Vice President of Operations Part 2

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Amazon Web Services Inc. is one of the best companies in the world. Not only does it have one of the friendliest business cultures around the world, but it also has its senior software developers earning up to $130000 per year (Emolument, 2017). I am the vice president of operations at Amazon Web Services Inc.

Who are we? What do we do? Simply put, Amazon Web Services is the future of computing. We seek to leverage on the power and opportunities presented by cloud computing in business development, provide data storage centers, develop and maintain Artificial Intelligence software APIs among other computing services (Amazon Web Services, 2014). In order to maintain a competitive edge, my office is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that the current operations strategies are in line with the current challenges that are bedeviling the company. At the moment, this desired ideal is not what we are experiencing.

There exists a set of key elements in our operational efficiency with our operational strategy upon which our success has been drawn this far. Firstly, our operational strategy is broadly service based. The aforementioned set consists of location and quality of service which are based on the elements drawn from both the structural and infrastructural frameworks. The key elements in this set comprise a strong global presence, hardware reliability, infinite storage capacities, infinite computer processing power and infinite server and hosting capacities (Amazon Web Services, 2017) among others.

However, there is also a set of tasks that do not align with our operational strategy. The tasks include Analytics, application and security. At Amazon Web Services, Analytics involves getting several terabytes of data from users and making sense out of it through processes such as graphical illustrations. This is usually done at no cost since it simply involves the transformation of data from one form to another. Nevertheless, we incur computer processing costs which have indeed led to a lag in data delivery over the network. The application field is utilized by our software engineers who are testing the latest technologies in Artificial Intelligence and distributed machine learning. Many a time, these are futuristic endeavors with which we do not realize much profit. Therefore, we need to pump funds into projects of this nature, even if they are not going to return on investments any time soon. For security in itself as a non-operational strategy oriented task, redundancy of security software is the greatest weakness (Varia, 2011). This is due to the fact that we have to run parallel antivirus programs with multiple layers of network abstractions and yet this data is being sanitized at the clients’ computers.

The four competitive priorities in business are usually a good basis upon which operational strategies are formulated. In regard to cost, our organization is already offering unrivaled price values in comparison to other competitors such as Google and Microsoft (Amazon Web Services, 2017) among others. To benefit more from the leverage presented by cost, we will need to introduce cost tariffs whereby our users and subscriber can indeed choose the kind of payment plans they want. By doing this, we will not only make the bottom cost the lowest one available, but we will also make it flexible which will probably attract more subscribers.

Quality is an important consideration in the modern business world. At Amazon Web Services, we will need to scale up our data centers globally. This will ensure that our customers, especially in some regions of South Asia and Africa have access to comprehensive and reliable network connections. In addition, we will need to liaise with local telecommunication companies in these regions to create affordable internet access points which will ensure a smooth delivery of our services globally.

Delivering on time means coming up with measures that will ensure our customers get exactly what they want at the very instant when they need it. Our services are based in the cloud. Therefore, all that we need in order to achieve this is reliable and robust internet coverage. This will make it a necessity for us to launch our satellite into space over the next ten years in order to leverage on the power of vast and free internet speeds obtainable once such a facility get its orbital coordinates in space.

Flexibility is analogous with adaptation. We must always be on the lookout for the kind of feedback that we are getting from our customers and competitors as well. In order to realize this, we will need to create an online platform whereby our subscribers can always hold a one on one chat with our team and talk about the issues that they may want ironed out within our services.

An integrated operations strategy will therefore encompass the four priorities already discussed. It will focus on tariff based pricing of the services, 100% uptime services and ubiquitous data centers across the globe. This will give us an ultimate upper hand as an established cloud based computing and infrastructure giants.

A deep analysis of the structure of the competitive priorities exhibits a largely skewed competitive edge for Amazon Web Services. Going by the kind of competitors in existence, AWS pricing is in such a way that it is indeed the lowest (Amazon Web Services, 2017). This gives the company an upper hand, given that most of the customers usually have cost as the sole factor in determining which client to book. However, AWS needs to work with the element of time. This is because Google, a major competitor, is by far having much better structure in the form of the Android operating system which is powering close to 2 billion handheld devices worldwide. AWS might need to mirror this process in a much clever way and find a means of being able to reach out to the customers at an instant’s notice just like google. Important to note, in regard to the infrastructure of the production process, is that having a personal touch, just like Google will give the company direct control and expression of the content being delivered to the end customers. AWS is not as flexible as it might be desired. Many a times, the company uses open source policy in most of its services. However, the corporate worlds which make the bulk of its customers prefer licensed and very expensive software in which they can demand for accountability from the vendors. This makes the AWS flexibility a debatable issue and the company might indeed need to put serious considerations into these issues in the future.

Three New Enablers Aligned with AWS’ Long Term Plan.

a. Increase in internet connectivity in Africa through fiber optic cables.

b. The establishment of Amazon Web Services as a brand name for cloud computing infrastructure.

c. Advancement and increase in interest in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.

Pros and Cons of the New Enablers

References Amazon Web Services. (2014). Overview of Amazon Web Services. Seattle: Amazon. Amazon Web Services. (2017, April). Amazon Web Services. Overview of Amazon Web Services. Amazon Web Services. (2017). Cloud Service Pricing. Emolument. (2017). Amazon Employee Salaries. Retrieved from https://www.emolument.com/salary-reports/companies/amazon/10152 Varia, J. (2011, January). Amazon Web Services. Architecting for the cloud.