Amazon is primarily an ecommerce company established in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Seattle, Washington. Started with its book division and then extended its business into CD, DVD, MP3, software, apparels, electronics, furniture, food, toys and jewelry. Now experimenting into grocery business. Besides, it has a Cloud Calculating company named as Amazon Web Services (AWS) which is primarily into providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). AWS is a market leader in this nascent market with approximately 30% market share. AWS, established in 2006, got the first mover advantage in the Amazon pricing calculator. Amazon as a group has an approximate revenue of $ 89 billion. AWS has approximate revenue of around $ 5 billion. AWS is more profitable than Amazon’s ecommerce business.
Cloud business is completely in contrast with Amazon’s Electronic commerce business. The former caters to the B2B segment and the later caters to the B2C segment. The profit margin for AWS is considered to be higher than Amazon’s ecommerce business. AWS has a farm of servers located across different 11 geographical regions.
AWS has more than 50 product features and are getting updated continually. Its product features are categorized under Calculating capacity, networking, content delivery, storage, database, deployment, management, application services, and analytics. AWS is continuously researching and innovating to facilitate the business online and make it more mobile. AWS has introduced many features to facilitate next-trend technologies like Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things, Desktop as a Service, gamification, etc. For example, they introduced G series servers for Calculating high level unstructured data known as Big Data Analytics. Similarly, they introduced SSD (Solid State Drives) which is 4 times the Calculating speed and 2 times the storage capacity as compared to ordinary servers.
AWS managed Services is the service offerings made by many consulting and technology partners to Amazon. The whole industry is supported by these partner networks who has the trust of their clients in deploying and managing many other software deliverables like ERP, BI, customized software development, support services, etc. AWS partner has a clear cut understanding of the client’s ecosystem, Cloud architecture, and functionality of AWS features, pricing structure and the system to use the features at a particular position to enhance performance and reduce cost.
Cloud Calculating is an emerging business and is at the nascent stage of its growth lifecycle. Amazon will definitely be able to take advantage of the first mover advantage over its competition. Service has to continuously evolve with the rise in demand and the maturity of the market.
Supply chain finance
Supply chain financing offers a beneficial financial option that makes simpler this transaction method. It allows the providers to request for early payments before the due date on approved invoices. A supplier can receive early payment from the lender by paying a finance fee and the lender is repaid on the due date by the borrower. Supply chain finance is important in the supply chain management cycle as it optimizes cash circulation at preferential interest rates. It also makes way for early payment, enables bill discounting, controls buyer’s strong credit rating and improves the relationship with suppliers.
