Do large organizations use Amazon web services?

Question

I was struck by the new version of Amazon Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). Amazon has many other impressive web application blocks. Are there examples of large organizations using AWS? They seem impressive, but the disadvantage is that you transfer your processing to a third party, which can be considered quite risky.

Answer 1

Netflix has a VERY large AWS deployment.

Here's a conversation from Adrian Cockcroft, their "Cloud Architect": http://blip.tv/file/4252897

In addition, http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/cloud-innovators-netflix-strategy-reflects-google-philosophy and http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/05/31/NetflixOnAWS.aspx

PBS for content delivery: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/pbs/

Visit Virgin Atlantic: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/vtravelled/

Ericsson set-top box content service: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/ericsson/

Hitachi for video delivery service: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/hitachi-systems/

Washington Post for processing documents: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/washington-post/

Then came many backup providers who resell S3 storage and organizations that return their own data to S3.

Plus tons of familiar web brands like Yelp, Reddit, SmugMug, AirBnB, UrbanSpoon, PlayFish and many more.

Answer 2

I’m not sure about any specific large organizations by name, but you can look at their case study page and see what types of organizations use it.

In addition, an article was published in 2008 that said:

So who uses these services? A senior Amazon executive told me that various Amazon Web Services have 60,000 different customers, and most of them are not startups that are usually associated with on-demand computing. Rather, the largest customers in the amount and amount of computing resources consumed are units of banks, pharmaceutical companies, and other large corporations that once try AWS for a temporary project and then connect .

Full article

Again there are no specific names, but an indication that large organizations are using it

Answer 3

I have a buddy who is a development manager at Amazon. He said that they have an internal mandate to start using EC2 for many of their customer-oriented sites, and that amazon.com can also move towards it. I believe Bezos calls it "Drink Your Own Champagne" or something like that.

I am not sure about their internal use of the AWS API (e.g. SimpleDB, SQS, SNS).

My experience with SimpleDB and SQS has been very positive. This is not the case for all situations. Reliability and performance were very good, but latency is higher than launching your own infrastructure (as you would expect).

Answer 4

There are certain large customers. However, most of them are confidential for various reasons. I think that in the near future they will have more use cases and links. I have spoken with several people in the Amazon, and it looks like they are moving forward.