Amazon.com's (AMZN) squat Seattle headquarters looks nothing like the country club affairs found in Silicon Valley. There are no free soft drinks or volleyball courts. The light fixtures hanging from the ceiling in the reception area aren't fixtures at all but rather collections of extension cords fitted with bulbs. The receptionists lack computerized systems for registering guests. They simply write down visitors' names on a piece of paper. Such is low-margin life in online retail, where Wal-Mart (WMT) stands at the ready, waiting to take away your extension cords.

乍一看去，亚马逊网站矮矮塌塌的西雅图总部一点都不见硅谷乡村俱乐部的范儿。这里没有免费软饮料，也没有排球场。接待区天花板上悬挂着的与其说是灯具，不如说是一组串着灯泡的延长电线。前台接待人员就连登记客人的计算机系统也欠缺。这便是网上零售业利润微薄的景象，沃尔玛还在一旁虎视眈眈，候着把你的延长电线一并省了。

Most people recognize this Amazon: Jeff Bezos's hyperproficient Borders-killer; one of the few dot-com initial public offerings that didn't end up a punch line; fount of millions of smiling cardboard boxes bearing everything from dildos to diapers. Sitting in a sparsely decorated employee cafeteria, Andy Jassy pitches a newer if equally thrifty side of the e-tailing giant. Although all shoppers are welcome, this Amazon, he explains, is for business customers and isn't well marked on the home page. It's called Amazon Web Services, or AWS. As senior vice-president, Jassy heads up AWS, which rents out computing power for pennies an hour. "This completely levels the playing field," Jassy boasts.

亚马逊留给大多数人的印象是：杰夫·贝佐斯（Jeff Bezos）效率卓著的Borders[译注：美国图书零售巨头，近日已申请破产]杀手；少数IPO未沦为笑谈的.com公司之一；什么都运送（从假阳具到尿片一应俱全）、带有微笑标志的数百万硬纸箱的源头。坐在简单装修的员工自助餐厅里，安迪·贾西（Andy Jassy）讲述着网上零售巨头较新却不改节俭的一面。虽说所有顾客都欢迎，但这个亚马逊，他解释道，是面向商业客户的，在主页上并未显著标明。它被称之为亚马逊Web服务，或简称为AWS。作为高级副总裁，贾西负责牵头AWS，该服务按每小时几美分来出租计算能力。“这打造了完全公平的竞争平台，”贾西言语中不免有几分得意。

AWS makes it possible for anyone with an Internet connection and a credit card to access the same kind of world-class computing systems that Amazon uses to run its $34 billion-a-year retail operation. "This will be a very high-volume, relatively low-margin business," Jassy says, sipping his third Diet Coke of the morning. He says he'd like to curb his 12-can-a-day habit, but why bother? If ever there were a time to get hopped up at Amazon, it's now.

借助AWS，任何人只要有互联网接入和一张信用卡，便能享用到世界级的计算系统——亚马逊一年340亿美元零售业务所跑的系统。“这将成为一项容量非常庞大、利润相对微薄的生意，”贾西一边憧憬，一边喝着健怡可乐，这已是他今天上午的第三罐。他说想要收敛下自己每天喝12罐健怡可乐的习惯，但何必费劲呢？若说亚马逊曾有过兴奋不已的时候，那就是现在了。

AWS is growing like crazy. Although he won't cite exact numbers, Jassy claims "hundreds of thousands of customers" already use the service, and analysts at UBS (UBS) estimate Amazon will do about $750 million of business on AWS this year. In fact, a whole generation of Internet companies couldn't exist without it. Netflix's (NFLX) movie-streaming empire runs on it; Zynga, the social gaming company, uses it to handle sudden spikes in usage. AWS has become such a fact of life for Silicon Valley startups that venture capitalists actually hand out Amazon gift cards to entrepreneurs. Keeping up with the demand requires frantic expansion: Each day, Jassy's operation adds enough computing muscle to power one whole Amazon.com circa 2000, when it was a $2.8 billion business.

