Amazon Finds a Home in the UK
January 10, 2020
Just a quick item about Amazon Web Service contract size. “Home Office Reinforces Commitment to AWS with £100m Cloud Hosting Deal” makes clear that a UK government entity has not been won over my Microsoft Azure. The write up reports this information:
“The award of the public cloud hosting services contract to Amazon is a continuation of services already provided to the Home Office,” a departmental spokesperson told Computer Weekly. “The contract award provides significant savings for the department of a four-year term.” The Home Office is renowned for being a heavy user of cloud technologies, and is – according to the government’s own Digital Marketplace IT spending league table – by far the biggest buyer of off-premise services and technologies via the G-Cloud procurement framework.
The contract is significant because it suggests that other Five Eyes’ participants will be exposed to the AWS approach.
For Amazon staff working on the contract, there may be some meetings at Clarendon Terrance. London taxi drivers know where that is. No digital map needed.
Stephen E Arnold, January 10, 2020
Is Open Source Changing and Rapidly?
January 7, 2020
Open source technology is what some perceive as unencumbered, handcuff free code. For outfits eager to slash costs, open source software is a foot stool for some developers and organizations. One interpretation of open source operates on the premise that the technology should be free and available for anyone. The social contract is that users “give back” to the open source community.
Some Amazon Web Services’ critics appear to suggest that the company is not giving back. Not surprisingly, some AWS-ers are not happy campers. ZDNet shares more on the story in the article, “AWS Hits Back At Open-Source Software Critics.”
Also, the deeply technical New York Times was not kind to AWS, when it stated that AWS, a giant cloud computing provider, consistently integrated open source software that non-AWS developers created. Vice President of AWS analytics and ElasticCache Andi Gutman claims that AWS is giving its customers what they want. Gutman says that Was customers want technology and services based off open source technology, so AWS is not strip mining, but truly answering their clients’ desires. He continued:
“The story is largely talking about open source software projects and companies who’ve tried to build businesses around commercializing that open-source software. These open-source projects enable any company to utilize this software on-premises or in the cloud, and build services around it. AWS customers have repeatedly asked AWS to build managed services around open source,” Gutman said.
He noted that AWS contributes to open-source projects such as Linux, Java, Kubernetes, Xen, KVM, Chromium, Robot Operating System, Apache Lucene, Redis, s2n, FreeRTOS and Elasticsearch.”
The complaints apparently come from AWS’s rivals, who have also discussed filing antitrust complaints against the company. One rival CEO, Matthew Prince of Cloudflare, is afraid Amazon’s ambitions are endless and might overpower or monopolize the entire cloud computing market.
Will open source return to its roots? Will some open source developers not permit big companies to privatize the community technology?
Which will triumph? Open source precepts or the needs of a publicly-traded company?
Elastic, the developers of open source Elastic, the write up “Why Elastic Stock Dropped 19% in December” may presage the impact of efforts to change the definition of open source.
Whitney Grace, January 7, 2020
Abandoned Books: Yep, Analytics to the Rescue
January 6, 2020
DarkCyber noted “The Most ‘Abandoned’ Books on GoodReads.” The idea is that by using available data, a list of books people could not finish reading can be generated. Disclosure: I will try free or $1.99 books on my Kindle and bail out if the content does not make me quiver with excitement.
The research, which is presented in academic finery, reports that the the author of Harry Potter’s adventurers churned out a book few people could finish. The title? The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling. I was unaware of the book, but I will wager that the author is happy enough with the advance and any royalty checks which clear the bank. Success is not completion; success is money I assume.
I want to direct your attention, gentle reader, to the explanation of the methodology used to award this singular honor to J.K. Rowling, who is probably pleased as punch with the bank interaction referenced in the preceding paragraph.
Several points merit brief, very brief comment:
- Bayesian. A go to method. Works reasonably well. Guessing has its benefits.
