Amazon.com Presentation

Amazon.com: Technology

To personalize the shopping experience for customers and deliver a quick response, the Amazon.com Web site must be able to recognize the user, determine which items to display, retrieve the items, and build a customized page fast enough that the user does not experience any real delay. According to the company’s senior manager of offering services, Tim Kohn, who supervises development of much of the software infrastructure, Amazon.com has been wedded to key principles in the architecture of its computing infrastructure: performance, reliability, and complete knowledge of how the infrastructure works. To satisfy the quest for performance and scalability, the company built a two-tier solution for a number of its databases: a large, back-end database tier coupled with a high-speed, distributed cache on the front end.
One of the largest databases within Amazon.com is the one that contains products and offerings information. This database runs on Oracle Database hosted on Linux and spread across numerous servers that together hold tens of terabytes of data. This database is regularly updated due to the arrival of new products at Amazon.com and at its partner stores, and by inventory counts based on completed transactions, promotional programs, and so on.
For performance purposes, Amazon.com uses a caching front-end for this database. Most customer interactions with the database are handled by this cache and do not generate I/O to the back-end servers. The caching front-end, was developed in-house using Oracle Berkeley DB as its foundation. The cache consists of multiple servers running Oracle Berkeley DB that are regularly updated by the products and offerings database
According to Tim Kohn, the company started using Oracle Berkeley DB because it was fast, reliable, and open source.
“We have a unique mission and we custom built a unique technology platform to serve it, Kohn said. “We must be running with no glitches 24 hours a day, and the only way to do that is to know everything that your infrastructure is doing. This is one of several reasons we chose Oracle Berkeley DB. The others were the incredible speed and the reliability.”
Amazon initially adopted Oracle Berkeley DB due to its hiring UNIX programmers during its formation stages, when the company was just a bookseller looking to improve the Web experience of prospective customers. The UNIX programmers remembered the remarkable performance of Berkeley DB when they designed the fast cache needed by the Amazon.com Web site. Oracle Berkeley DB is the productized version of that code, now significantly expanded from the original and proven by deployment with some of the largest commercial databases.
Kohn adds that a cadre of developers at Amazon.com knows the Oracle Berkeley DB code base intimately and regularly communicates requests to Oracle.
Oracle Berkeley DB is the most widely used developer database in the world. It is a building block for developers who are writing applications for internal use or to sell to customers. It is architected for control by programmers. For example, all administration is done programmatically. The database eschews much of today’s database paradigm: it is not relational, not object-oriented, and not client-server. It does not use SQL or ODBC. Rather, it’s an extremely fast data store that runs in 500KB and has APIs for C/C++, Java, Perl, PHP, Ruby, and many other languages.
Amazon.com uses data mining to provide customers with purchase suggestions. The use of association rules has increased sales by 15%. SAS, Inc. developed the process for Amazon.com. There are a number of data mining software packages, including Intelligent Miner by IBM. However, for good data mining software combined with good statistical software, there are two: Clementine by SPSS and Enterprise Minery SAS. Enterprise Miner as the best integration of statistics with data mining. It contains methods that SPSS does not include: link analysis, text mining, memory-based reasoning. It is the data mining used in the business world. Netezza provides Amazon.com with an analysis platform that can scale to accommodate terabytes of detailed clickstream analyses at a moment’s notice. Amazon.com chose the NPS 8650 system based on its ability to deliver query response times faster than any other alternative it had considered. The Netezza data warehouse appliance provides Amazon.com with a high-performance, low-maintenance system that can query data in near real-time, delivering faster and deeper analysis capabilities on terabytes of information. The Netezza Performance Server system is the market-leading data warehouse appliance, built specifically to analyze terabytes of detailed data 10 to 50 times faster than existing data warehouse options, at half the cost. The NPS system stores, filters and processes terabytes of records within a single unit, analyzing only the relevant information for each query. Netezza has placed the CPU power next to the data, allowing the NPS system to speed through processes that would occupy most data warehouse systems for hours, or even days, thereby enabling dramatic increases in productivity across the organization.

Amazon E-commerce Service exposes Amazon’s product data and e-commerce functionality. It allows all kind of users from different places through the Internet Service provider (ISPs) to enter Amazon online store. Internet is a vast network of computer that connects millions of people all over the world.

