Figuring out what you're good at, and outsourcing everything else, Part XXVIII

Just more proof. If you haven't heard of them, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is basically a computing platform for online applications that basically rents out its data centers on an as needed basis much like in the same way you might buy gas or electricity without actually having to own a electrical generating plant or gas refinery. Small firms can have the benefits of a large scale operation and not worry about the costs and headaches of building a data center (AWS is a something that I'm considering for our own web app). It turns out though that despite its original target market, the biggest users of AWS aren't small firms: "the biggest customers in both number and amount of computing resources consumed are divisions of banks, pharmaceuticals companies and other large corporations who try AWS once for a temporary project, and then get hooked."

It's also more proof that technology is really leveling the playing field reducing transactional costs enough that companies like Amazon's S3 can offer its services to small and large firms at not too dissimilar costs and still make money. It's part of that theme I like so much - the need for capital in capitalism is slowly being chipped away. It's all about the idea.