Jeff Barr of Amazon addressing the IWMW 2007 conference in York
Back in June, at the snappily-titled Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 conference at the University of York, I attended a presentation by Jeff Barr, who has the enviable job title of Senior Manager, Web Services Evangelism at Amazon.com.
That’s right, Amazon have a Web Services Evangelist. Go spread the word! And you thought that all Amazon did was allow you to buy cheap books, software and DVD box sets.
What are Amazon Web Services?
In the words of Jeff Barr:
Amazon Web Services are a set of APIs and business models which give developer-level access to Amazon’s infrastructure and content.
In words that my Mum would understand:
Amazon Web Services provide ways for you to connect your programs and websites to their programs and websites.
Jeff’s presentation was entitled “Building Highly Scalable Web Applications”, and while it was very interesting I struggled to see the immediate practical application for using Amazon’s Web Services at The University of St Andrews. I could certainly see its relevance in other contexts.
Find out more
For those of you interested in finding out more about Amazon’s Web Services I can recommend the following online resources
- View Jeff’s slides from his presentation at IWMW 2007
- Watch a video of Jeff’s presentation
- Virtual Hosting have a very good blog article entitled 10 Creative Ways to Use Amazon Web Services (thanks to Rich McIver for the link)