Tag: Amazon

Amazon Web Services makes half the company’s dosh

Amazon Web Services (AWS) made up half of the vendor’s overall operating income in its first quarter of the year.

Cloudy services grew its operating income by 59 percent to $2.2 billion which was an increase from $1.4bn in the same period in 2018.

Amazon’s net sales grew 17 percent to $59.7 billion in the first quarter its slowest since 2015.

Amazon cements its position as market Queen

Amazon is the latest technology titan to claim the crown of world’s most valuable public company –  the outfit is worth $797 billion and beats surpasses Microsoft with $784 billion in value.

Apple, which had been part of a close three-way race for the seat, is now down to about $702 billion in market value after plunging last week on the news of its weak iPhone sales. Google parent company Alphabet has surpassed Apple with a market value of about $748 billion.

Amazon not taking on Cisco

amazonAmazon Web Services (AWS) has denied that it is planning to launch a range of network switches to compete with the likes of Cisco.

Cisco said that the pair’s CEOs recently had a chin-wag about the news and AWS’ boss had ruled it out.

The Cisco statement, first published by MarketWatch, said: “Cisco and AWS have a longstanding customer and partner relationship, and during a recent call between Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and AWS CEO Andy Jassy, Andy confirmed that AWS is not actively building a commercial network switch.”

MarketWatch also said that an AWS spokesperson confirmed the statement.

For those who came in late there were some serious reports that AWS was planning an assault on the networking market to help tempt users to its public cloud.

Cisco, Juniper and Arista all saw their share prices plummet.

Cisco’s share price has jumped over three percent in the wake of AWS’ denial, while Juniper’s climbed more than two percent.

Ryanair to swap Microsoft for AWS

Software King of the World Microsoft has received a vote of no confidence in its cloud ambitions after Budget airline Ryanair decided to ditch its data centres and shift its infrastructure to Amazon Web Services.

The bucket shop which often charges you more for your baggage than the actual ticket, already uses the Amazon cloud for sections of its business – such as its website Ryanair.com and Ryanair Rooms – but will now shift the rest of its data into it over the next three years.

Ryanair also plans to set up a data lake on Amazon’s S3 service that will useAmazon Kinesis to gain insights from customers and its broader business. It will ditch Microsoft SQL Server and switch to Amazon Aurora for its European email marketing campaigns.

Ryanair CTO, John Hurley said that it wanted to work with the world’s leading cloud to develop and deliver services that will transform customers’ travel experiences.  This will involve rebuilding core applications, converting data into actionable insights, and creating intelligent applications; we are putting the solutions in place to continue our leadership in the travel industry.

Ryanair will also work with AWS’s ML Solutions Lab to create an application that detects surges in demand for specific flights and predicts changes to flight schedules.

 

Arcserve achieves advanced technology partner status on Amazon

amazonData backup and availability outfit Arcserve has achieved Advanced Technology Partner status in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN).

As an Advanced Technology Partner in the APN, Arcserve has to evangelise cloud innovation with AWS.

ArcserveVP of Products Oussama El-Hilali said the company focuses on protecting heterogeneous environments, and working with AWS is a natural extension of that philosophy.

“We are honoured to become an Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network, an achievement that further solidifies our commitment to continued cloud innovation. Our extensive multi-cloud capabilities underscore our deep understanding of AWS”, he said,

Arcserve offers enterprise capabilities for customers using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS)

Arcserve VP of Global Strategic Alliances Scott Walker said that the company has partnered with AWS since it launched Arcserve UDP several years ago.

“Achieving Advanced Technology Partner status in the APN allows us to continue creating innovative solutions for our customers to scale infrastructure while protecting their investments in existing systems cost-effectively.”

 

IAR gets under Amazon’s bonnet

amazonsIAR Systems has announced support for newly launched Internet of Things (IoT) Microcontroller Operating System, Amazon FreeRTOS.

Together with Amazon Web Services (AWS), IAR Systems provides developers with easy access to  pre-integrated development tools for developing and debugging embedded and IoT-connected applications based on Amazon FreeRTOS.

Amazon FreeRTOS provides tools that developers need to quickly and easily deploy a microcontroller-based connected device and develop an embedded or IoT application without having to worry about the complexity of scaling across millions of devices.

