Amazon Web Services Conference in NY

I went to the Amazon Conference last week that we spoke about late last month. I was impressed with what Amazon is doing. Amazon outlined their intentions to create a Web operating system. The competition is heating up. It is such a huge opportunity, project and even idea that there are only a few companies — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Yahoo — that can tackle it. This time around, it is unlikely that any one of them is going to own it outright. But from the observations of a stock trader and employee of a start up, it was a fascinating case study to hear how companies like Cruxy, Mogulus and Phanfare are using the Amazon services.

Some of the highlights of the conference were:

1. Web scale computing. This allows customers to rely on the Amazon infrastructure and scale up or scale down based on system demands. Start-ups should not be held back by resources now. I'd like to learn more about EC2.

2. Pay for what you use. They kept reiterating that there are no upfront costs, no fixed costs, no scary contracts, no investment. You only pay for the resources that you use which is a nice proposition for everyone from a start-up to a larger organization.

3. The founders could focus on the idea and business without being distracted by scaling up data centers, buying expensive hardware, and maintaining servers. All of which costs a lot of time, effort, stress and money.

All in all I was again impressed with the offering. While some of the guest wanted support lines to be able to call if there was a problem, no SLA or assurances the business was a priority at Amazon, I think it will start to take off more and more. Keep an eye out for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft as well in the web operating space.