- Data sets. Not exactly comprehensive. Amazon? What about the Kindle customer data, including time to abandonment, page of abandonment, etc.? Library of Congress? Any data to share? Top 20 library systems in the US? Got some numbers; for example, number of copies in circulation?
- Communication. The write up is a good example why some big time thinkers ignore the inputs of certain analysts.
To sum up, perhaps The Casual Vacancy may make a great gift when offered by Hamilton Books? A coffee table book perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2020
Oracle, Amazon, and Maybe Soon Open Source Excitement?
January 6, 2020
Remember the on going Google-Oracle Java dust up? Oracle may. According to “Oracle Copied Amazon’s API. Was That Copyright Infringement?”:
Among the companies offering a copy of Amazon’s S3 API is Oracle itself. In order to be compatible with S3, Oracle’s “Amazon S3 Compatibility API” copies numerous elements of Amazon’s API, down to the x-amz tags. Did Oracle infringe Amazon’s copyright here? Ars Technica contacted Oracle to ask them if they had a license to copy Amazon’s S3 API. An Oracle spokeswoman said that the S3 API was licensed under an Apache 2.0 license. She pointed us to the Amazon SDK for Java, which does indeed come with an Apache 2.0 license. However, the Amazon SDK is code that uses the S3 API, not code that implements it—the difference between a customer who orders hash browns and the Waffle House cook who interprets the orders.
DarkCyber thinks the author is saying, “Yep, we copied.”
But… and this is interesting.
the Amazon SDK is code that uses the S3 API, not code that implements it.
Is this going to have an impact on API use? A court may decide.
In the meantime, let’s approach this from a different angle.
What’s the future of software? In DarkCyber’s opinion the future of software is a mix of open source code with proprietary components. DarkCyber doesn’t have a nifty Waffle House analogy for this trajectory.
The idea is that the technical constructs we know and love as FANG for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google want to reduce costs, create a glide path for young open sourcey developers, and lock in big spending customers.
One way to think about the Oracle copying Amazon move is in the context of the 2020 version of proprietary software. The APIs and the need for lock in are essential to the persistence of certain big companies.
Net net: What looks open is not? What looks like wordsmithing is a prelude to more aggressive maneuvers.
The name of the game is revenue and growth. Losers will eat in a Waffle House. Winners will not.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2020
Informatica: A Play for Greater Relevance in an Amazon Chess Game?
January 3, 2020
Informatica was set up in 1993. The company was private, then public, and now private. Its new CEO is a former McKinsey professional, a background which some may find reassuring and others terrifying. (McKinsey had a racketeering lawsuit dismissed. How does a consulting firm ensnare itself in an allegation of racketeering? I will leave it to you to answer that question.)
The big news, however, is that Informatica is making an attempt to retain its relevance and increase its impact among Fortune 1000 firms, investment banks, financial services firms, insurance companies, and other blue chip customers.
The method, its seems to DarkCyber, involves Amazon. Keep in mind that Informatica’s previous attempts to add some zing to its quarter century of database-related work involved Microsoft and Salesforce, both next big things.
According to “Informatica Aims to Better Track Data Lineage with AI-Powered Data Catalog,”
its AI-powered data catalog, called Catalog of Catalogs is notable because it is trying to track data lineage across ecosystems. Catalog of Catalogs includes metadata scanners for business intelligence, data warehouses, big data and third party repositories.
The “new” Informatica is represented in this graphic, which has a remarkable resemblance to Amazon Web Services blockchain diagrams:
Is this an Amazon diagram in recognizable AWS orange or an Informatica diagram?
There’s a hook to Amazon’s data marketplace technology, support for Amazon’s smart workflow, and the federation of metadata.
But what’s missing in this real news story?
Alexa, the Mom
January 2, 2020
Amazon not only wants to sell computer technology and every conceivable item on Earth, but the company also wants to move into the healthcare industry. TechCrunch reports that “Amazon Launches Medication Management Features For Alexa.” Amazon’s Alexa, a smart speaker, is useful for a lot of things. Alexa can be used to set reminders, book appointments, order things from Amazon, play music, answer questions, contact emergency services, and spy on users for the CIA or FBI. While the latter has not been confirmed, Amazon wants Alexa to assist people with their medications.