AWS正在疯了似的发展。尽管贾西不会引用什么确切数据，但他宣称有“数十万客户”已经在使用该服务，而UBS（瑞士联合银行）的分析师估计，亚马逊每年在AWS上将做成大约7.5亿美元的交易。实际上，整整一代互联网公司的生存都离不开它。Netfix的电影流王国在上面运行着；社交游戏公司Zynga用它来应付突然性峰值应用。AWS已经成为硅谷新创企业无法回避的真实生活，以至于风险投资家实际是把亚马逊礼物卡【译注：指代AWS服务】发给了企业家。要跟上需求，就得疯狂扩张：每天，贾西负责增加的计算能力，足以驱动2000年左右的整个亚马逊网站（当时它是家280亿的企业）。

The physical expansion of all that data takes place in Amazon's huge, specially designed buildings—the biggest can reach 700,000 square feet, or the equivalent of roughly 16 football fields. These interconnected facilities, scattered all over the world, are where AWS conducts its business: cloud computing. The "cloud" refers to the amorphous, out-of-sight, out-of-mind mess of computer tasks that happen on someone else's equipment. For the past five years or so the cloud has been hyped by companies to mean anything that happens on the Web, which is how "cloud computing" came to rival "social networking" in overuse.

所有这些数据的物理扩张都在亚马逊庞大而专门设计的建筑里进行，这些建筑中最大的占地达70万平方英尺，换句话说，相当于大约16个足球场。这些散布于世界各地、相互连接的设施正是AWS开展业务的领域：云计算。“云”指的是无定形的、看不见的、无需留心的在别家设备上运行的一大堆计算机任务。在过去5年左右的时间里，“云”已被各家公司大肆宣传，用来代指Web上的一切东西，就滥用这一点说，“云计算”与“社交网络”可谓伯仲之间。

Right now, the cloud is small: It represented about 5 percent of the $1.5 trillion in corporate information technology spending last year, according to industry data supplied by International Data Corp. and Gartner (IT). Yet the phenomenon of businesses moving their most important and innovative work into the cloud is real and is profoundly changing how companies buy computer technology.

就当下而言，云技术规模尚小：据IDC（国际数据公司）与加特纳所提供的行业数据，它在去年公司信息技术1.5万亿美元的开销中大约只占5%。不过，企业将它们最重要最新颖的工作迁入云中可是实在发生的情景，而这正深刻改变着公司购买计算机技术的方向。

One other thing about the cloud: It's turbulent. It's getting to be war up there.

云技术还有一点值得关注：它是汹涌动荡的。这儿将会有一场激战上演。

The battle roughly breaks down to two sides. On one is Amazon and two other rising superpowers of the cloud, Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG). That's right, the company that once touted itself as "The World's Largest Bookstore" sits alongside a search company and PC software giant as a leader in new business technology. These three companies are hardly allies, of course, but each poses a threat to traditional infrastructure makers such as AT&T (T), EMC (EMC), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL), and Verizon (VZ).

这场战争大致可分作两方。一方是亚马逊与其他两家冉冉升起的云计算超级企业——微软与谷歌。没错，曾经标榜自己为“全球最大书店”的亚马逊公司与搜索公司、PC软件巨头坐到了一起，成为新型商业技术的领军者。当然，这三家公司不大可能结成同盟，但它们各自都对传统的基础设施制造商如AT&T、EMC、惠普、IBM、Oracle与Verizon构成了威胁。

Those giants collectively control the other 95 percent of the market and sit on vast cash reserves earned by steering the creation of data centers inside large corporations. They specialize in selling and servicing high-margin products and reap the consulting fees that arrive from helping companies manage their equipment. These global powerhouses might seem invulnerable, but they must take Amazon, Google, and Microsoft seriously. The cloud war is only partly about next quarter's market share; it's also a culture clash.

那些巨头企业共同控制了其余95%的市场，靠着掌舵大公司的数据中心建设，它们赚得盆满钵满。它们专门销售利润丰厚的产品并提供相关服务，通过帮助公司管理设备来赚取咨询费。这些全球的强大集团貌似固若金汤，但它们必须认真对待亚马逊、谷歌和微软。云之战不仅关乎今后二十五年的市场份额；它还是一次文化冲突。

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have attracted a generation of converts to their message that technology can be fun again. They are the cloudpeople. This species has a vision of freedom and excitement. They see a world of innovation, where the digital engine rooms of the economy transform from unwieldy assemblies of parts into smooth-running dynamos. The cloud, they believe, can unleash the same kind of creative ferment going on in consumer tech, where smartphones and tablets have captured people's imaginations.

