Amazon.com’s cloud-computing business turned 10 years old Monday, a short but fast-paced life that has revolutionized the technology industry and strongly contributed to Seattle’s economic boom. The real growth spurt for Amazon Web Services, however, may yet lie ahead.
What started as a service to provide cheap storage for software developers soon added computer power for rent on a pay-as-you-go basis, enabling a new generation of Web-oriented startups such as Airbnb and Pinterest to focus on building apps rather than the technology infrastructure to support their products.
It’s such a moneymaking machine that when its financial record was first publicly disclosed in April, its shares soared to new heights. In 2015, AWS accounted for 41 percent of Amazon’s profit, though it was only 7 percent of its revenue.
Now, as big companies and even national governments jump on the bandwagon, analysts say cloud computing is still in its infancy. It’s a business, moreover, that Amazon dominates to a great extent, although it’s being increasingly penetrated by rivals such as Microsoft and Google.
