amazon
Contents
Introduction:
Amazon is an American multinational electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, It is the biggest online retailer in world, although many consider that it is more a leading software developer or "information systems' company with a little pick, pack and ship service" (Hof, 2003). This world-class retailer, which began doing business as an online bookseller in the mid 90s, has changed with the time and currently it offers its customers a wide variety of products such as electronics, clothes, beauty products, and so on. In addition, Amazon operates as a service provider allowing other retailers to sell on its site and it also commercializes cloud storage services and its own tablet post-PC device –Kindle-. (Business week, 2003; Hof, 2003; Jenkinson, 2005) Therefore, Amazon has become the Net's premier shopping destination in 2011, and data, information technology and information systems constitute its most valuable assets. (Manjoo, 2011).
Amazon has separate retail websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and China, with international shipping to certain other countries for some of its products. It is also expected to launch its websites in Poland, Netherlands, and Sweden.
Services offered by Amazon
Amazon requires huge data centers and high-speed Internet connections to run its systems. Through vast economies of scale, Amazon is able to achieve incredibly low prices for data storage and bandwidth. Around 2005, the company decided that it could leverage those low costs into a new business selling Internet-based services. The company offers an online data storage service called S3. For a monthly fee of about 15 cents per gigabyte stored plus 15 cents per gigabyte of data transferred, any person or company can transfer and store data on Amazon servers [Markoff 2006]. Through a similar service (EC2), any company can
Introduction:
Amazon is an American multinational electronic commerce company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, It is the biggest online retailer in world, although many consider that it is more a leading software developer or "information systems' company with a little pick, pack and ship service" (Hof, 2003). This world-class retailer, which began doing business as an online bookseller in the mid 90s, has changed with the time and currently it offers its customers a wide variety of products such as electronics, clothes, beauty products, and so on. In addition, Amazon operates as a service provider allowing other retailers to sell on its site and it also commercializes cloud storage services and its own tablet post-PC device –Kindle-. (Business week, 2003; Hof, 2003; Jenkinson, 2005) Therefore, Amazon has become the Net's premier shopping destination in 2011, and data, information technology and information systems constitute its most valuable assets. (Manjoo, 2011).
Amazon has separate retail websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and China, with international shipping to certain other countries for some of its products. It is also expected to launch its websites in Poland, Netherlands, and Sweden.
Services offered by Amazon
Amazon requires huge data centers and high-speed Internet connections to run its systems. Through vast economies of scale, Amazon is able to achieve incredibly low prices for data storage and bandwidth. Around 2005, the company decided that it could leverage those low costs into a new business selling Internet-based services. The company offers an online data storage service called S3. For a monthly fee of about 15 cents per gigabyte stored plus 15 cents per gigabyte of data transferred, any person or company can transfer and store data on Amazon servers [Markoff 2006]. Through a similar service (EC2), any company can