Amazon Information System
Amazon
Amazon is the biggest online retailer in world. 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-. (Businessweek, 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's Information Systems Value
Amazon uses information systems to improve profitability faster and its current financial situation, strategic position, market share, and intangible benefits give evidence of that the company's IT and IS strategies worked as expected. According to Hottovy's report (2011) Amazon doubled in size from 2008 to 2011 with $34 billion in net sales and its current revenue growth is close to 40%.
Information Technology
In the first years, Amazon intentionally kept its Web site systems separate from its order fulfillment system. The separation was partly due to the fact that the programmers did not have the technical ability to connect them, and partly because the company wanted to improve security by keeping the order systems off the Web.
By 1997, Amazon’s sales had reached $148 million for the year. The big book database was being run on Digital Alpha servers. Applications were still custom written in house. By early 2000, the company had over 100 separate database instances running on a variety of servers—handling terabytes of data.
In 2000, Amazon decided to overhaul its entire system. The company spent $200 million on new applications, including analysis software from Epiphany, logistics from
Amazon is the biggest online retailer in world. 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-. (Businessweek, 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's Information Systems Value
Amazon uses information systems to improve profitability faster and its current financial situation, strategic position, market share, and intangible benefits give evidence of that the company's IT and IS strategies worked as expected. According to Hottovy's report (2011) Amazon doubled in size from 2008 to 2011 with $34 billion in net sales and its current revenue growth is close to 40%.
Information Technology
In the first years, Amazon intentionally kept its Web site systems separate from its order fulfillment system. The separation was partly due to the fact that the programmers did not have the technical ability to connect them, and partly because the company wanted to improve security by keeping the order systems off the Web.
By 1997, Amazon’s sales had reached $148 million for the year. The big book database was being run on Digital Alpha servers. Applications were still custom written in house. By early 2000, the company had over 100 separate database instances running on a variety of servers—handling terabytes of data.
In 2000, Amazon decided to overhaul its entire system. The company spent $200 million on new applications, including analysis software from Epiphany, logistics from