When Amazon.com was launched in 1995, its primary goal was to revolutionize retail.

What began as just an online bookstore, soon grew to become an online marketplace where consumers could purchase virtually anything they might need or want. By 2007, the online store's infrastructure cost $2 billion and is the largest and most reliable in the world. Amazon is now the largest online retailer with annual sales in excess of $10 billion (Rainier & Turben, ---). Despite its growth, Amazon has had to not seen the results it originally hoped for. Two major business problems that it has faced are online retail competition fallen profits. In addition, Amazon uses just 10 percent of its processing capacity at any time (Turben & Rainer, 2008). Amazon's solution to these problems is to provide computing storage and other services to companies and help them run the technical side of their businesses. By providing these services, some believe that that Amazon is moving aware from its core competency of being an online retailer. Although there is no definitive answer, this idea seems inaccurate as Amazon's primary goal to be the world's largest retailer still remains. Amazon seems to have found a way to grow and adapt to the changing economy while using the resources it already has. Amazon's two major competitors are Google and Microsoft. Amazon competes with Google by offering Flexible Payment Services (FPS). FPS allows the transfer of money between two entities with the support capability for multiple and reoccurring payments. FPS also provides the ability for users who already have Amazon accounts to use their already existing account information to make a purchase off of another website. Amazon's FPS competes with Google's Checkout, which provides a similar feature although Amazon's cost to vendors for this services is currently the cheaper of the two. Amazon's other major competitor is Microsoft. Both companies compete for cloud computing customers. While Amazon offers EC2, Microsoft offers Microsoft Azure. Microsoft's original approach was to have developers write applications in its Azure environment and then move the applications over to have Amazon host. However, now that Microsoft is offering infrastructures as a service with flexible payment options, like Amazon, the two companies whom consider themselves business partners have begun to compete for the same customers. The web services provided by Amazon are Simple Storage Services (S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and the Mechanical Turk. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) is storage space for the internet (Amazon). This service provides the customer with a way to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web for 15 cents a gigabyte per month. The Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) supplies the customer with Amazon's processing power for 10 cents an hour per server. EC2 allows customers to run programs on Amazon's huge computing environment while remaining in control of their own resources. EC2 is beneficial as it allows a customer to only pay for the capacity that they need. The Amazon Mechanical Turk service handles the type

of work that machines aren't capable of doing well, such as identifying inappropriate objects in a photo or video, performing data de-duplication, transcribing audio recordings or researching data details. Companies find the Mechanical Turk service beneficial because it provides a service for something that often gets left undone or that a company would have to hire expensive temporary help to accomplish. By providing these three services, Amazon uses excess computing space and power and also generates income which helps regain some of the income originally put into the construction of its $2 billion infrastructure. Although Amazon's infrastructure seems strong, it could still run into data management issues. One data management issue that Amazon may encounter is a breach in security. If Amazon's infrastructure is weakly secured then a customer's data becomes vulnerable. This could affect both the retail customers and developers that utilize Amazon's web services. When information is controlled by another party, there is no guarantee that it is ever completely safe. Amazon's data can be described as the raw result of transactions, inventory, and sales figures. The information is the data described previously after it has been presented in a way that the customer or others can use. Such as a customer's online shopping cart that contains the item, price and quantity desired. Knowledge is a complete summary of the information at an even higher level. For example, the tracking that Amazon executives must do weekly, monthly, and annually of certain products in order to make the best decisions about inventory management. Amazon uses e-business and e-Commerce for Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Consumer (B2C). An example of B2C is when Amazon sells a household item to a consumer on its website. Amazon uses B2B when it allows other businesses to sell an item to a consumer while Amazon takes a commission. Another B2B strategy is the web services described earlier that are provided to developers by Amazon. In a way, the B2B aspect is actually part of Amazon's B2C by selling web services or retail items. Without the insight to adapt to a changing environment a business will almost certainly fail. Amazon continues to find new and enhanced ways to continue to be the preferred online retailer as well as a reputable web service provider. In spite of its challenges, Amazon has proven that it is a company that is willing to spend the time and focus needed to evolve and remain strong.