

How Amazon's EC2 Service Was Born - brentb
http://blog.layer8.net/2009/01/i-was-trying-to-avoid-this.html

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felipe
Three small things that demonstrates how Bezos is an unique leader:

1) " _we presented the paper to bezos_ " -- Wow, engineers have direct access
to the CEO.

2) "we presented the paper to bezos ( _he doesn't do slides_ )" -- Wow, a CEO
that actually has some attention span

3) "we presented the paper to bezos (he doesn't do slides), _he liked a lot of
it_ " -- Wow, a CEO who actually understands technology

~~~
ooorrr
All of those are true. The lack of powerpoint at Amazon is not a myth - docs
are the order of the day. This is more good than bad, but has some of both.

~~~
brandonkm
This is a great aspect of the culture there that has helped Amazon maintain
its technical competitive edge.

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ntoshev
EC2 has been in operation for a few years now, and the price levels from the
launch remain unchanged, despite the fact that their largest expenses are
subject to Moore's law.

~~~
teej
They have also added:

\- Elastic Block Storage

\- An SLA

\- Windows

\- Static (Elastic) IPs

\- New datacenters

\- Geographic targeting (Regions)

without raising the price.

~~~
gojomo
And, the bandwidth prices have gone down a little.

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redorb
I enjoyed the story thanks for sharing, a couple things I didnt get is why the
author "was trying to avoid this.." and why "after some exchanges its best to
share"

\- I bet he feels some ownership, over the product.

\- The 2nd option is this is a resume` play, but probably not likely.

either way great story; although short - good luck with your other endeavors

~~~
wmf
After a project succeeds in a large company, people who were tangentially
involved come out of the woodwork to claim credit. There is a natural human
urge to debunk these claims, but often this just makes things worse if the
credit-takers are politically astute.

~~~
ooorrr
A few things for context:

1) This came up b/c somebody else publicly described the author as the
inventor of EC2, which created some unintended blowback;

2) The author is well-known in the ops community and still close to a number
of people at Amazon, and has no personal or professional interest in hurting
those relationships.

~~~
redorb
Thanks for the context; it helps a lot to know that this fellow was trying to
deflect credit where it was due; Not sneak some where it wasn't.

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mtkd
It's a great service at a great price.

I do think they should have picked a different brand name than Amazon for it.

We're moving to EC2 at the moment and when explaining it to commercial people
it's an unnecessary hurdle to also have to explain that Amazon do more than
sell books and they really can be trusted to host infrastructure.

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enneff
I'm interested to hear what sort of products people are running on EC2. Anyone
want to share their story?

