Amazon Web Services

September 2005

Werner Vogels

Vice President & Chief Technology Officer

What is Amazon.com?

• Online Retailer

– More than 50 million active customer accounts

– Seven countries: US, UK, Germany, Japan, France, Canada, China

• E-commerce Platform

– 975,000+ active seller accounts

• Technology Provider

– 120,000+ developers registered to use Amazon Web Services

– Hundreds of thousands of Associates

Amazon.com’s Global Operation

• 7 Web sites

• 9,000 Employees

• 20 Fulfillment Centers Worldwide

• Ship To More Than 225 Countries

• 49% of all shipments are delivered outside of the USA (2004)

• 44% of worldwide net sales is from the international segment (2004)

Amazon.com Fulfillment and Warehouse Center

Amazon.com’s Global Development

• Main goal is to drive innovation on behalf of customers

• Innovation in many areas– E-commerce

– Search (A9.com)

– Amazon Web Services

– Personalization

– Supply Chain

– Seller Platforms

– Digital Initiatives

• Small, loosely-coupled development teams comprised of the world’s brightest software developers and computer scientists

• Teams in the US, UK, India and South Africa

Amazon.com Customers• Buyers – over 50 million active customer accounts

• Sellers – More than 975,000 active seller accounts

– 26% of total units worldwide in Q4 2004 were sold by third parties

• Web Search Users - Users of A9.com search technology

• Web Site Owners (Associates) – people who own Web sites and link to Amazon in return for referral fees. Hundreds of thousands active associates.

• Developers – people who use Amazon Web Services to create applications and productivity tools.

– More than 120,000 registered developers

Amazon E-commerce Technology Platform

Amazon E-commerce Technology Platform

Search

Catalog Payments AssociatesSimilarities Order Pipeline

1-Click

Shopping CartPersonalization

Wish List

Marketplace ForecastingSeller Tools

Products Customers Orders

International much more…Distribution

Reviews

Features

Content

Amazon.com, .ca, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .co.jp, joyo.comWeb sites

Over 975,000 Active Seller Accounts

Amazon Web Services

Shoppers

Developers

The Amazon Web Services Mission

Expose the atomic-level pieces of the Amazon.com platform so that

software developers can build their own innovative and revenue-

generating Web sites and applications.

The Web Services Concept @ Amazon

• The Programmable Web Site:– Highly interoperable programming interface

– Remote access to data and functionality

– Decoupling of data and presentation

– Creation of a platform to attract software developers

– Unlocking creativity

– Leveraging technology investment

Why Does Amazon offer Web Services?

• Amazon has valuable data and technology

– Partners (Associates, sellers) want our data and technology

– Third-party developers extend Amazon’s technology platform

– They surprise us by building features we never thought of

• Lead ecommerce and Web development

– Driving fundamental shift in software development

– Leveraging others’ innovation

– Empowering entrepreneurs

– Facilitate the introduction into new markets

AWS Roots

• The very successful Associates program required better tools– for building more complex web sites

– For addressing an ever expanding dynamic item collection

• The mobile Amazon Anywhere program– Innovation on the mobile platform

– Addressing different form factors, interface languages & connection types

– Separating data from UI

– Server side data pre-processing

AWS Components

Amazon Technology Platform

Products HistoryCustomers

Amazon Web SitesAmazon.com

Amazon.jpAmazon.frAmazon.caAmazon.de

Amazon.co.ukAWS – Amazon Web Services

Amazon E-Commerce

Service (ECS)

Alexa Web Information

Service (AWIS)

AmazonManagement

Service

Seller Integration

AmazonSimple QueueService

AWS Dataflow

AWS - E-Commerce Service (ECS)

• Detailed information on all Amazon.* products– Real-time pricing and inventory information

• Millions of product images

• Customer-created content– Reviews, Wish Lists, etc.

• Extended search

• Remote Shopping Cart

History: AWS-ECS version 1.0 - July 2002

• Oriented around Product Display services

• Ability to retrieve product information via Keywords, ASIN, Browse Node, Lists, Manufacturer, Artist, Author, etc.

• Ability to modify Amazon.com Shopping Cart through addition of 1 or more items.

• Ability to maintain client-side cookies (a client-side shopping cart) before posting updates to Amazon.com's Shopping Cart

• Ability to view lowest 3rd Party offering prices.

• Ability to use SOAP and XML/HTTP.

• Ability to transform results into various Mark-up languages using XSLT service

• Heavy and Lite response formats

• Paging Capabilities for some retrieval methods.

