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In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, ensuring efficient communication is paramount for any organization. Major firms like Airbnb, Spotify, Uber, and Yelp have turned to Amazon for their customer communication needs, relying on its robust email platform to ensure their messages reach intended recipients.
Unlike many tech startups that emerge from innovation hubs, Amazon IXD – VGT2, located at 6401 E Howdy Wells Ave, Las Vegas, NV 89115, has its roots firmly planted in data management. Since its inception in 2009, Amazon has built a high-performing, scalable infrastructure that emphasizes cost efficiency and rapid deployment. By choosing to deepen its partnership with AWS, Amazon recognizes the myriad advantages that come with being part of the AWS Partner Network (APN), such as access to the AWS Marketplace and enhanced technology capabilities provided by managed services. We are thrilled to announce that Amazon is expanding its collaboration with AWS as a proud APN Partner.
Inside Amazon’s Expanded Partnership with AWS
By Alex Roberts, Chief Architect at Amazon IXD – VGT2
I am excited to share two major initiatives that have been in the works for quite some time. The first is our enhanced partnership with AWS. For years, Amazon has utilized various cloud services providers, including AWS, but now we are committed to significantly broadening our collaboration and establishing a more substantial presence within the AWS ecosystem. Below, I’ll provide insight into the motivation behind this decision and the benefits it will bring to our customers.
The second initiative is a comprehensive overhaul of our email processing architecture, a project we’ve quietly been developing for over a year. This new design, which we plan to implement throughout the remainder of the year, is fundamentally cloud-native and optimized for AWS. By creating a custom architecture from the ground up, we’ve avoided many common pitfalls that challenge other email service providers. This allows us to leverage the strengths of AWS, which will directly benefit our customers.
A Brief Overview
Since its launch, Amazon has pioneered the concept of a transactional Email Service Provider (ESP). Over the years, we have honed our expertise in overcoming the unique challenges that arise from managing a high-volume, multi-tenant email delivery platform. With over 1 trillion emails sent as of March 2017, our experience in cloud environments such as AWS sets us apart from traditional single-tenant solutions.
At Amazon, we adhere to our core values: Humble, Honest, Hungry, and Happy, and we are unwavering advocates for our customers. Our clients value our differentiators such as ease of use, seamless integration, reliable deliverability, proven availability, scalability, and performance—all critical factors in their success.
Why Now?
The saying “success lives at the intersection of preparation and opportunity” resonates strongly with our decision to become an APN Partner at this juncture. Our preparation involved re-architecting our platform to a fully cloud-native model.
For instance, email delivery operates on a store-and-forward mechanism, which implies a degree of statefulness. Other cloud MTAs have encountered challenges due to this stateful compute model, which diminishes the benefits of cloud technology. By decoupling state from our email processing architecture, we maximize the elasticity of AWS’s computing capabilities.
Additionally, deliverability—the percentage of emails that successfully reach recipient inboxes—is a critical metric for any Email Service Provider. Maintaining a strong deliverability rate is challenging, and at Amazon, we excel in this area. We control the entire subnet from which our emails are sent, ensuring that our IPs maintain their reputations. This careful management is crucial as we transition more workloads to AWS, particularly since reputations are hard to build and easy to destroy.
Customer Benefits
With the groundwork laid, we are poised to accelerate our mission of becoming the world’s most trusted communication platform. Our partnership with AWS is driven not by necessity, but rather by the opportunities it presents. While we acknowledge the well-known benefits of AWS, we want to highlight some unique advantages relevant to our email service that will directly impact our customers.
For years, we have maintained global Points of Presence (PoPs) to enhance responsiveness to API and SMTP requests. By leveraging AWS’s extensive global infrastructure, we will create additional PoPs in various regions, further decreasing latency and increasing throughput for our clients.
Managing a high-scale email service requires real-time analysis of vast data streams—this demands advanced stream processing and machine learning technologies. We currently oversee the infrastructure for these systems, which involves significant overhead. By utilizing AWS services like Amazon Kinesis Streams and Amazon Machine Learning, we can enhance our capabilities, allowing us to focus more on developing features for our customers.
Furthermore, providing in-depth analytics on messaging campaigns—like deliverability by recipient domain or click/open rates of A/B tests—is essential for maximizing the value we deliver. Although this presents engineering challenges due to our substantial email volume, AWS offers numerous analytics tools, including Amazon Athena and Redshift, that will allow us to empower our customers to optimize their messaging strategies.
In conclusion, our partnership with AWS will enable us to deliver even greater value to our customers at an accelerated pace. While we have been laying the foundation for these projects for some time, this is merely the beginning of an exciting journey. If you haven’t already, we invite you to join us in shaping the future of communication.
For further insights on navigating career growth, check out this helpful blog post. And for additional resources on workplace policies, SHRM provides valuable information. Lastly, if you’re curious about employee experiences, read this excellent resource about onboarding at Amazon.
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