Simplicissimus Web Wervices: Overview of the Simplicissimus Cloud Infrastructure

AWS for Media, Entertainment, and Internet | Milan | October 26, 2011

Simplicissimus Web Services

Overview of the Simplicissimus Cloud Infrastructure

Giacomo D'AngeloCTO, Simplicissimus Book Farm S.R.L.

Our MISSION

Help everyone to understandthe transition to the creative industry

as an opportunity to improvethe quality of everyone life

EbooksDigital Magazines

Digital NewspapersPublishers

Authors...

Digital Contents and all Stackeholders

Our Market: The Digital Publishing World

by Simplicissimus Book Farm

1. Hardware: ereaders and tablets distribution2. Ebooks production3. Newspapers and Magazines production4. E-content Distribution Platform5. E-content Retail Platform6. Self Publishing Platform7. Web and Mobile Dedicated Apps

Simplicissimus Business Units


Stealth: sbfstealth.com, @sbfstealth

Narcissus: sbfnarcissus.com, @sbfnarcissus

Ultima Kiosk: ultimakiosk.com, @ultimakiosk

Ultima Books: ultimabooks.it, @ultimabooks

Simplicissimus Main Assets on AWS


Stealth: the E-content Distribution Platform

Content providers can upload their contents into our web applications, in one single place, with descriptive metadatas, price, availability and protection details


Resellers and stores can utilize the Stealth

API to sell content without any concerns about technology, file mngt (reliability and

security) and burocracy

Narcissus: the Self Publishing Platform

Artists can upload their contents and manage them on Narcissus, with metadatas, price and availability control, sales control, without any intermediary


Thanks to our distribution asset,

Stealth, all Narcissus contents can be

distributed to all main E-content stores and

resellers

Ultima Kiosk: the Publishing Platform for Magazines, Comics and Newspaper

● The coolest kiosk to purchase contents

● The most effective way to read contents: free-app

● The only way to publish digital contents: gratis


Different skins:● Unique app with

contents from different publishers

● White-label and single-publisher app

● White-label and single-magazine (or newspaper) app

Ultima Books: the E-content Retail Platform

● The coolest online library to purchase contents

● The only one with a digital bookseller in flesh and blood :)

● The only one with a weekly useful newsletter (try it!)


Main tech features:● User-customizable

shelves based on semantic engine

● Multi platform frontend (ereader)

● Ecommerce as as service (UltimaBooks PRO)

Main issues before adopting AWS


1. Hardware related issues2. High startup cost for every single project3. No scaling, no long tail4. No flexibility for developing and testing

purposes5. No High Reliability6. No Smart Recovery Strategy7. Many daily activities for sysadmins

Why AWS: our main benefits


1. The only hardware in our office are our personal notebooks :)

2. Flexybility for daily operations (test, deploy, dev, backup)

3. Startup of new projects without concerns4. Automatic disaster recovery strategy5. Scalability6. Agility7. Reduced Time to Market8. Cross technology platform

Main Costs due to the AWS adoptions


1. Learn how to architecting for the clouds2. Build multi-AZ systems3. Build customized management tool based on

AWS API 4. Fewer sysadmins activities but more specific

then before5. Suggestion to avoid lockin: build a

decoupling software layer from AWS API

Stealth, Narcissus, Ultima Kiosk and Ultima Books are powered by AWS


1. S3 as long-time and reliable repository2. EC2 instances as web server3. EC2 instances as processing server4. EC2 instances as semantic information

processing platform (IDOL, Authonomy Technology)

5. Load Balancer + Auto Scaling + CloudWatch to manage the peaks of traffic

6. RDS database

AWS Optimization: Costs


The biggest projects are on reserved instances, every new project starts on on-demand ones.

Example: ● Stealth -> Reserved● Narcissus -> On Demand● Ultima Books -> Reserved

AWS Optimization: Costs and Reliability


Lots of small instances in load-balancing with auto-scaling through multiple A-Z

Example: Ultima Books● 1 AWS Load Balancer● 4+ EC2 in Auto Scaling● Multi AZ RDS Database● 2 Availability Zones

AWS Optimization: Costs


Cloud Horizontal Scaling benefits:● The needed computing capacity is

not constant during the week● Increase and decrease the

capacity following the users demand

● The infrastructure should be elastic

Thanks!

Q & A, if you want :)CONTACT ME:

Giacomo D'Angelo@giacomodangelo

[email protected]

CTO, Simplicissimus Book Farm S.R.L.

LINKS:Presentation: http://slidesha.re/SBFServicesOnAWSSimplicissimus: http://simplicissimus.itStealth: http://sbfstealth.comNarcissus: http://sbfnarcissus.comUltima Kiosk: http://ultimakiosk.comUltima Books: http://ultimabooks.it TWITTER:@simplicissimus, @sbfstealth, @sbfnarcissus, @ultimabooks, @ultimakiosk