History: AWS-ECS version 2.0 - October 2002

• Driven by direct Associate & Developer feedback

• Ability to sort results by alpha, featured, price, pub. date, or avg. customer review

• Oriented around 3rd Party Offering Display Pages ( SDP centric-> new, used, collectible, refurbished )

• Ability to do all product search

• True availability information

• Browse Node ID/Name information

• Integrated Shopping Cart Service Support via the OA/ECOS servers

• Ability to search for Wish lists via ID

• Ability to allow 3rd parties to split-up a customer's ordering experience

• Documentation which allows the addition of marketplace items to the shopping cart or customers to enter the order pipeline.

History: AWS-ECS version 2.1 - March 2003

• Feedback from Associates and developer indicating a need to access the international sites.

• Access to Amazon.co.uk and marketplace offerings via the 1.0 & 2.0 interfaces

• Bug fix release

History: AWS-ECS version 3.0 - May 2003

• Targeted at very big website developers who wanted co-branded order pipelines, etc.

• Increased Amazon internal use of web services.

• Complete Web Services Developer Studio that contains upload, download, tools, and links to online resources and examples.

• Rights management for select partners: Silver, Gold, Platinum

• Support for 1-Click

• True Co-Branded Order Pipeline available to select Silver/Gold/Platinum merchants/partners

• True Co-Branded Account Creation/Manipulation available to select Platinum merchants/partners

• First level of ISV/3rd party development company support of complete platform

AWS-ECS version 4.0 - October 2004

• A lessons-learned & maturing release, largely based on customer feedback

• Establishing ECS as a solid platform for future development

• Access to all international sites

• Additional product information

• Additional product images

• All customer reviews

• Extended search

• Enhanced shopping cart

• Wish list search

• Precise response groups

• Multi-operation and batch operations

• Detailed error messages

• Self-describing help

AWS E-Commerce (ECS) Data Types and Functions

• Shopping Cart - Create, Modify, Add, Get

• Catalog - Search

• Catalog Item - Lookup, Similarity Lookup

• Customer Content - Lookup

• Seller - Lookup

• Seller Listing - Lookup

• Transaction - Lookup

• List – Search, Lookup

Who uses Amazon.com Web Services

• Over 120,000 developers

• Associates

• Marketplace Sellers and Merchants

• General Developers

• Integrators and Solution Providers

Associate Example

• Registered Associate

• Allows customers to shop for virtually any product Amazon.com sells

• Built technologies that Amazon.com does not offer, like a comparison engine

• Paid by Amazon.com every time someone clicks on a product and makes a purchase on Amazon.com

www.simplest-shop.com

Marketplace Seller Example

• Registered Marketplace seller

• Built technology that lets employees scan barcodes, price, and list books in a matter of seconds

• Adds 10,000 books every day (250,000 total listings)

• Makes more money because they can list more books at more competitive prices

www.thriftbooks.com

Solution Provider Example

• Built scanning device for “book scouts”– Scan the barcode, send call to

Amazon, see prices, inventory, reviews – on site, instantly!

• Marketplace sellers can buy inventory smarter

• Scoutpal Subscription is $9.95/month or $29.85/quarter

www.scoutpal.com

ScoutPal founder Dave Anderson

Integration Provider Example

• Early AWS developer• Helps retailers integrate with

Amazon Marketplace• Helped Savers Inc. sell thousands

of books a week instead of paying to recycle them

• Monsoon’s solutions built on AWS allow retailers to:

– Manage, upload inventory– Price competitively– Fulfill orders

www.monsoonretail.com

Alexa Web Information Service (AWIS) 1.0 Highlights

• Alexa Web Information Service

• Access to 100 TB of Alexa crawl data

• 4 billion web pages

• 5 functions:– URL information

– Browse Category

– Web Search

– Crawl Meta Data

– Web Map

Amazon Simple Queue Service

– Scalable, hosted queue

– Build distributed applications

– Up to 4,000 items per queue

– Up to 4,096 queues per subscriber

Producer#1

Producer#3

Producer#2

AmazonSimpleQueue

Consumer

Getting Started with Amazon.com Web Services

• www.amazon.com/webservices

• aws.typepad.com

• Register for a Subscription Id

• Read discussion board

• Attend weekly chats

• Receive Newsletter

• Build application

Questions ?

Some Other Examples built with ECS

• Hive Group Honeycomb

• WWWInkazon

• Pluck

• Music Plasma

• Shopping-Club.biz