 |
Amazon moves own IT-infrastructure to the cloud
July 07, 2010 | Author: Michael Stromann
It sounds strange, but the IT director of Amazon (the leading cloud platfrom provider) Jennifer Boden is not a fan of cloud computing, like her boss, Jeff Bezos. She looks at the cloud carefully and rationally. That is why, the Amazon's IT infrastructure is still moved to AWS only partially. Moreover, the company did not move in this direction until last year when Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), which allows to separate an enterprise cloud from the public cloud, appeared. Nevertheless, the process is started, and now Jennifer is speaking at the IT event with the presentation (see above) about how Amazon moves to Cloud Computing. Note that it this concerns not the Amazon's online store but the in-house enterprise apps, like email, financial software, IT management, HRM, etc.
Jennifer says that Amazon's IT infrastructure is no different from any other large company. They mainly use the traditional systems of Microsoft, Oracle, BMC in mixed Windows / Linux environment.
The decision to move to the cloud, according to Jennifer, was taken without any push by Jeff Bezos and is not a marketing pitch. The main motivation - is a need for a scalable platform because quite often Amazon's engineers had to deal with hardware tickets when server capacity gets near to full. The main constraining factor was the security, and therefore they waited for Amazon VPC.
The first step towards the cloud was server consolidation and virtualization that gives more flexibility in where and how applications could be deployed and served. Then they deployed the pilot project and moved HR-system to the cloud. Jennifer said that she had to create an account on AWS in a general way, as third-party companies do. The whole project might take another year and a half.
Jennifer says that Amazon's IT infrastructure is no different from any other large company. They mainly use the traditional systems of Microsoft, Oracle, BMC in mixed Windows / Linux environment.
The decision to move to the cloud, according to Jennifer, was taken without any push by Jeff Bezos and is not a marketing pitch. The main motivation - is a need for a scalable platform because quite often Amazon's engineers had to deal with hardware tickets when server capacity gets near to full. The main constraining factor was the security, and therefore they waited for Amazon VPC.
The first step towards the cloud was server consolidation and virtualization that gives more flexibility in where and how applications could be deployed and served. Then they deployed the pilot project and moved HR-system to the cloud. Jennifer said that she had to create an account on AWS in a general way, as third-party companies do. The whole project might take another year and a half.
See also: Top 10 Public Cloud Platforms