Amazon.com network of connections is logical connections that allow computer applications, such as e-mail programs and the browsers used to explore the World Wide Web, to exchange information. Logical connections are created by network protocols and allow data sharing between applications on different types of computers, such as an Apple Macintosh or a personal computer (PC) running the Microsoft Corporation Windows operating system, in a network. Some logical connections use client-server application software and are primarily for file and printer sharing. The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite, originally developed by the United States Department of Defense, is the set of logical connections used by the Internet, the worldwide consortium of computer networks. TCP/IP, based on peer-to-peer application software, creates a connection between any two computers.
Amazon Web Services (AWS): The service provides programmatic access to many features leveraged behind the scenes on its own website. AWS was rapidly adopted by what now amount to tens of thousands of software developers.
Amazon EC2 ("Elastic Compute Cloud"), a virtual site farm, allowing users to use the Amazon infrastructure with its high reliability to run diverse applications ranging from running simulations to web hosting.
Amazon EC2 provides web service interfaces to control network security. You define groups of instances and their desired accessibility.
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service): an online storage web service offered by Amazon Web Services. Amazon S3 provides unlimited storage through a simple web services interface. Data can be easily stored and retrieved at any time, from anywhere on the web. Amazon S3 is an inexpensive storage solution using the same scalable storage infrastructure that Amazon.com uses to run its own global e-commerce network.
Amapedia: a collaborative wiki for user-generated content related to "the products you like the most." Amapedia replaced Amazon's ProductWiki product, and all ProductWiki content was copied into Amapedia at launch.
Amazon Mechanical Turk: An application programming interface (API) allowing programs to dispatch tasks to human processors

http://www.netezza.com/

http://www.oracle.com/

Amazon.com Business Strategy

Amazon.com Business Model

Amazon.com is biggest online book retailer. It has own e-commerce technology—software, website developing and hosting—through a new subsidiary, Amazon Services.

Amazon.com is a “24 X 7” of value company for almost anyone that you could shop at Amazon 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. But if you mapped the Amazon.com business on the Networked Activity Map (see diagram), you would quickly see that for the majority of customers, they could only access Amazon at home or at the office when the boss was not looking – because you had to be sitting at an internet-enabled PC to shop at Amazon. Even today most people do not carry a PC with them 24 X 7. The Amazon experience could only be created in a very narrow time and geography, which - in terms of real customer activity – was not close to 24 X 7.

Amazon Services grew out of Amazon.com’s partnerships with Toys "R" Us and Target, both of which use Amazon’s technology to power their own websites in addition to selling on the Amazon site. "We’re thinking about ourselves as a technology company and a technology platform," says Mark Stabingas, Amazon.com’s vice president of worldwide business development and services sales. "The universe of opportunity is larger than if we just want to think about ourselves as a retail business."

This Get Big Fast strategic imperative drove the company to success by embracing a 'land grab' logic and staking out large areas of online space at the one time, rather than gradually expanding its online presence. As recognition of Amazon.com began to expand and fortunes began to grow, with the

implementation of their Get Big Fast business model, in a matter of only a few months, Amazon.com went from thousands to millions, and eventually to billions and tens of billions, demonstrating that Get Big Fast was the strategy for Amazon.com. After Bezos achieves profitability, he knows how to use his money to make more money because he knows how to put the money where it is needed. For example, purchasing banners on portals like AOL, creating a variety of offline promotional activities and established partnerships with search engines like Yahoo.

Amazon.com Business Strategies

In recent years, online shopping has become extremely popular and many organizations have been covetously observing the online market. But, how does Amazon.com stand head and shoulders above others? Within its major Get Big Fast strategy it pursues many unique strategies. Strictly speaking, there are three strategies that have helped Amazon.com to enhance its competitive advantage, including cost-leadership, customer differentiation and focus strategies.

