Nearly a decade after it started as an internal project for a group of engineers, Amazon.com’s cloud services unit has turned into the online retailer’s fastest-growing business.
The company gave a rare glimpse into the growth of Amazon Web Services on Thursday, saying that during the first quarter, it had reached$1.57 billion in revenue, up nearly 50 percent from the same period last year. It had operating income of$265 million, up from$245 million last year. It was the first time Amazon has released such details about what many investors consider the most lucrative part of the retailing giant.
“Amazon Web Services is a$5 billion business and still growing fast — in fact it’s accelerating, ” Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s founder, said in a statement.(Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)
Seattle-based Amazon Web Services is widely known for providing computing power to start-ups and companies such as Netflix and Airbnb, and media organizations, including The Washington Post.
At its D.C. office, which opened last fall, the mood is more like a start-up than a multibillion-dollar business. A single elevator leads to the top floor, where you’re greeted by a mural of dogs.(A photo of the late Rufus, Amazon’s office dog, also adorns the wall.) “We realized eight years ago that cloud computing would be a game-changer — we could do science in a few days that we would otherwise spend weeks on, ” said Tom Soderstrom, the laboratory’s chief technology officer.
NASA’s test case for cloud storage occurred when the Curiosity rover touched down on Mars in 2012. The rover’s high-resolution images were hosted on Amazon’s cloud, so they could be consumed by the world in real time, Soderstrom said.
The last obstacle to overcome in the government market was security: How do you ensure that sensitive data is protected?
In 2013, Amazon took a step that analysts say gave it greater legitimacy in government circles.