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AWS was never really an internal tool. The idea that Amazon had all this extra capacity and decided to open it up is a myth. AWS was always a deliberate strateg

AWS was never really an internal tool. The idea that Amazon had all this extra capacity and decided to open it up is a myth. AWS was always a deliberate strategy. Now, you could argue that it arose out of the expertise they acquired in building API-first infrastructure, but I think that’s different than a lot of these examples.

bsdpufferfish 3y ago
I think the software for managing servers was internal, not the massive build out of hardware.
lijok 3y ago
SQS, S3 and EC2 were all internal systems that they decided to start offering publicly at some point. That’s the widely understood history. I’d love to read anything contrary to that, sounds very interesting
- fcsp 3y ago
  Do you have sources that confirm that this was the case? Otherwise, none of the counter proof that you demanded would be needed, saving everybody some research time
  - lijok 3y ago
    Woah, let me be clear, I am not demanding anything, nor are we looking for “counter proofs”, this is a simple discussion on some interesting AWS history and potentially myths surrounding it GP and myself are in agreement that the widely understood history is as I laid it out (given they said it was a myth). Happy to link to some info on the history of AWS, but its not the point of this thread I think
  - maximinus_thrax 3y ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-of-the-genesis-of-aws/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-... It's also on the Wikipedia page, with references to the appropriate articles/talks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Service... This is not some secret or hidden piece of knowledge requiring extensive research..
    - lupire 3y ago
      That says that the products were inspired by Amazon architecture, not externalization of Amazon's actual existing retail websites tech. EC2 was sold to customers long before it was functional and secure enough for Amazon itself to use.
      - maximinus_thrax 3y ago
        https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-the-history-of-awss-ec2/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-th... > EC2 was developed first and foremost for Amazon's internal infrastructure. It started out as an idea in the head of Chris Pinkham, who worked as an engineer in charge of Amazon's global infrastructure in the early 2000s. > "It struck us in the infrastructure engineering organisation that we really needed to decentralise the infrastructure by providing services to development teams," Pinkham says. "That was a big motivating factor." Someone here is lying. I really couldn't care less who's right or wrong, I'm just using publicly available information.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        Actually, they can be both true: it could have been developed for Amazon's internal use, but sold to the public before the target internal customer was sold on adopting it.
        maximinus_thrax 3y ago
        > Actually, they can be both true This is probably the case for 99% of all arguments I witnessed in my career.
- rcxdude 3y ago
  that's not how I understood the history: AWS was a result of a strategy of making amazon's infrastructure into its own business unit (with the basic idea that any future internal projects should also be suitable to sell to someone else, because they would be). It took quite some time for them to migrate from 'internal tool' to 'suitable to sell to someone else', they didn't just do it because they happened to have those tools.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  It's the other way around. The public offerings were built and only much later were they used internally, at least with any widespread adoption. They are many AWS products that are a derivative or variation of internal tools, but they are effectively almost always rewrites with significant changes. The dogfooding comes much later. Source: I once worked there while they were migrating workloads to these AWS systems.
lupire 3y ago
It was more of a symbiotic evolution with both goals mind. On the business side, Amazon externalized every little piece of its retail business into a product, from the website itself (target.com), 3P sellers, FBA, etc.

bsdpufferfish 3y ago

I think the software for managing servers was internal, not the massive build out of hardware.

lijok 3y ago

SQS, S3 and EC2 were all internal systems that they decided to start offering publicly at some point. That’s the widely understood history. I’d love to read anything contrary to that, sounds very interesting

fcsp 3y ago
Do you have sources that confirm that this was the case? Otherwise, none of the counter proof that you demanded would be needed, saving everybody some research time
- lijok 3y ago
  Woah, let me be clear, I am not demanding anything, nor are we looking for “counter proofs”, this is a simple discussion on some interesting AWS history and potentially myths surrounding it GP and myself are in agreement that the widely understood history is as I laid it out (given they said it was a myth). Happy to link to some info on the history of AWS, but its not the point of this thread I think
- maximinus_thrax 3y ago
  https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-of-the-genesis-of-aws/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-history-... It's also on the Wikipedia page, with references to the appropriate articles/talks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Amazon_Web_Service... This is not some secret or hidden piece of knowledge requiring extensive research..
  - lupire 3y ago
    That says that the products were inspired by Amazon architecture, not externalization of Amazon's actual existing retail websites tech. EC2 was sold to customers long before it was functional and secure enough for Amazon itself to use.
    - maximinus_thrax 3y ago
      https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-the-history-of-awss-ec2/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-th... > EC2 was developed first and foremost for Amazon's internal infrastructure. It started out as an idea in the head of Chris Pinkham, who worked as an engineer in charge of Amazon's global infrastructure in the early 2000s. > "It struck us in the infrastructure engineering organisation that we really needed to decentralise the infrastructure by providing services to development teams," Pinkham says. "That was a big motivating factor." Someone here is lying. I really couldn't care less who's right or wrong, I'm just using publicly available information.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        Actually, they can be both true: it could have been developed for Amazon's internal use, but sold to the public before the target internal customer was sold on adopting it.
        maximinus_thrax 3y ago
        > Actually, they can be both true This is probably the case for 99% of all arguments I witnessed in my career.
rcxdude 3y ago
that's not how I understood the history: AWS was a result of a strategy of making amazon's infrastructure into its own business unit (with the basic idea that any future internal projects should also be suitable to sell to someone else, because they would be). It took quite some time for them to migrate from 'internal tool' to 'suitable to sell to someone else', they didn't just do it because they happened to have those tools.
xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
It's the other way around. The public offerings were built and only much later were they used internally, at least with any widespread adoption. They are many AWS products that are a derivative or variation of internal tools, but they are effectively almost always rewrites with significant changes. The dogfooding comes much later. Source: I once worked there while they were migrating workloads to these AWS systems.

lupire 3y ago

It was more of a symbiotic evolution with both goals mind. On the business side, Amazon externalized every little piece of its retail business into a product, from the website itself (target.com), 3P sellers, FBA, etc.