Amazon developed a medication management feature that allows people to set medication reminders and request refills using Alexa. Currently the service is only available at Giant Eagle Pharmacy, a retailer in the Midwest and East Coast. Alexa is a tool of the future and simplifies tasks with vocal commands:
“ ‘Voice has proven to be beneficial for a variety of use cases because it removes barriers, and simplifies daily tasks. We believe this new Alexa feature will help simplify the way people manage their medication by removing the need to continuously think about what medications they’ve taken that day or what they need to take,’ noted Rachel Jiang, Head of Alexa Health & Wellness, in an announcement about the new features. ‘We want to make it easy for people to get the information they need and to manage their healthcare needs at home while maintaining the privacy and security of their information, and hope this feature is a step toward that vision,’ she added.”
Amazon’s move into the healthcare industry includes purchasing online pharmacy PillPack and Health Navigator. Amazon plans to transform Health Navigator into the company’s employee health program dubbed Amazon Care. The biggest barrier Amazon faces is guaranteeing that Alexa follows HIPPA laws. Amazon is developing protocols to be HIPPA compliant, such as deleting voice records from Alexa’s skills and creating personal passcodes. But secure? Surveillance centric? Hmmm.
Whitney Grace, January 2, 2020
Blockchain: A Loser in 2020?
December 31, 2019
I recently completed a report about Amazon’s R&D work in blockchain. If you want a free summary of the report, write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com. If not, no problem. You will want to read “Please Blockchain, Prove Me Wrong.” The author likes to use words on some online services stop list, but that’s okay. The writer is passionate about the perceived failings of blockchain.
Blockchain is, according to the write up:
a solution looking for a problem.”
More proof needed, you gentle but skeptical reader? How about this?
According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, blockchain is still “sliding into the trough of disillusionment,” meaning the technology is struggling to live up to the expectations created by the hype around it.
There you go. Proof from a marketing company.
DarkCyber’s view is that encryption is likely to continue to toddle forward. Also, the charm of the distributed database continues to woe some people’s attention.
There may be hope, and perhaps that is why Amazon has more than a dozen patents related to blockchain technology. We learn from the impassioned analysis:
Blockchain’s purported promise is such that everyone is willingly taking a multi-faceted approach, not giving much thought to the possibility that its potential may, in fact, be limited. Or maybe blockchain is just the first iteration of something far more powerful, a base we can build on to restore our faith in decentralized systems.
To sum up, for a dead duck, there are some feathers afloat. And there are those Amazon patents? Maybe Mr. Bezos is just off base and should stick to bulldozing outfits like mom and pop stores and outfits like FedEx?
Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2019
Amazon UK Delivery: Maybe Headed for a Tailback on the M5?
December 30, 2019
CNN is signaling how it will approach Amazon in 2020. The online bookstore everyone loves is finding that its half billion dollar Deliveroo play might be caught in a traffic snarl in the UK. “Amazon’s Big Bet on UK Food Delivery Is in Jeopardy” reported:
Britain’s competition regulator is escalating its investigation into whether Amazon’s planned investment in UK food delivery company Deliveroo would reduce competition and harm consumers. The Competition and Markets Authority said in a statement Friday that it had opened a “phase 2” probe after the companies failed to address its concerns about how the deal would affect the market for online deliveries of restaurant meals and groceries.
Maybe dealing the UK regulators has the same priority as training Amazon delivery drivers?
We noted this statement:
The Competition and Markets Authority ordered Amazon to pause its investment in July while it investigated whether the deal amounted to a takeover. Earlier this month, the regulator said that it was also concerned that the deal would discourage Amazon from re-entering the online food delivery market as a competitor to Deliveroo in the future. The companies fought for the same customers before Amazon shuttered its Amazon Restaurants business last year.