Based on the FreeRTOS kernel, Amazon FreeRTOS includes software libraries which make it easy to securely connect devices locally to AWS Greengrass, directly to the cloud, and update them remotely. For new devices, developers can choose to build their embedded and IoT application on a variety of qualified microcontrollers from companies collaborating with AWS and IAR Systems, including Microchip, NXP, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments.

Amazon Web Services Principal Engineer Richard Barry said that AWS is pleased to be teamed with IAR Systems to provide developers with access to a high performance, pre-integrated set of development tools for developing and debugging connected applications.

“Software development is becoming ever more complex and critical and the need to have access to the right tools to help developers create, optimize and debug their code is paramount.”

IAR Systems Product Manager Lotta Frimanson said that FreeRTOS is widely used among our customers and the new capabilities added by AWS will enable them to take their development of connected applications to the next level.

“AWS and IAR Systems solutions provide easy access to high-performance and integrated tools that can enable developers to focus on the innovative and differentiating parts of their application.”

 

Amazon plots New Year partner revamp

usa-mockingbird-heights-munsters-vampire-grandpa-magazineAmazon Web Services (AWS) is planning a New-Year revamp of its channel partner programme.

The big idea is to promise incentives for resellers which commit to specialising in its core cloud technologies.

Terry Wise, vice president of worldwide alliances, channels and ecosystems at AWS, told the assembled throngs at the AWS Partner Summit keynote at the cloud giant’s annual user and partner conference, Re:Invent, in Las Vegas, that the AWS Channel Reseller Programme will get a full rebrand in 2018.

It will be renamed the AWS Solutions Provider Programme, and will feature beefed-up benefits and support for partners, Wise said.

“What customers are telling us is they want AWS to actually recognise and incentivise a set of partners that provide more of the specialised services”, he said.

The bookseller will use a tiered incentive structure for its new-look partner programme, with resellers specialising in managed services, cloud migrations, DevOps and other areas set to reap bigger rewards.

“Further incentives and investments in partners working with us on the front end to bring net new opportunities to the AWS cloud are coming”, Wise continued.

Furthermore, resellers who go above and beyond from a customer support perspective will also have their efforts recognised via the programme, he added.

“We’re going to make changes in the support model by recognising our reseller partners (who provide a great high-quality support experience) with a different economic model, and a much more flexible way in which you can offer support to our mutual customers”,  Wise said.

“Collectively, these areas are going to give our channel partners the opportunity to substantially improve the profitability of their business.”

More details will arrive early in 2018.

 

Symantec jumps on Amazon

amazonAnti-virus outfit Symantec has said it will move the “vast majority” of its cloud workload to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

It is making a “major operational move” to AWS, a month after moving its Norton consumer business to Vole’s Azure.

Symantec VP of cloud platform engineering Raj Patel, said: “Our cloud-first approach to engineering requires a highly scalable and reliable infrastructure that helps our team deliver faster time-to-market and ensures that security remains our top priority.

“AWS’s experience serving some of the most risk-sensitive enterprise customers was an important part of the decision to choose AWS as we execute on our enterprise integrated cyber-defence strategy.”

Symantec said the AWS platform allows it to develop new software and tools at a faster rate.

AWS VP of worldwide commercial sales Mike Clayville said: “By taking advantage of the benefits of deploying their software on AWS, Symantec has been able to accelerate its pace of innovation, gain more profound insights through their company-wide data lake, and use that knowledge to make better-informed business decisions.

“Leading ISVs worldwide are moving core business applications to AWS for greater agility and efficiency, to reduce costs, and to leverage the security, reliability, and global infrastructure we offer.”

 

 

 

Amazon sets up distribution from Bolton

enhanced-buzz-6474-1379079420-13Online bookseller Amazon has decided to set up one of its flash new robotic warehouses and distribution points in the sunny and vibrant town of Bolton.

The move will create 1,200 new permanent jobs in the town and means that the total permanent jobs Amazon has created in the North West of England now amount to more than 3,500. The company says that Bolton, home of the village of Nob End, will be equipped with Amazon Robotics technology in order to help products be processed throughout.

“Our ability to expand in the North West of England is the result of two things: incredible customers and an outstanding workforce”, said Stefano Perego, the rather astounding Amazon’s Director of UK Customer ‘Fulfilment’. “We are thrilled to begin recruitment for 1,200 new permanent roles in Bolton with competitive wages and comprehensive benefits starting on day one.”  How thrilling!

