That series of posts should be seen in the context of someone who was working on a Solaris to Linux migration (like EVERY company at the time) trying to claim credit for creating cloud computing. This is NOT the origin story for EC2, which started as a skunkworks project in Cape Town.
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EC2 wasn't the first AWS service though it is the most fundamental one.
AWS (IaaS) was started after Andy Jassy, who was Chief of Staff or Technical Assistant to the CEO at the time (2003/4), came up with a different vision for "Web Services" [0] to solve web-scale infrastructure problems every single project at Amazon then faced (and so, couldn't ship fast). That is, until Andy reinvented it, "Web Services" was simply limited to access to Amazon's catalog of SKUs [1][2]. As (may be) part of "Web Services" they also ran Target, AOL (shop@AOL), and toys-r-us' e-commerce stores [2]. Mechanical Turk showed up in 2004/5, S3 followed early 2006, whilst SQS, EC2 launched mid 2006 [3], and SimpleDB late 2007.
[0] https://youtu.be/9XTdhpYV168?t=457
[1] https://reference.wolfram.com/language/WebServices/tutorial/...
[2] https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=99979&seqNu...
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20210109135519/http://www.newsfl...
You're almost correct.
SQS I believe started in 2004, but in a very limited capacity. I think that MTurk also started in 2004.
Andy Jassy is the one that came up with the vision for AWS. S3 was called S4 at the beginning! There was a big vision on the payments part, but I think S3 + EC2 took off faster than anyone expected, and I credit these two as the main reason why (IMHO) AWS has been so incredibly successful.
I had the privilege to work and interact with Andy Jassy in my past (I was at AWS 2008-2014 and I met him and sat with him numerous times, despite I wasn't based in Seattle), and I can say that I'm pretty sure I've never seen a leader as focused, as effective, as visionary as Andy.
The "2 pizzas team" structure at Amazon and therefore at AWS was also very conducive to running many experiments and failing fast.
Just curious - how did the name S3/S4 get coined? What is the story/rationale behind it?
Simple Storage Service - three S's.
really? So EC2 is a DARPA program? Would make sense as Internal is also a military project.
EDIT: can you provide some links thanks to this. Thanks.
Below is a link with some of the history of EC2.
It wasn't linked to Darpa but it was developed as an experimental project by an autonomous team in South African office lead by Chris Pinkham and initially Amazon were quite secretive about it.
"""The designation "skunk works" or "skunkworks" is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, with the task of working on advanced or secret projects. """
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-amazon-exposed-its-guts-th...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works#:~:text=The%20desi....
Wikipedia says
Amazon EC2 was developed mostly by a team in Cape Town, South Africa led by Chris Pinkham. Pinkham provided the initial architecture guidance for EC2 and then built the team and led the development of the project along with Willem van Biljon.
with links to a Register piece
https://www.theregister.com/2010/06/25/nimbula_cloud_os/
And
https://web.archive.org/web/20100621120705/http://itknowledg...