亚马逊、谷歌与微软已经吸引了一代人，他们转而相信技术也能再度充满乐趣。他们就是“云族”（cloudpeople）。这一群体向往自由与刺激。他们看到了一个崭新的世界，在这个世界里，经济的数字引擎室正由笨拙的配件组装转变为平稳运转的Dynamo【译注：亚马逊key-value模式的存储平台，可用性和扩展性都很好，性能也不错】。他们相信，犹如消费技术领域（在该领域，智能手机与平板电脑已经引发了人们无尽遐想），云技术也能发动同等规模的创新攻势。

"Things are downright Darwinian right now," says Mike Olson, the chief executive officer of Cloudera, a startup that specializes in data analytics software. "There hasn't been this type of Cambrian explosion in corporate technology in 20 years."

“眼下的形势完全是达尔文式的，”Cloudera首席执行官迈克·奥尔森（Mike Olson）如是说，Cloudera是一家专做数据分析软件的新创企业。“过去20年里，在企业科技领域，从未出现过如此级别的寒武纪大爆发【译注：在距今约5.3亿年前一个被称为寒武纪的地质历史时期，地球上突然涌现出各种各样的动物，它们不约而同的迅速起源、立即出现。】。”

On a January evening in Mountain View, Calif., about 80 programmers cram into an unadorned conference room, helping themselves to tables full of pizza and Blue Moon beer. The crowd is mostly male, mid-40s. There are a lot of T-shirts, gray hair, and ponytails. These are rank-and-file members of the Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Group, and they're here to learn.

1月的某个晚上，在加州山景城，大约80名程序员挤入一间简陋的会议室，室内桌子上摆满了匹萨与蓝月亮啤酒，可供大家随意取用。这些人大多是男性、45岁上下，不少都穿着T恤、头发灰白、留着马尾辫。他们是“硅谷云计算协会”的普通成员，到这儿是来取经的。

At around 6:50 p.m., the attendees drift to the rows of tables and chairs where they've set up their laptops for the evening. At 7 p.m. sharp, a young, skinny guy at the front of the room calls for attention. Sebastian Stadil, the 26-year-old founder of the club, declares the meeting in session and cedes the floor to the guest speaker, Shashank Tiwari, a local cloud developer. The topic of tonight's three-hour presentation: working with the "sloppy quorums," "gossip-based membership protocol," and other fine points of a database technology invented at Facebook called Cassandra.

晚上6：50左右，到场者纷纷就座，在桌子上安放好今晚要使用的笔记本电脑。7点整，会议室前面有位瘦削的年轻小伙提请大家注意。他便是该协会26岁的创立者塞巴斯蒂安·斯塔迪尔（Sebastian Stadil）。他宣布开始上课，并把话筒交给应邀演讲人萨仙克·提瓦里（Shashank Tiwari），提瓦里是当地一位云技术开发者。今晚三个小时讲课的主题是：如何使用Facebook发明的一种称做Cassandra的数据库技术的“松散仲裁（sloppy quorums）”、“基于流言的成员协议（gossip-based membership protocol）”及其他细节。

Stadil runs these night classes in his spare time. He's a dedicated cloudperson with his own software startup and feels it's his duty to educate his peers about the coming era. The admission fee is $20 a session, which covers the pizzas and beer. (The conference room, in the offices of prominent Bay Area law firm Fenwick & West, he finagles for free.) Attendees come to network and hear experts opine on Voldemort, Hadoop, Puppet, Chef, and other playfully named types of cloudware. "When the meetings started two years ago, it was mostly people in their twenties," Stadil says.