This is the latest spate of job creation from the company in the UK. Amazon had reaffirmed its ‘commitment to the country’ in the wake of Brexit by stating that its workforce would be raised to over 24,000 in 2017 – adding 5,000 jobs. Throughout the year, the company has opened new ‘fulfilment’ centres in Daventry, Doncaster, Tilbury and Warrington, creating, between them, in excess of 2,300 jobs. In addition, Amazon also announced in August that it is to add over 1,000 jobs at its new Bristol fulfilment centre.

In spite of its positive efforts in job creation, the online retail giant has recently caught a lot of criticism for its tax payments. While it rectified the 2012 findings that it paid no corporation tax, Amazon only paid £7.4 million in tax, despite retail sales surpassing £7 billion. Thrilling!

Cloud giants headed towards per-millisecond billing

grandpa_simpson_yelling_at_cloudThe cloudy giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Google are moving towards per-millisecond billing.

Microsoft and Google already have adopted the billing method and now Amazon has gone the same way – at least for some of its services.

Amazon’s move to introduce per-second billing for some of its services forms part of a wider industry trend and could inspire similar moves by other cloud players, according to partners.

The cloud giant has announced that it will begin billing some forms of Linux instance of its EC2 and EBS services in one-second increments, bringing it into line with public cloud rivals Microsoft Azure and Google.

Amazon’s partners were happy as it seems to be part of an inexorable trend towards ‘per-millisecond’ pricing in the cloud world.

The feeling is that the world will get used to the idea and other cloud companies to follow this trend.

AWS will be able to provide sustained usage discounts, which is one remaining area where competitors claim they are cheaper.”

It appears to customers because they can reduce their TCO for workloads in cloud which in turn increases the appeal of moving new or more workloads to it.

Per-second is very helpful when running very heavy workloads, but a lot of the very large migrations to the cloud are just datacentre migrations where the private cloud providers like IBM play.  It will be less interesting to some customers.

 

Amazon builds a new distribution centre in Bristol

 

amazonAmazon has just built a new fulfilment centre in Bristol that will create over 1,000 jobs.

The online retailer now has 13 fulfilment centres in the country.

The company said that these newly created jobs in Bristol are in addition to the 5,000 jobs that it is creating this year. Those new roles that were announced in July are to be based across three others new fulfillment centres in Tilbury, Doncaster and Daventry, in addition to being based at its offices in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London.

There will also be several full-time jobs created at Amazon’s fashion photography studio in Shoreditch. In total, Amazon will have a UK workforce of 24,000 by the year’s end.

The announcement might be sending a statement to the government about the company’s tax bill that saw it paying just £7.4 million in spite of UK profits of in excess of £7 billion.  It is also a sign that Brexit has not changed Amazon’s relationship with the UK or its ability to hire staff.

Doug Gurr, Amazon UK country manager, said in a statement: “We are creating thousands of new UK jobs including hundreds of apprenticeship opportunities as we continue to innovate for our customers and provide them with even faster delivery, more selection and better value.”

 

 

Supplier discovers a quarter of Brits have been scammed

nigeria1A quarter of UK adults have been scammed online in the past, according to research conducted by the supplier Misco.

Apparently only a third can tell if an email is real or not, which might be the main problem.

In light of recent high-profile cyberattacks, Misco tested the nation’s ability to spot whether an email is real or fake. The research used screenshots of both real and fake emails and texts from banks, online money transfer services and Apple’s iCloud.

When asked to identify which of two near-identical emails – one real, one fake – was a genuine online account statement update from a bank account, 12 percent were fooled by the phishing email, believing it to be legitimate.

Those aged 16 to 24 were twice as likely to be duped, with 25 percent of this age group believing the fake email was genuine. Sixty-one per cent believed both to be fake, even though one was authentic.

Only 60 per cent of those surveyed could correctly identify another fake phishing email, this time a supposed security update from a bank. Sixteen percent believed the email to be authentic, while 24 percent admitted they were unsure as to whether it was real.

Afsar Chaudhury, Misco practice lead for network and security at Misco said: “We live in a digital age, where everything from our boarding passes to our bank accounts are accessed online. This makes it easier for hackers to gain access to our details, and this is shown in the increasing level of sophistication that goes into phishing emails.”

Chaudhury advised people to look out for certain clues, such as poor spelling or grammar, and high levels of impersonalisation to prevent phishing attempts.

