AWS

When Amazon Web Services chief research officer, Werner Vogels, joined the organisation in 2004, the focus was very much on servicing clients in a retail environment. The concept of commercially available, robust, scalable infrastructure was just that - a concept.

The organisation

The organisation was working big name retailers just as Marks & Spencer and Target however it was the online retailer's own operations that drove the research agenda. Amazon Web Services was as a matter of fact borne out of the business requirements of its retail operations.

"There was no commercial software that could service to the scale the organisation needed," Vogels recalls. "So we worked to put more rigour into the fundamentals, looking at things like performance, availability and efficiency."

New business model

Amazon quickly recognised a new business model, opening up its research as e-commerce services. It quickly found a market with lean, fast-growing companies that needed scalable infrastructure.

Fast forward to 2011 and AWS has become synonymous with Cloud computing. And, like any growth area, there have been growing pains. Vogels, but, maintains the organisation has lost none of the core ingredient of those early days - technology.

Vogels willingly admits AWS is "nevertheless learning how to be more effective" as it expands from its original audience - developers within enterprise - to a more business-focused approach.

"It was clear that as we were becoming more mature we needed to provide services then to [APIs] in the form of user interfaces, support, training when all is said and done on. It goes beyond just serving the research and I think we've reached a point where we have nurtured the ecosystem so that we can help businesses grow and help their clients.

He says usage patterns and adoption rates for Australia are similar to that around the globe; agile, fast-growing businesses look to the Cloud as an inexpensive way to get up and running during large enterprise takes a more strategic view.

"Right now, anything internet-facing is a no-brainer and marketing campaigns are a good example. To support that you need to overscale or use a Cloud service whose elasticity can serve the increase and as well cap the overall cost."