and with storing data being so important, many need to invest in a database. The sheer cost of a database can put companies in a financial hole from the start, but if they were to use cloud storage, this would no longer be the case. They could pay for what they use so it would be much more efficient for smaller businesses. For any company, the hardest part is getting up and running, so any way to cut costs such as this can really change the way things work. This technology can help companies that otherwise would not see the light of day become a reality.
One thing that worries me is how long Amazon can keep this profitable. The costs for new technologies are usually very high at first, but drop as time goes on and more competition arrives. While Amazon is charging 12.5 cents/GB now and being profitable, in 5 years what will they be charging? If they have to charge less, but still pay high salaries for employees to maintain these databases, will this affect profit margins? Of course Amazon has brilliant people working for them and I’m sure they can find a way around this. However, there is always the chance that another company will find a cheaper, more efficient way to maintain their databases, thus being able to charge less than Amazon and take away customers. As a consumer, I am not complaining about cheaper technology prices in the future, but investors and the company itself must look to the future to consider all possible threats to their business.
Brendan I think what Amazon is doing with their business is so cool. They have changed their image for the better over the company’s lifespan, and are continue to do this with Amazon Glacier and their cloud services in general. First, Amazon was only known to the public, as am Ebay where you don’t bid on products. Then it became a supplier when it released the kindle and the online ebook market. And, clearly Amazon is not settling there. They are giving out storage to people for a very low cost and do not have to change their business very much to do this.
ReplyDeleteLet’s take a look at storage in general. There was once a time when people could not decide what laptop or desktop to buy. Every model was almost identical but one offered 100 GB of storage, another 250 GB and the best one 500 GB. Then, if you wanted more storage, you had to purchase an external hard drive or a flash drive and make sure you had that with you when ever you needed access to the data stored on it. Like Dr. Tallon said, some people only need data for a short amount of time. Some data is only required to be read once and then can be cleaned up and eventually discarded, however, for that short period of time, it needs to be stored. Big data seems to be the new concern in the IT industry, so the fact that Amazon is able to rent out storage at an affordable cost and when it is convenient to the customers is a very creative use of their resources. The scalability feature of Amazon’s storage is what makes it so attractive.
Brendan, I particularly liked that you added a video on a company that uses Amazon to solve their big data problem. But, I thought it was really clever that your Uncle Sully group realized any company could benefit from Amazon’s service. You guys were planning on investing in Amazon Glacier, which would allow Uncle Sully to put his archives in online storage, getting rid of the need for filing cabinets in his office. What a great idea for such a simple task!
The hardest thing that Amazon is going to have to face is outages. People have dealt with hard drive crashes for decades now, and every time many people walk away with a lot of missing data that cannot be retrieved. Now, individual people who own the computer are to blame for their own data loss in this situation, but when Amazon offers their own data storage, people get very upset when their technology does not function properly. Amazon is going to have to figure out a way to be flawless because they have so much to lose if their services are not perfect in the eyes of their customers.
I think that very soon everyone will be using a cloud for their data and other companies will need to jump on the bandwagon to compete with the already successful Amazon. It is great to see technology changing and people’s needs being met in a creative and innovative way.