Amazon arrives in the country with a mega-server

12/15/2011 - 10h05

Amazon, one of the most leading internet companies in the world, announced today the start of its operations in Brazil with its corporate online services.

The company's first initiative in the country will be through its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division, dedicated to the cloud computing model, in which corporate clients pay monthly for the use of the company's servers.

This type of "rent" eliminates the need for the companies to buy their own servers and allows them to pay only for the computational capacity that they need. There will be 30 services in the country.

"The reason is mainly in economic growth and the potential for technology spending in the country," says Vice President Andy Jassy.

Today the company has among its clients the collective buying site Peixe Urbano and the airline Gol, which use the company's servers in the USA.

With the opening of the operation in São Paulo, the idea is to reduce by 70% the access time for files and systems that run on servers controlled by Amazon.

The São Paulo base will also serve customers in countries like Chile, Peru and Argentina.

Amazon will have a home page in Portuguese, but the rest of the information about products and support will still be in English.

The initial charge will be in US dollars and will require an international credit card.

The prices should be 20% higher than in the USA.

Questioned about the arrival of the Amazon.com online bookstore, the AWS says it is a separate company and wouldn't comment.

LOCAL COMPETITION

Among the local competitors that already offer general solutions is UOL Cloud, offered by UOL Host, a division of the UOL portal, a company belonging to the Folha Group which publishes the newspaper Folha.

Launched in July of this year, the service has 3000 enterprise servers.

"The company will still take time to get to know the market and has the challenge of providing service and support in Portuguese, which is fundamental to selling services of this kind," says Vinícius Pessin, director of UOL Host, with 2000 service personnel.

Another competitor is Locaweb, which has had cloud computing services since 2005, and has 5000 customers.

According to Gilberto Mautner, president of the company, the prices of the domestic offerings are more competitive because they already include support, while the "self service" model of Amazon requires a separate payment.

IDLE CAPACITY

Created in 2006, Amazon Web Services was born with the purpose of renting the idle capacity of the servers of the global retail giant Amazon.com. Netflix and Shell are some of its customers.

The unit should end the year with revenue of $750 million, still a small fraction of the more than $34 billion in sales of Amazon.com.

Translated by DAVE WOLIN