The topic for this week is the ‘Innovation of Assembly’. It discusses a few aspects of Web 2.0 application includes the introduction of platform and the importance of application in a platform. The innovation of platform as a service has created a competitive advantage between companies. More companies have introduced their APIs, an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software, which can benefits the developers in their competitive venture.
APIs and its services in certain platform are tools for automating business process and also tools for executing business tasks. Company such as Amazon is one of the leaders in providing APIs both as a products and services. Amazon Simple Storage System (S3) for instance, “enables user to upload, download, and store data across the Internet” (Amazon Web Services, 2010). Like Amazon, Google, Yahoo and eBay are also publish their technical information including APIs, which guide the developers on how to write Web applications that include their sites (LaMonica, 2006). However, Amazon has developed a hosted technical infrastructure service which provides developers with the tools to reliably send data over the Internet.
However, the nature of the API’s technology puts everything at risk. Amazon hosted storage service went down a few times in recent years which frustrating many Web site customers. This problem has reflected their brand and has given bad reputation to Amazon. Moreover, the services provided by Amazon are not free. Companies have paid a lot of money for the services and stored millions of files on Amazon servers (LaMonica, 2006). It is reported that some companies have planned to stop using S3 if it is not reliable since it has given huge impact in their performance and their business.
The complaint about Amazon service issues have been reported by many Websites. Amazon S3 is an example of a great innovation in Web2.0. However, if it is not reliable, it will give huge impact to their other products. Drop in service level will frustrates user and it should be addressed properly.
Video about Amazon web Services (S3 and EC2)
References
Amazon Web Services. (2010). Introduction to Amazon S3. Retrieved March 2010, from Amazon Web Services: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AmazonS3/latest/gsg/
LaMonica, M. (2006, March 14). Amazon offers hosted storage for developers. Retrieved March 2010, from CNet News: http://news.cnet.com/Amazon-offers-hosted-storage-for-developers/2100-1032_3-6049545.html
