Amazon's Cloud Evangelist

Werner Vogels left a post at Cornell University to come work as Amazon.com’s chief technologist, giving the online retailer a competitive edge in “cloud computing.”

On a cool spring afternoon in New York City, Werner Vogels ascends the stage in a packed ballroom at the Roosevelt Hotel on Madison Avenue. Hundreds of business and technology executives have come to hear Amazon.com’s chief technology officer talk about cloud computing, the computer services phenomenon that’s thriving even as much of the technology industry struggles through the economic downturn. Vogels is high-tech’s leading guru on “the cloud,” and he’s here to explain why the computer industry will never be the same.

For the next hour, Vogels lays out what’s new and different about cloud computing, including Amazon’s popular cloud offering, Amazon Web Services. Cloud computing blends the ease and pervasiveness of the Web with the computational power of large, modern data centers, in an architectural shift that business managers and technology professionals have yet to get their arms around. “It’s still day one,” Amazon’s towering, whiskered CTO tells the audience.

Customers that sign up for Amazon Web Services can order servers, storage and other computer infrastructure on demand, be billed for what they consume in one-minute increments and then charge the fees to a credit card. It’s a fast and flexible alternative to deploying new computers and other equipment in corporate data centers, and, in many cases, it’s cheaper, too. For budget-constrained IT departments, Vogels explains, cloud services are a way to translate fixed costs into variable expenses, or, as the folks at Amazon like to say, shift “cap ex” to “op ex.”

IT consultant Gartner Inc. estimates the cloud computing market generated $46 billion in revenue last year and is on track to hit $150 billion by 2013, a 21 percent annual growth rate. In what feels like a land rush, Google, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and other leading computer and Web companies are jumping into the market. Amazon has established itself as the early leader, with a half-million developers subscribing to Amazon Web Services and an impressive list of business customers that includes Eli Lilly, NASDAQ and The New York Times. Just as significantly, a who’s who of the software industry—IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems—has begun offering products through Amazon Web Services, thrusting Amazon into the middle of the computer industry’s