In the Data Center world we in general care more about what Amazon is doing in AWS than what is happening with the Kindle and other Amazon.com retail efforts. I've commented in the past how Amazon.com's quarterly press releases consistently list AWS last which implies it is the least important of things Jeff Bezos wants discussed. The latest press release does the same with three items on AWS.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that Amazon DynamoDB – the fastest growing AWS service ever – is now available in both the EU (Ireland) andAsia Pacific(Tokyo) Regions. Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides extremely fast and predictable performance with seamless scalability.
- AWS lowered prices for the 19th time in five years by reducing reserved instance prices for Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS, as well as reducing on-demand pricing for Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Amazon ElastiCache.
- AWS launched AWS Marketplace, an online store that makes it easy for customers to find, compare, and immediately start using the software and services they need to build software systems and products, and run their businesses. With AWS Marketplace, software and SaaS providers with offerings that run in the AWS Cloud can benefit from increased awareness, simplified deployment, and automated billing. AWS Marketplace brings the same simple, trusted, and secure online shopping experience that customers enjoy onAmazon.comto software built for the AWS platform, streamlining the process of doing research and purchasing software.
The top three items are about the Kindle.
- Kindle Fire remains the #1 bestselling, most gifted, and most wished for product across the millions of items available onAmazon.comsince launch. In the first quarter, 9 out of 10 of the top sellers onAmazon.comwere digital products – Kindle, Kindle books, movies, music and apps.
- Amazonlaunched Kindle Touch Wi-Fi and Kindle Touch 3G on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es. The full line of Kindle e-ink readers is now available in over 175 countries around the world. Kindle Touch 3G is the most full-featured e-reader with an easy to use touchscreen and the unparalleled convenience of free 3G – no hunting for Wi-Fi spots, simply think of a book and download it. Kindle remains the bestseller on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it and Amazon.es since their launches.
- Amazonintroduced a new version of its popular Kindle for iPad app, which is the #5 free iPad app of all time and the #1 free books app on iPad. Millions of customers are using the new Kindle for iPad app, which is optimized for the high resolution display of the newest iPad.
The mistake I've been making is not thinking like the general population. The problem about talking AWS first is even though it is profitable and game and changing for Amazon, it has a much smaller audience than discussing Kindle.
Just because AWS is last on Jeff Bezos's list of things amazon.com does, doesn't mean it is the least important. Also, with Werner Vogels managing the AWS effort, Bezos doesn't need to focus on the effort.
AWS is hiring like crazy and CTO Werner Vogels is hitting the road to recruit more people to AWS.
And that leads me to another distributed problem – finding good engineers to help AWS build the next generation of cloud computing services. We’ve got a big vision and to realize it we need to find qualified engineers to join us on our journey. A quick look at the AWS career web sites reveals that we are hiring hundreds of people around the world.
Click here for our current job openings in the U.S.
Click here for our current job openings in Europe, Asia, and South Africa
Distributed problems call for innovative solutions. So next month we will be taking a distributed approach to finding engineers who want to join AWS. On May 17th and 18th we will be traveling to Houston, Minneapolis, and Nashville to interview candidates who want to join the AWS team. If you live in or near one of those cities and are interested in a meeting with us about careers in AWS check out this page. You can also simply email your resume to aws-recruiting@amazon.com