“Services will never ask you to enter your details through a message, so avoid clicking those links or sending personal information in a message. We recommend using a different, secure password for each account you hold and changing them regularly, as this makes it harder for your accounts to be hacked. Regularly updating the security software on your computer can also stop any malware in its tracks, in case you do accidentally click through on a phishing link.”

Disloyal punters ignore brands claims Salmon

Salmon-of-Knowledge-Irish-Stamp-from-An-PostBeancounters at global ecommerce consultancy Salmon have discovered that the era of the ‘disloyal consumer’ is upon us.

Apparently, brand loyalty is tumbling as consumers increasingly prioritise speed, innovation and convenience when they shop.

A new study of over 6,000 consumers across the UK, US and Benelux conducted, showed that 88 percent of consumers believe speed of delivery is more important to them than the brand being ordered (78 percent).

The study also found that consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with new and innovative ways to shop, with 45 percent using or likely to use digital assistants such as Amazon Echo’s Alexa or Google Home in the next 12 months. They are more likely to use these devices than smart lighting (42 percent), smart fridges and other white goods (42 percent), Virtual Reality (40 percent) and Apple Home (37 percent). As these services look to control the products shoppers buy, brand loyalty looks set to decline even more.

Nearly 60 percent say they can see the personal benefit of Programmatic Commerce – allowing technology to automatically purchase goods for them based on their set of product preferences – compared to 53 percent the year before.

Consumer hunger for new retail technology is growing with 23 percent identified as “digitally obsessed”, making almost all of their purchases online.

This need for speed and convenience plays into a wider shift in consumer shopping behaviour, as they value the variety of digital services on offer and experience that they receive overall: 60 percent say that if a retailer was more digitally innovative, they would be more likely to shop there – emphasising the lucrative potential retailers could be tapping into, especially as 73 percent say they plan to spend more in the future.

Two thirds of consumers in fact feel all online retailers should offer same-day delivery, compared to 2016’s research showing that the average expected delivery time was 2.6 days – no doubt fuelled by services such as Amazon Prime.

Consumers are preparing for the next generation of retail technology – reflected in the fact that on average, there are four devices per household (increasing to five in the US) and over half (51 percent) of all surveyed also said they could not comfortably live one day without connected devices.

What is holding everything back is that retailers are failing to provide these elevated digital and innovative experiences for customers.

More than 57 percent believe the technology, apps and services they use in their own life are more sophisticated than that provided by digital retailers. Almost 70 percent said they want to see greater innovation to improve the customer experience, showing a desire to shop with only the most forward-thinking stores.

Hugh Fletcher, global head of Consultancy and Innovation at Salmon, said: “Loyalty is a complex thing. Across all sectors, we’re seeing fewer people favouring and remaining strongly aligned to certain brands and companies. This is especially prevalent in digital commerce – where the consumer focus on finding the lowest prices and fastest delivery doesn’t lend itself to being loyal to a certain product.

“However, as the study shows, loyalty is still there to be captured. Consumers are increasingly loyal to services over retailers – this is largely because the likes of Amazon is seen to be innovating and delivering the best overall experience to the consumer.

“It is this ‘experience’ that drives loyalty and will be the difference between being a leader in digital commerce and being left behind,” continued Fletcher. “What this means, however, is that retailers need to offer consumers a host of convenient services and harness innovative technologies in the process if they are going to attract and retain customers’ attention. As consumers are becoming more open to trying new technologies – or expect to in the coming months –retailers need to put in the ground work from now if they are to meet high expectations.”

Home Office wants help on Amazon public cloud

parliamentThe Home Office is looking for a partner to move one of its systems to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

According to an ad posted on the Government’s Digital Marketplace, the Home Office wants three suppliers to bid for a six month contract to move its Digital Capabilities to the public cloud.

“The HO Digital Capabilities programme deals with a significant amount of data and our current hosting provider has reached its potential… Home Office has determined that the in-house Amazon Web Service platform is the most appropriate location to run these services,” the advert says.

The Home Office wants to solve its migration problems of putting all its digital services on the new platform within the period and with minimal disruption to the live service. It  wants a supplier to provide solutions architects and developers to build the new AWS environment and provide a seamless switch to the new platform.

The closing date for applications is 17 August, with the start date pencilled in for no later than 9 October. The contract can be extended for a further three months if required.

Government is expected to be a big spender looking at AWS, Azure and Google (now that the search engine outfit has announced its UK datacentres).