Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was one of the attendees at this week’s D6 Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., to be interviewed on stage, where he talked about Kindle at length. But right after his chat with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, I caught up with him to discuss Amazon Web Services and his company’s efforts in cloud computing. Here is a short excerpt from that conversation, captured on my Sanyo Xacti. In particular, he talks about…
- How and when Amazon began its cloud computing effort.
- Why Amazon has become an innovator with Amazon Web Services and how it relates to their core business of being an online retailer.
- Whether or not Wall Street recognizes Amazon’s cloud efforts.
- What’s next for Amazon Web Services.
- Whether or not Amazon has plans for a VC fund or for cloud computing startups.
For even more info about Amazon’s cloud computing efforts, join us at our upcoming conference, Structure ‘08, where CTO Werner Vogels will be delivering a keynote address.
Wow! Nice exclusive interview grab Om!
How did you pull this off? Was it the Gigaom clout? Or are you dating his sister?
@ Ben,
very simple – just asked him if he had a few minutes for me. best
good interview Om.
He didn’t mention anything about Dynamo
I would be interested to see if they could get windows server 2008 virtualization running on ec2. good interview om.
Great interview and insights. Very good!
Jeff, a legend, appears to be a humble person. Also, the way he laughs is infectious. :)
Good one and nice job with the Xacti :). The highlight for me was Jeff articulating the fact that their Web Services business stems from their own internal need for a set of API’s to mitigate the “fine grain coordination” between their network and applications groups!
Things are getting more and more interesting with App Engine announcing their pricing. I’ve delved into some of the ways App Engine actually beats AWS by considerable margins on my blog at:
http://adamfisk.wordpress.com/2008/05/28/where-google-app-engine-spanks-amazons-web-services-s3-ec2-simple-db-sqs/
I can’t wait to hear what Werner Vogels has to say on the topic at Structure ‘08.
-Adam
Cloud compute startup that Bezos personally funded, everyone should check it out. They are bridging the gap between on demand infrastructure and test lab automation.
I don’t think Jeff answered the question regarding Wall Street – What people want to know is if Wall Street has recognized this technology edge and new market and factored that into the pricing of AMZN stock -
i seen video i think Jeff answered the question regarding Wall Street. They are bridging the gap between on demand infrastructure and test lab automation. People often wonder about this aspect of Amazon’s web services strategy
Nice interview……….I learned a few things about Amazon and Jeff Bezos
Nice interview.
Here are my thoughts as a consultant trying to leverage Amazon into a B2C/B2B client….I don’t think Amazon has done a good job of marketing, and promoting these new technology services. As Jeff put it, some of this stuff is years old. There might be companies using it, but it’s still not clear to me how I can leverage it and what the details are.
They also don’t do a good job of providing help. If you send Amazon an email (which seems to be the only way to communicate with them, and get more information on the services), you get a reply from someone overseas in 2-3 days. …. and of course, the reply is poor, so you have to play 20 emails because they dont really understand english.
Again, my point is that Amazon had good technoologies, they can be a bigger force, but I think they are still playing around.
Om, that last comment from Jim on 10/13/08 raises a fascinating question: what is Amazon doing to improve its marketing of AWS? This is a very deserving topic. Have you written on this topic in recent months? I’d love to hear from anyone who has.
thanks,
Graeme
graeme (at) tech-surf-blog (dot) com