Amazon - Diapers, Soap and Cloud Computing

When you hear of Amazon what do you usually think of? Place to buy Books, vacuum cleaner, diapers or laptops that can be shipped directly to your home.

Plain vanilla, boring e-commerce...... however nothing could be farther from the truth.

Amazon over the years has built itself into an obvious e-commerce behemoth which sells shoes to clothes to computers. But not so obviously Amazon has built a mind boggling technology capability with the ability to execute across hardware, software and consumer electronics platforms.


3 years ago, it would have been difficult to believe that Amazon would produce the biggest selling e-reader in history. But with Kindle, Amazon created a top of the line e-reader - a network device with the ability to download content using an always on data connection. It was unprecedented and showed how a network device of the future would behave.

Similarly on the enterprise side of things, Amazon was a pioneer in offering commercial cloud computing services. It has allowed organizations to utilize computing power without the upfront costs, the ability to scale phenomenally and the ability to pay as you go.

It is just amazing to see the various products that Amazon offers to understand how much of a core technology company they are - movie streaming, Android app store, Cloud Player, IMDB and so on. It is just a matter of time before Amazon develops its own tablet based on Android and also could own the best Android market place in the world.

In addition these are a couple of areas that I believe Amazon will get into. Google, Apple, Microsoft beware!!!!

• Amazon Smart Grid Platform - Smart Grids allow energy consumption to be monitored and managed just as we manage computer networks. Amazon with its cloud computing services can provide a robust and scalable platform for smart grid applications. For e.g. utility companies could use Amazon platform to crunch large amounts of consumption data in real-time to provide feedback to the smart grid to control distribution.
• Amazon Virtual Office - The ability to create a complete virtual office including company websites, intranets, private networks, productivity apps on demand, email, call handling and forwarding, mail handling and forwarding, virtual meeting rooms etc. This will integrate VoIP, video conferencing technologies to produce a completer virtual office.
• Amazon Content Streaming Device  - An Amazon device like Roku or Boxee seems likely which will stream movies, music and other content from the internet. The fight to replace cable is heating up and Amazon would want a piece of it.

What do you think are the other areas Amazon will target?