Last week Mr. Jinesh Varia, Technology Evangelist at Amazon visited SPJain, participants were quite curious to know about Amazon and its new Web Services business which has already made such a huge impact on how enterprises work (one of my friend's startup uses the same platform). Few coming from a technology background like me were excited knowing more about the new technological changes happening, and the ones who were not-so-tech-savvy kinds were curious as the Amazon Web Services Case Discussion in one of our courses had been pretty exciting.
As Prof. Nilanjan rightly introduced Mr. Varia, a Google Search on his name weaves a CLOUD of information on Cloud Computing. Mr. Varia has moved on from Amazon's research division to a role of an evangelist and he surely didn't dissapoint anyone as he took us on a journey of development of Amazon Web Services and how its offerings have enabled businesses to come up with new business models. The talk as the name suggested covered Cloud and Utility Computing in the perspective of Amazon which has extended offerings from a Website selling Books to Web Infrastructure provider on the basis of research efforts put in by their scientists.
Amazon Web Services is a collection of Web Services offering a range of infrastructure services (both storage and processing). In a layman terms it’s like what Jinesh mentioned, it’s analogous to the difference between renting a house and owning a house. Renting gives you flexibility, you get a raise and you can move around easily, owning a house you get stuck to a particular place and there are people who prefer both. Now talking about from a business perspective someone starts a business and instead of owning up all the storage and processing platform we rent an infrastructure from a service provider like Amazon and utilize their technology platform.
Cloud Computing is at the heart of that strong technology platform. Cloud Computing is an extension of Grid Computing where XML based Web Services are accessible to users (Services in the Cloud) to provide control over the technology infrastructure supporting them. Amazon is a pioneer in Cloud Computing Technology and it’s a perfect example of how research efforts can help you to extend beyond your traditional business.
Mr. Varia used the Animoto story to put across this point. This cool website which enables user to upload pics, mix music and create videos out of it was doing well. One fine day they come up with a Facebook App and all of a sudden the number of user hitting them takes a Quantam jump. As it was based on Amazon Web Services they were able to cope up with the increase in numbers easily. AWS enables businesses to scale-up and down based on seasonal variations and removes overheads of managing the changes in infrastructure.
Amazon Web Services runs with the motto We innovate for you, so that you can innovate for your customers. People running the business(web based) don't waste time on day to day operational activities of maintaining servers etc. and they can concentrate on innovation so that they create more value for their customers. Mr. Varia shared stories about many entrepreneurs who have leveraged new innovations in technology to kick start their business and become successful. He asked everyone to utilize the opportunities available especially in India which according to him is on the verge of becoming a huge economic power and the environment is just apt for such things.
There were lots of questions asked, lots of nice discussions, from both a technology and business perspective and I am sure Mr. Varia would have enjoyed those discussions. The students surely enjoyed it and left the session much enlightened with knowledge of Web Based Businesses and motivated to try out things on their own.
For me it was about understanding how quickly technology has evolved, from my Lab in college two years back, when I tweaked numerous settings of a Globus Toolkit to setup Two Linux Box Grid (that was some achievement :)) to Clouds of Amazon. The challenges and opportunities rapid changes in technology throw up surely provide a great platform for both managers and entrepreneurs to learn, innovate and create successful enterprises.
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Abhishek Deshpande PGDM(08-10)
PRCom
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