As Amazon's global imprint continues to expand, the e-commerce giant is celebrating the 15th anniversary of Simple Storage Service, Amazon S3, the first of its cloud service offerings. Launched back in March 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has since become a model for not only other e-commerce entities but a wide range of industries that incorporate cloud services.
"We've been the pioneers in this space. The concept of cloud computing didn't exist before this, and we got a real head start in building these services. Also, the close relationship with our customers — being able to get continuous feedback from our customers — have resulted in the fact that now we have more than 200 services," Werner Vogels, Amazon's chief technical officer, told Cheddar.
Vogels said Amazon's maturation into cloud services was a natural progression for the company because it has been "a tech company since day one." For client businesses, Amazon's low-cost cloud services with no long-term commitments were an immediate draw. And, while the pandemic has slowed the production of semiconductors for cloud computing chips, Vogels said Amazon has prepared for the exact scenario, building their own chips and redundancies in their systems.
"Remember, of course, that we learned a lot from building the supply chain for AWS from the tremendous effective supply chain that Amazon.com has, and as such we're building supply chains to 25 regions around the world that are all replicated and actually can sustain shortages in any of those supply chains," he noted.
Also, the tech industry isn't the only one benefitting from the cloud, according to Vogels. Many industries have been able to utilize the technology. Farmers have even found ways to use the services to manage data related to land cultivation and to create effective labor plans.
"If you travel outside of the U.S., what you meet a lot is these companies that are solving truly hard human problems," he said. "For example, in Indonesia, there's a company called HARA Token where smallholder rice farmers, they don't have an identity and as such cannot get loans, and so what this small company does is give them an identity, measure their piece of land, measure their yield, and make the data available to banks."
In order to be able to share more stories about how AWS impacts the world beyond business, Vogel traveled the globe for the Now Go Build video series highlighting startups tackling the aforementioned "hard human problems."
Updated March 19, 2021 at 6:00 p.m. ET to clarify that the name of the service launched 15 years ago was the Simple Storage Service, Amazon S3.
An analyst at JP Morgan is predicting massive future growth for Apple in its music and gaming divisions — to the tune of more than $8 billion in revenue by 2025. Cheddar News anchors Kristen Scholer and Hena Doba discuss the glowing forecast for the tech giant.
Catching you up on today’s top headlines with Bitcoin falling below $24,000, U.S. gas prices reaching above $5 on average, Tesla shareholders voting on a 3-for-1 stock split, and more.
On this episode of On The Job presented by ADP: Gemma Burgess, CEO of Ferguson Partners, explains what people are looking for in an employer, and how to convey positive work culture to potential employees; Amy Leschke-Kahle, Vice President of Performance Acceleration at The Marcus Buckingham Company, an ADP company, breaks down how encouraging employee engagement and empowering employee voices can benefit every workplace and busts a myth about employee engagement while working from home; Jim Huether, CEO of Hyperice, discusses Hyperice's new employee mental health initiative, known as the Workplace Alliance, with 100-plus companies to combat the ongoing mental health crisis and how they're taking a hands-on, data-driven approach to the mental health crisis.
Amy Leschke-Kahle, Vice President of Performance Acceleration at The Marcus Buckingham Company, an ADP company, joins Cheddar to discuss how encouraging employee engagement and empowering employee voices can benefit every workplace and busts a myth about employee engagement while working from home.
Jim Huether, CEO of Hyperice, joins Cheddar to discuss Hyperice's new employee mental health initiative, known as the Workplace Alliance, with 100-plus companies to combat the ongoing mental health crisis and how they're taking a hands-on, data-driven approach to the mental health crisis.
Consumer prices saw an 8.6 percent jump in May, with fuel prices showing the biggest surge, climbing 17 percent last month. As inflation continues to climb to levels not seen in 40 years, President Biden took to calling out ExxonMobil and other major oil companies, accusing them of holding back production while continuing to collect huge profits at the cost of the consumer. Mark Avallone, the president of Potomac Wealth Advisors, joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss. “They have reduced long-term expenditures. But why? Because the world is going to alternative energy and as consumers, if we thought that that welcome change to alternatives was going to happen without pain, we might have been mistaken," he said. "The less investment they make in oil because they're getting ready for a new world of electric vehicles, the less we're going to be prepared for oil shocks such as the one we got when Russia invaded Ukraine."
Catching you up on the stories you need to know this morning, the U.S. could soon get its first major gun safety law in years, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the U.S. capitol holds its second hearing, and today might just be the day the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, and decides on new gun laws.