Stepping back from the bangers and beans delivery to your flat in Kensington, DarkCyber perceives the harsh approach of the UK and CNN’s enthusiastic reporting of a meeting in a room painted with a weird green and yellow motif as signals that 2020 may not be kind to the Bezos bulldozer.
Stephen E Arnold, December 30, 2019
Amazon: Sticks and Stones and Assertions Can Break Stuff
December 26, 2019
An online publication called LiveMint published “The Ascent to Power of Surveillance Capitalists.” The write up is semi interesting and may foreshadow how technology companies will be characterized in 2020.
Let’s look at how LiveMint described Amazon, which has been the subject of my research in the last few months.
These two passages invoke the mantra of surveillance capitalism, a popularization of lecture notes and deep thinking by a professor. The phrase “surveillance capitalism” has become a way to make clear that private companies are in the information business. What the book does not make clear is that one of the fundamental laws of digital information is that concentration and monopolistic utility structures cannot be avoided. From my point of view, wanting Amazon, Google, or any other digital operation to be significantly difficult is difficult if not impossible to achieve.
Here are the two passages from the write up I noted:
Allegation One
For its part, Amazon has moved aggressively into government contracting, providing a wide range of information services to federal and local agencies. It has offered facial-recognition products to law-enforcement agencies such as Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), though the software suffers from implicit bias against people of color.
Allegation Two
Amazon is also using its Ring line of smart doorbells to broker cooperation agreements with local police departments. When homeowners provide prior approval, law-enforcement officials can access Ring video feeds without a warrant. Civil liberties advocates and experts are understandably concerned that when combined with facial-recognition technology, Ring doorbell networks will allow for new, potentially unconstitutional forms of surveillance. Journalists have also discovered that Amazon’s Ring deals give the company undue leverage over how law-enforcement agencies communicate with the public.
Several observations:
First, the approach is “everybody knows this to be true.” Well, maybe.
Second, the absence of facts is troubling. Asserting and repeating information without attribution or — heaven forbid — a footnote is interesting.
Third, recycling digital tropes does little to address a real or perceived issue.
Will analyses in 2020 follow this write up’s approach? Don’t know. I do, however, care.
Stephen E Arnold, December 26, 2019
Learning to Drive a Bezos Bulldozer Knock Off
December 25, 2019
“Two-Pizza Teams and More: Former Amazon Employees Bake Bezos Principles into Their Startups” makes clear that certain management methods may be transportable. Like Facebook’s precept “Move fast. Break things”, the Bezos bulldozer driver learns to “never say that’s not my job.” Other important ideas are having a catchy metaphor for one’s business foundation; for example, a flywheel. The idea is that once a big heavy electrical motor begins spinning, it takes quite a bit of effort to slow it down. Then there’s momentum, an idea which explains why one does not stop a bulldozer with a couple of people pushing on the business end of the machine.
The write up notes that Amazon has since 1997 encouraged employees to “have backbone; disagree and commit,” for example, and “insist on the highest standards.”
Another big idea is to keep teams small. If it takes more than two pizzas to feed a team, the team is too big.
Several “discoveries” sparked by the write up are:
- The Seattle Times’ Web site is unusable because ad blockers are not permitted and certain versions of Internet Explorer cannot render the story’s pages. Maybe hiring one of those no-longer-at-Amazon developers is a good idea?
- The focus on people seems to be a good idea except when those people want to unionize or to implement certain training procedures for some Amazon delivery professionals.
- The highest standards sounds good but apparently permitting merchants to sell certain types of products is okay.
To sum up, looking at companies which are operating in ways which would have had 19th century regulatory authorities working overtime provides a new type of management blueprint. Methods which a “bar raisers” are likely to create some interesting business consequences.
Efficiency can be a positive. But there are downsides, and business schools, management consultants, and baby Amazons will rush to explain these glitches away.
Sounds good, almost utopian. One company may be more efficient than multiple companies. Plus that pizza may be delivered by an Amazon operating unit.
Stephen E Arnold, December 25, 2019
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