斯塔迪尔利用业余时间打理这些夜班。他是一位忠实的云族，并新创了自己的软件企业，他觉得自己有职责教同行们了解这个即将到来的新时代。一次课程的费用为20美元，包含了匹萨与啤酒在内。（会议室设在著名的湾区律师事务所Fenwick & West的办公楼里，这是他免费哄到手的。）参加者可连入网络，聆听专家就Vodemort、Hadoop、Puppet、Chef及其他趣味命名的云软件发表见解。“两年前集会刚起步时，主要参与者还是20多岁的年轻人。”斯塔迪尔回忆道。

Since then, as cloud technology has crept through corporate IT departments, the crowds have gotten older. Much of the work done by people who managed computer systems is getting automated, which is forcing managers and engineers to upgrade their skills. Also driving the urge to learn: New IT tasks tend to be more intellectually demanding and nuanced than those of previous eras. Companies that used to dig through six months of customer data to tease out sales trends—"what's the average selling price" and "who's the biggest customer"—now use tools built by Google and other Web specialists to plow through 10 years' worth or more. And they're asking such computer-intensive questions as: What do people like? Why do they like it? What's the optimal coupon to send to their smartphones as they shop for it in aisle 6 at ShopRite? As Stadil puts it, "Companies don't need the guy who is good with a shovel anymore. They need a guy who is good with a bulldozer."

自那以后，随着云技术在公司IT部门的蔓延开来，参与者的年龄更大了。计算机系统管理者的许多工作日益自动化，这迫使经理与工程师都要更新自己的技能。同时也促生了强烈的学习欲望：新的IT任务往往对智力要求更高，较之前那些时候更加微妙。公司以前常靠挖掘6个月的客户数据来梳理销售趋势——“平均售价是多少”、“谁是最大的客户”之类的，现在使用Google及其他Web专业公司搭建的工具，可以细细研究10年乃至更长时间内的客户数据。并且公司可询问以下这些计算机增强型问题：人们喜欢什么？他们为什么喜欢它？当他们在ShopRite通道6购买它时，发送什么样的最佳优惠券到他们的智能手机？正如斯塔迪尔所言，“公司不再需要那些擅长用铲的家伙，而是需要擅长用推土机的家伙。”

After the evening's talk, some of the old-timers grouse that cloud computing is just a new name for an old idea. It's true that technology types have long used a little picture of a cloud as whiteboard shorthand for "the Internet," or "the ethereal place somewhere on the network where work gets done." What Stadil's classes are about, though, is something more specific, and that message got through loud and clear to the other attendees. Some of them almost sound like true cloudpeople. "This time things really are different," says Robert Harker, a veteran systems administrator.

晚上的演讲结束之后，有些老家伙还在抱怨云计算不过是旧瓶装新酒。确实，技术文档中很久以来就使用一小块云图作为“互联网”，或“完成工作的虚无飘渺的某处网络” 的白板速记。不过，斯塔迪尔的课程所讨论的则更为具体，并且这一讯息响亮清楚地传达给了其他参与者。他们中的有些人听起来很像是真正的云族。“这次的情况确实有所不同，”经验丰富的系统管理员罗伯特·哈克尔（Robert Harker）感慨道。

What's different this time—as compared with the rise of the mainframe or the PC—is scale. As the consumer Web exploded, the global mass of computer data went supernova. This year, according to IDC, the world's digital universe will reach 1.2 zettabytes, or 1.2 quadrillion megabytes. If you take every word ever written in every language, it's about 20,000 times that.

与大型机或PC的崛起相比，这次的差别在于规模。随着用户Web呈爆炸式增长，全球计算机数据的容量有如超新星【译注：大质量恒星】。据IDC统计，今年全球数字宇宙将达1.2泽字节，或1200万亿兆字节。这相当于所有语言所有单词总和数据量的2万倍。

To cope with the onslaught, Web companies have built dozens of megadata centers—often at $500 million a pop. Some of the players—and here we return to Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—pioneered many of the techniques needed to deal with hundreds of millions of people trying to access unprecedented volumes of information. These companies built software that spreads data across the globe, automated the command and control of tens of thousands of servers, and refined data-center designs to be more energy-efficient. They had to out-innovate the big guys and do it on the cheap because their customers were consumers who weren't locked in with fat contracts and dedicated account reps. The next logical step for the cloudpeople: Sell the capabilities of their new supersystems to customers who would pay—other businesses.