• First strategy, cost-leadership is pursued by Amazon.com by differentiating itself primarily on the basis of price. Due to this strategy, Amazon.com always makes sure that it offers the same quality products as other companies for a considerably less price.
• Second strategy is customer diffentiation. Amazon.com provides current and prospective customers with differentiation though design, quality or convenience and Amazon.com always selects a differentiator that is different among the competitor. So, Amazon.com consumers can recognize and differentiate its product from competitors.
• The last strategy that it uses is a focus strategy. This strategy takes one of the two earlier strategies and applies it to a niche within the market. Amazon.com focuses on outstanding customer service as a niche but not the whole market because each niche has its own demand and requirement

Amazon, Plog and CRM

Amazon.com using Plog and CRM the two interesting tools to improve relations between customers and their favorite products. First the Plog is a personalized web log that appears on your customer home page. Every person's Plog is different (hence the name), and the posts are sorted so the most recent entries appear at the top. Each post also gives you the opportunity to provide feedback to the sender as to whether you liked the post or not. Your Plog only appears if you are logged into Amazon.com and is visible only to you. Then, AmazonConnect is an unprecedented program for authors whose books are sold on Amazon. Authors who participate in the AmazonConnect program can send messages to readers who have bought their books on Amazon or have signed up to receive their posts. Messages from AmazonConnect authors will appear in Your Plog on the Amazon home page. As Henri Kaufman said: “It is not any more the brand which speaks with its customers in One to One, it is the product itself which speaks with the person who already bought it.”

Amazon.com is the largest on-line retailer of books, music and videos in the world. Recently, Amazon.com has diversified its services and embarked on several, notable joint business ventures with fortune 500 companies. The specific types of e-commerce used would include the selling of books and its IT services to several companies.

Amazon.com uses several business models in its e-commerce business. In the past before diversification, Amazon.com was primarily using a Business to Consumer model. Now, Amazon.com has turned into an E-Marketplace offering several Business models to consumers and businesses. Because Amazon.com is an example of an e-marketplace, there is consumer-to-consumer selling as well as business to consumer selling. The best example would be that an independent publisher could now offer their product directly using Amazons Internet Technologies. Merchants such as Waldenbooks, Borders and until last year Disney have reaped the benefits of Amazons superior Internet Technologies to enhance their business to consumer relations.

Amazon.com uses several innovative marketing tools to achieve its marketing mix. Advertisers power the site by paying for space or links to be provided on the site. Launched in 1996, Associates is Amazon.com affiliate marketing program. By linking to Amazon products and services you can add compelling content for your site visitors enjoyment and receive up to 10% in referral fees for doing so. As one of the first online affiliate marketing programs, Associates has a 10-year track record of developing solutions to help website owners, Web developers, and Amazon sellers make money. Our latest innovations include aStore, Omakase™ Links, and Product Previews. Current participants in the Amazon Associates program include large, well-known sites, niche content sites and blogs, comparison shopping engines, search engine marketers, and everything in between. Visit our Current Associates page to see how some of these members are using our solutions. Recently, Amazon.com inked an affiliate program deal with Google to create links on the Amazon web site to increase consumer utility. Amazon.com receives publicity by being the largest online retailer in the world. There are several resources available to the consumer to check the progress and growth of Amazon. By way of Amazons web site. Amazon.com offers a wide variety of products at various prices to the consumer. The marketing function is tailored to the consumers needs by establishing price, an e-marketplace, and fast delivery to the consumer.

Amazon.com uses all major forms of payments. They accept all major credit cards, payment by online check, and a Bill me later option. Amazon also has a patent on their one click checkout, users are able to complete a transaction with just one click. Amazon.com has also partnered with Chase to provide its shoppers their own Amazon.com credit card. This card also gives its users $30 off their first purchase.


Amazon.com would be considered a Low Cost Global Strategy business. With the Internet, and services such as FedEx and UPS they are able to sell, and ship a product anywhere in the world. They are able to maintain low costs by negotiating low purchasing prices and maintaining efficient warehouses and distribution centers.

Amazon.com considerably increases the power of its buyer power by being the largest online store in the world. With so much potential exposure for sellers, Amazon is able to tell them to sell at low cost or they won't carry the product. By building the biggest online database of products, and warehouse infrastructure they have managed to lower hopes for any new start up to enter the business and compete with them. Any competition would require Billions of dollars to get to catch up to Amazon.com They also have a tremendous supplier power. By having the lowest prices online, the fastest shipping, and the safest shopping experience Amazon.com is able to give consumers very few options as where to shop. By using its superior convenience and benefits Amazon.com has been able to cause several switching costs to consumers. They have managed to keep all their customers information saved with online profiles for each user, this allows customers to shop quickly and safely. They also give its shoppers rewards that can be redeemed for future purchases, this keeps customers from leaving because they do not want to loose their rewards. Some of the other services that they have such as product reviews, product recommendations and exclusive products also keeps consumers from leaving.

