Amazon Web Services Tech Open House, Werner Vogels and Mardi Gras

Feb 8 was an Amazon Web Services event with a Mardi Gras theme.  Werner Vogels opened the short presentations.

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Werner Vogels
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Cool,  from  brought his "coding for libraries" buddies to the amazon tech open house tonight 
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customer David from  presenting at the Amazon Technology Open House - 
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Madri Gras at Amazon Technology Open House getting ready (including Jazz Band) - 
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Mardi Gras at Amazon Technology Open House is this afternoon!
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Seattleites, join us for Mardi Gras at Amazon Technology Open House and presentation by David Friedberg of 

There was probably close to 200 people there.

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There was a half dozen Amazon recruiters there.  Running a search on Amazon's career website for "Amazon Web Services" it looks like there are 1,200 jobs open (63 pages with 20 jobs per page).

Job Search > “amazon web services”

Product Manager - Amazon Web Services (ID 160987) US, WA, Seattle
Product Manager: Amazon Web Services   Amazon Web Services ("AWS") is blazing new trails as a pioneer in the extremely high potential Web Services arena. AWS is looking for a Product Manager to help define and drive the product strategy and roadmap that will help a new AWS offering. This is a highly visible position that will interact at all levels of the AWS and Amazon.com…
Read more and Apply
Principle Business Intelligence Engineer, AWS Data Services (ID 166121) US, WA, Seattle
Amazon Web Services is looking for a talented Business Intelligence Engineer who has a passion for Big Data systems.  Come join the team that is building a disruptive new service for processing Big Data streams.  Our globally distributed service must be able to process over 2 million records per second at launch, and eventually scale to handle over 100x that traffic.  It is…
Read more and Apply
Sr. Professional Services Consultant - Amazon Web Services (ID 164839) US, VA, Herndon
Would you like a career that gives you opportunities to help customers and partners use cloud computing web services to do big new things faster, at lower cost?  Do you like to work on-site in a variety of business environments, leading teams through high impact projects using the newest technology?   Would you like to gain the deepest customer and partner insights on maximizing…
Read more and Apply

Here is a slide of Amazon's data centers and CDNs.

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Got a chance to sit down with a Microsoft guy and an Amazon guy while watching the presentations and chatted briefly with James Hamilton.  The event was well worth the time, and I keep on hearing of other friends who are joining Amazon.

One person asked when I was going to join Amazon.  After 26 years at HP, Apple, and Microsoft, I really enjoy being on my own. :-)  But, who knows maybe it would be fun to work for Amazon for a year or two.

James Hamilton and other Amazon execs discuss AWS DynamoDB

James Hamilton posts about DynamoDB.

Amazon DynamoDB: NoSQL in the Cloud

Finally! I’ve been dying to talk about DynamoDB since work began on this scalable, low-latency, high-performance NoSQL service at AWS. This morning, AWS announced availability of DynamoDB: Amazon Web Services Launches Amazon DynamoDB – A New NoSQL Database Service Designed for the Scale of the Internet.

In a past blog entry, One Size Does Not Fit All, I offered a taxonomy of 4 different types of structured storage system, argued that Relational Database Management Systems are not sufficient, and walked through some of the reasons why NoSQL databases have emerged and continue to grow market share quickly. The four database categories I introduced were: 1) features-first, 2) scale-first, 3) simple structure storage, and 4) purpose-optimized stores. RDBMS own the first category.

DynamoDB targets workloads fitting into the Scale-First and Simple Structured storage categories where NoSQL database systems have been so popular over the last few years.  Looking at these two categories in more detail, Scale-First is:

Scale-first applications are those that absolutely must scale without bound and being able to do this without restriction is much more important than more features. These applications are exemplified by very high scale web sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo, and Amazon.com. Some of these sites actually do make use of relational databases but many do not. The common theme across all of these services is that scale is more important than features and none of them could possibly run on a single RDBMS. As soon as a single RDBMS instance won’t handle the workload, there are two broad possibilities: 1) shard the application data over a large number of RDBMS systems, or 2) use a highly scalable key-value store.

And, here is a video with James and others at Amazon.

Amazon rumored to go Physical, Brick and Mortar Kindle store to open in Seattle

Amazon has disrupted the Retail Business Model with no physical presence.  Amazon Web Services is a self-servicing model of IT services.

There have been tons of articles written about the flaw of a Brick and Mortar store, and how Amazon has an unfair advantage without the costs of Brick and Mortar stores.

But, what happens if Amazon does open a store?

Amazon in the Process of Launching a Retail Store

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Amazon sources close to the situation have told us that the company is planning on rolling out a retail store in Seattle within the next few months. This project is a test to gauge the market and see if a chain of stores would be profitable. They intend on going with the small boutique route with the main emphasis on books from their growing line of Amazon Exclusives and selling their e-readers and tablets.

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The company has already contracted the design through a shell company, which is not unusual for Amazon. When Amazon releases new products to the FCC it is always done through anonymous proxy companies to avoid disclosure to their competition on what they are working on. They are doing this for the actual first store layout and design, while modeling themselves after Apple.

What would happen if AWS had people to help sell AWS?

 

Amazon Web Services Technology Open House, Feb 8, 2012 Seattle, Mardi Gras Theme

For those of you in the Seattle area there is a Amazon Web Services Technology open house on Feb 8, 2012.

Amazon Technology Open House – February 8, 2012

It’s Mardi Gras time, and Amazon Web Services invites you to come learn about the magic taking place in the cloud with a Mardi Gras-inspired celebration. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels will kick off the evening highlighting recent innovations at AWS and then introduce Seattle’s newest addition to the local tech community - The Climate Corporation. The Climate Corporation combines Big Data, climatology and agronomy to protect the $3 trillion global agriculture industry with fully automated weather insurance products. You’ll hear more about the business from The Climate Corporation’s CEO, David Friedberg, as he discusses this unique application of cloud computing.

 

We look forward to welcoming you on campus – look for us in the Van Vorst building under the purple, green and gold!

Who should attend:

  • Technology leaders, professionals and educators such as CIO’s, CTO’s, IT managers, consultants, SDEs, solution architects, administrators and professors and students of engineering and computer sciences.

Agenda:

5:30pm – 6:00pm Registration and networking
6:00pm – 6:15pm Introduction with Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO
6:15pm – 6:30pm David Friedberg, CEO of The Climate Corporation
6:30pm – 7:30pm Closing and Networking

Where/When:

February 8, 2012
Van Vorst Building
Amazon’s Campus in South Lake Union
426 Terry Avenue North
Seattle, WA 98109

Amazon lures Data Center Architect from the Mouse (Disney)

The data center community is small and news travels fast.  One of the moves that became official through LinkedIn is Bill Hunter leaving the Mouse (Disney) for Amazon.

Bill Hunter Moving on. Last day at Disney. Starting at Amazon 2/1/2012. New opportunity! Thanks to all the fantastic people at Walt Disney who made the past 5 years great!

Bill is based out of Seattle so he doesn't have to move, but he will be on the road more than ever.

I expect to be traveling more, and
Globally. Should know more after this week.

Now that Bill has joined amazon he will be less visible, but i am sure the vendor community will be pummeling him with e-mails looking to take him to lunch, dinner, drinks, maybe a party in LV.

Amazon made a good hire and there is a more consistent need for data center capacity than the Mouse.  Especially in emerging markets.