Amazonia: Chopping Digital Trees, November 12, 2018
November 12, 2018
After a few days wandering in the Peruvian mountains, I had a moment of either insight or oxygen deprivation. Amazon can yield Amazonia. No, not jungle insects. Digital information which provide some insight or shape shifting to the company which seems positioned to suck Google’s online revenue like a frisky mosquito.
Thus, we have the first installment of Amazonia:
Alexa Listens and Records
ITEM ONE: Everyone’s favorite surveillance device is in the news. According to a report from WMUR tv:
A judge has ordered Amazon to turn over recordings that might have been captured by an Echo smart speaker in the Farmington house where two women were stabbed to death in January 2017.
The write up points out:
“I think most people probably don’t even realize that Alexa is taking account of what’s going on in your house, in addition to responding to your demands and commands,” said Albert Scherr, a professor at the University of New Hampshire School of Law.
Don’t have an Alexa device? Keep in mind that Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant now available on Windows 10 PCs as a standalone app. More info is here.
Alexa, are you connected to Sagemaker and DeepLens? Unfamiliar references, gentle reader? Worth tracking down our four part Amazon policeware series. Start here.
Oracle, What Database Will Amazon Use?
ITEM TWO: Amazon Eases Out the Troublesome Oracle
“Keep Talkin’ Larry: Amazon Is Close to Tossing Oracle Software” reveals that Amazon is about ready to undergo its final chemotherapy session. Most traces of the Oracle disease have now been eliminated. Sure, there are lingering side effects like Oracle PR creating inflammation in Amazon, but the end is in sight.
I learned from the real news, real accurate Bloomberg:
An executive with Amazon’s cloud-computing unit hit back at Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison, who ridiculed the internet giant as recently as last month for relying on Oracle databases to track transactions and store information, even though Amazon sells competing software, including Redshift, Aurora and DynamoDB. Amazon’s effort to end its use of Oracle’s products has made new progress, Andy Jassy, the chief executive officer of Amazon Web Services, tweeted Friday. “In latest episode of ‘uh huh, keep talkin’ Larry,’ Amazon’s Consumer business turned off its Oracle data warehouse Nov. 1 and moved to Redshift,” Jassy wrote. By the end of 2018, Amazon will stop using 88 percent of its Oracle databases, including 97 percent of its mission-critical databases, he added.
Time’s are changing for the once dominant database giant.
Amazon: Free PR on a National Scale
ITEM 3: The location of a big Amazon office complex may be known. Surprise, Amazon’s giant PR play called HQ2, the erstwhile competition among cities for a second headquarters, may be over. Where is the online giant and policeware vendor heading? The Washington, DC, area. We learned in “Amazon and Microsoft Are Fighting for a $10 Billion Pentagon Contract — and HQ2 in Virginia Could Be Jeff Bezos’ Boss Move”:
“Let’s just put it this way. I don’t think the timing of Amazon moving its headquarters near D.C. is coincidental,” Daniel Ives, Managing Director of Equity Research at Wedbush Securities, told Business Insider.
Yep, coincidence. But can Amazon win JEDI? Microsoft is trying to prevent the juicy plum from ending up in a Whole Foods shopping basket. But Amazon does have that other government cloud contract, and it seems to deliver what In-Q-Tel could not. Plus, the bitter harvest of the Distributed Common Ground project still lingers in some mess halls.
Stephen E Arnold, November 12, 2018
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