AWS (Amazon Web Services) announced the release of Kinesis – Streaming data service brings real-time decision-making to Big Data. Why is that important? The “internet of things” or IoT is the enablement on a massive scale of self-monitoring, IP enabled devices all creating streaming data. These “things” include your car, individual parts of your car, any active device in your house like your thermostat, or any package, any machine, any movement in the business environment. Creating the device and the data is one problem, but creating the infrastructure to collect, manage and make meaning from this instrumentation data is another big part of the challenge in delivering the promise of IoT. AWS Kinesis is a big step toward allowing any developer or any company to have the infrastructure to process real time streaming of data from devices and make real time decisions and actions with it.
Amazon Leadership Principle: Invent and Simplify
Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.
Kinesis is on-demand, is purchased by-the-sip versus needing to commit to long term contracts or upfront services, and is self-service. It’s one thing to invent, it’s another thing to simplify along with this type of sophisticated offering.
In my upcoming management book A Trip Up the Amazon — What I learned (and so should you) from Jeff Bezos and his 14 leadership principles, understanding, examples and insights into Amazon’s culture, strategy and management techniques will be explained.