Amazon – Anything from A to Z

 “Connecting small things from a to z”is what Jeff Bezos, owner of the larges e-commerce kingdom -Amazon’ does best. Despite being the owner of one of the greatest tech giants in the modern world Bezos ability has never been of an engineer or an out of the world ‘coder’. What he does best is identifying patterns of the future and developing solid business plans based on that, in other words : connecting small things a from a to z” just as his bright yellow smile-like logo suggest. It is this ability that helped him to understand that e-commerce will be the future of retail 20 years ago, even as an owner of smalltime online bookstore, the same ability that makes him to bet on IoT today.

From his famous ‘two pizza” meeting policy, his ‘customer first’ approach, his fitness makeover to his recent divorce from long standing wife MacKenzie (Even after paying the largest divorce fee of$38B, he still remains the wealthiest man the world). Amazon founder Jeff Bezos often find his place in headlines and business journals. But we often fail to identify the visionary in him. We are bit resistant to spell his name along with modern days visionaries in likes of Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. For a man who single handedly built an ecommerce kingdom that rule every home today even in third world countries to launching rockets to space and as the wealthiest man on earth whose assets exceeds the combined market capitalization of Nike, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Goldman Sachs it is fair to say the visionary in him is little underrated. But his greatest vision and his large chunk of success come from none of the stated above. It is in the indentifying early, the part small things like a voice assisted speaker to a touch button that can re-order your running out groceries are going to play in our lives. Jeff Bezos’s understanding of IoT today can be very much related to his understanding of Ecommerce when he started two decades ago in an interview around 20+ years ago he says“ This is Day 1… this is the Kitty Hawk Stage of electronic commerce.” Well, He is probably saying the same thing about ‘Internet of thing’ today.

Early Years

Bezos sets his site on IoT long before the tech universe realized the power of connected devices. In fact, the very beginning of the company’s humble origin as an online book store from a small rented garage can be traced back to his realization about how internet is going to change word in the next century. Back in the  first half of this decade when giants like IAM and Microsoft were realizing the potential of IoT and was starting to invest heavily on the platform, Bezos has already understood Iot not just as a hype but as the future internet.

The advantage he had was that every IoT device has to be finally connected to an powerful cloud service to be working in harmony. Amazon already had a well established AWS cloud service as backbone of their IoT Developments. Bezos was investing heavily on IoT devices in those years, serving a wide range of customers from families through devices such as echo dot and Amazon dash buttons (which allows consumers to order thousands of products range from washing liquids to vegetables with just a touch), enterprises with its AWS solutions and developers with hardware as AWS IoT Button, modeled on its highly successful DASH button. David Stephenson the author of bestseller “Future is smart” summarize the Amazon’s development at that time as “It joins a comprehensive, and growing, package of IoT devices and services from Amazon that I suspect will quickly make it the platform of choice for the consumer IoT”.  The services and solutions he was referring to can be mainly classified in to four areas. 

AWS platform: As you probably know when in 2015 AWS was the largest cloud platform in the world. It was an absolute monster with revenue of $2.4 billion in revenue and an year to year growth of 69%. In 2015 Amazon also launch as second AWS platform dedicated to enterprise IoT services, built partially on the 2lemtery IoT platform that it had bought earlier.

When talking about Bezos vision on Enterprise IoT solution John Rossman the author of ‘The Amazon Way’ series says “Amazon Web Services has several existing IoT enabling products include AWS Redshift, AWS Kinesis, AWS Machine Learning and recent acquisition of 2lemetry show that the big bet for Amazon is not in creating devices for its retail business, but in providing cloud infrastructure and software to thousands of companies needing to build IoT devices and capabilities.  This is the AWS IoT flywheel and the real business in IoT for Amazon.”

AWS IoT Hardware Developer Program:  “that allows companies to build re­ordering buttons directly into their own hardware. Listed on that page are partners such as Whirlpool (re­order laundry supplies), Brother (ink and toner), Brita (water filters) and Quirky (which is launching a line of appliances including a fancy pourer coffee machine). An Amazon spokesman says the first Dash enabled devices will start showing up in the fall.”

Home Services: is an on­-demand service in selected major cities for local installation and repair of IoT devices. Clicks and bricks!

 Its $100M Alexa Fund: “to fuel voice technology innovation. We believe experiences designed around the human voice will fundamentally improve the way people use technology” (amen, brother…) It has “invested in companies like home security firm Scout Security Inc. and wireless doorbell maker Bot Home Automation Inc,” Amazon quickly made progress in its voice controlled IoT devices through the power of Alexa. Amazon predicted early that voice will play a major role in the future of IoT.

In all fairness, Amazon, with its financial prowess, has managed to assemble a platform that looks poised to execute maximum extraction of IoT’s potential. The uncertainty around where this development of IoT might take us shall stick around for a while, however if we look at all the resources Amazon can tinker with to further enhance the user experience, it seems to have all the ingredients to be considered as an exciting prospect.

As we speak, the experts around the industry forecast this steep rise of IoT to continue as a billion dollar valuation for the industry closes in. While the milestones are being reached and placed aside by this prodigal technology, there are murmurs of reservation regarding the interpersonal experience Amazon is trying to promote with IoT. The nature of it remains a dilemma for some figureheads who have closely observed IoT’s development over the years. Their argument delivers a ‘wrongful presentation’ point that does have some sort of weightage to it. The limitations of Amazon’s technology have also been pointed out. It makes sense to dissect these points and follow it up with a thorough assessment of the current scenario, but the consensus around the bigger chunk of the industry is that Amazon is getting actually an unfair bit of stick here. The limitations within their IoT branch are the direct consequence of limitations within the structure of IoT itself. IoT is evolving and so is the environment Amazon has created to develop its IoT-based services in. The result of partnering everything that IoT brings to the table with Amazon’s hugely advanced technology base might just grab a spot on the list of things to watch-out for over the next few years.