Amazon.com has several new business initiatives. The newest one is AmazonUnbox. Here customers are able to purchase, and download movies directly to their PC the same day it is released. Amazon.com has also partnered with TiVo and users are able to order these movies trough the TiVo service. This is a top-line initiative.

Reuters - TiVo, Amazon to sell movies straight to TV sets

Introduction/History/CEO

Amazon.com (AMZN) is one of the most dynamic, innovative and successful e-commerce companies to survive the crash of the dot-com era. Founded by Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon.com was able to grab a considerable amount of the book selling market share by creating a niche in the market that catered to their customer needs by providing superior customer service.
Amazon.com was able to increase their customer’s satisfaction by incorporating several business ideas and Internet technologies. First, Amazon.com was one of the first businesses to incorporate Internet technology tools to increase the satisfaction of their customers.
Secondly, Amazon.com also was able to manage their supply chain to gain a competitive advantage on their competitors. Finally, Amazon.com was able to use a fully functional automated warehouse to gain a competitive advantage on their competitors by reducing cost. Amazon.com has diversified their services by not just exclusively selling books, but providing other merchandise and selling options for other businesses. Amazon.com has created such a niche that other companies have used their technology to build their businesses.

Amazon.com, Inc. is a Fortune 500 company with its global headquarters located in Seattle, Washington. It was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, a computer scienceand electrical engineering graduate from Princeton University. It was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the Internet and is considered the global leader in e-commerce. The company first went on-line in July 1995 operating as an online bookstore under the name Cadabra.com selling its first book, "Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought." The company was later renamed to Amazon after the world's most voluminous river . Amazon.com soon diversified its product line selling movies, music, software, video games, furniture, electronics, apparel, pet supplies, and more. The company went public on May 15, 1997, trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the symbol AMZN with an IPO price of $18.00 per share. Today the stock trades on the NASDAQ at about $70.00 per share. Amazon’s first fulfillment center was opened in New Castle, Delaware and since has opened offices and fulfillment centers that are spread throughout world. Amazon also has international sites such as Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.co.jp and Amazon.ca. Amazon has created many alliances partnering with Target, Office Depot, Shutterfly, Tire Rack, Weight Watchers and more. In the fall of 1999 Amazon was granted its "1-Click" patent. The patent describes an online system that allows customers to enter their address and credit card information once so that on future visits it only takes is a single mouse-click to complete a on their website. Amazon.com’s mission statement reads “to be the most customer-centric company in the world, where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online.” It recently made top in Businiessweek's Info Tech 100 being rated the number one technology company and not just a retailer.

Jeffrey P. Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His mother's ancestors were early settlers in Texas who over the generations had acquired a 25,000 acre ranch at Cotulla. Jeffrey's maternal grandfather was a regional director of the Atomic Energy Commission in Albuquerque. He retired early to the ranch, where Jeffrey spent most summers of his youth, working with his grandfather doing tasks that would be crucial to the development of his operational skills. At an early age, he displayed a striking mechanical aptitude, one example was when he dismantled his crib with a screwdriver as a kid. His mother was still a teenager when Jeffrey was born when, her marriage to his father lasted little more than a year. She remarried when Jeffrey was four. Jeffrey's stepfather, Mike Bezos, was born in Cuba; he escaped to the United States alone at age 15, and worked his way through the University of Albuquerque. When they got married they moved to Houston where his stepdad became an engineer for Exxon. The family moved to Miami, Florida, where Jeffrey attended high school. This is where Jeff fell in love with computers and was valedictorian of his class. He went on to attend Princeton University planning to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers, and graduated with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. After graduation, Jeff found employment on Wall Street, where computer science was increasingly in demand to study market trends. He went to work at Fitel, a start-up company that was building a network to conduct international trade. He stayed in the finance realm with Bankers Trust, rising to a Vice President position.. At D. E. Shaw, a firm specializing in the application of computer science to the stock market, Bezos was hired for his overall talent to solve any particular assignment. While working at Shaw, Jeff met his wife, Mackenzie, also a Princeton graduate. He rose quickly at Shaw, becoming a senior Vice President, and looked forward to a bright career in finance, when he made a discovery that changed his life, and the course of business history. That discover was the internet, and it led to the beginning of something that would become Amazon.

TIME - Time's Person of the Year.