为了应对如此汹涌的数据攻势，Web公司已经搭建了数十个超级数据中心，一个的造价通常都高达5亿美元。在数亿人存取空前数据容量方面，有些公司（此处我们再度回到亚马逊、谷歌和微软）是诸多处理技术的先锋。这些公司构建可在全球分布数据、自动执行命令和控制数万服务器的软件，完善数据中心的设计使之更具能效。它们必须一改那些大公司的做法，转而采用廉价的方式实现，因为它们的客户并非笃定有利可图和现金流充足的用户。对云族而言，合乎逻辑的下一步是：除了自己的业务之外，还出售新型超级系统的性能给那些愿意付钱的客户。

In the early 2000s "software as a service" companies such as Salesforce.com (CRM) pioneered the model of renting niche applications to customers by the month. Hosting companies also offered to run companies' software in their far-off computing centers for monthly and yearly fees. But it was the Web companies, led by Amazon, that went a step further and sold these types of services on a utility basis. A company could fire up hundreds or thousands of computers on the fly and turn them off when the work was done. Instead of monthly or yearly contracts, customers pay only for what they use in computing cycles, bandwidth, and storage. "Pay-by-the-drink pricing seemed natural to us," Jassy says.

本世纪初，“软件即服务”类公司，如Salesforce.com，率先推出了按月出租特定应用给客户的模式。主机托管类公司也提供了在远离公司的计算中心运行公司软件，按月及按年计费的业务。但直到由亚马逊为头的Web公司才更进一步，把这些服务类型以功用为基础进行销售。公司可以即时启动数百或数千计算机并在工作完成后关机。用不着按月或按年签约，客户只需支付它们使用的计算周期、带宽与存储即可。“对我们来说，用者付费的价格模式似乎是自然的事情，”贾西说道。

The most obvious appeal of such cloud services, of course, is the potential to save money. Business buyers have gone through decades of technology transitions, tacking new hardware and software onto the old. The average corporate IT department has to deal with the dreaded 70/30 rule where they spend about 70 percent of their technology budgets just trying to keep this jumble of products running, leaving only 30 percent to chase new ideas. Chief information officers have to buy equipment by the ton to meet spikes in computing demand or prepare for disasters, and then watch as that gear sits idle most of the time. While companies struggle to deal with this mess, they've become overwhelmed by the influx of data in the Internet Age. The promise of the cloud is shoving the costs of dealing with all that off the bottom line.

当然，此类云服务最显著的吸引力还在于可能更省钱。企业顾客历经数十年的技术变迁，总在选择新的硬件和软件替换老的。普通公司的IT部门必须面对令人畏惧的70/30规则，即他们约70%的技术预算只是为了保持各类产品运行，仅余下30%来追逐新概念。首席技术官们必须数以吨计地购买设备，以满足峰值计算需要，或为容灾作准备，然后眼看着这些设备大多数时间空闲在那儿。虽然公司竭尽全力地收拾这个烂摊子，却仍然疲于应付互联网时代蜂拥而来的数据。是云技术保证了将处理这些的开销压缩到最低。

The cloudpeople suggest a daring complement to the cost-cutting: Adopt the rapid-prototyping, beta-testing lifestyle of the new era. Relinquish control of your technology infrastructure—you don't need it anymore. Let employees toss out new services and see what sticks. Innovate with impunity. "In the cloud," says Tony Scott, CIO of Microsoft, "there's no penalty for guessing wrong."

云族建议对削减开支作一大胆的补充：采用快速原型、beta测试的新时代生活方式。放弃对技术基础架构的控制，你可以不再需要它了。让员工自己去折腾新服务，看哪些是可以留下的。这是免受惩罚的创新。“在云里，”微软CIO（首席技术官）托尼·斯科特（Tony Scott）说，“猜错了，也不会受到什么惩罚。”

"This stuff finally works," says Andy Bechtolsheim. "If you're a startup, you would never build a data center again." Bechtolsheim co-founded Sun Microsystems and built the company's first computer workstation, which itself set off a revolution of lower-cost systems for businesses in the 1980s. He also made billions cutting some of the first checks to Google and VMware (VMW), the big enterprise-software maker. As Bechtolsheim sees it, the cloud is a foregone conclusion for new companies such as his latest venture, Arista Networks. The only hardware of any significance on the premises of Arista are the high-speed switches it sells to companies building large-scale cloud computing systems. Everything else—e-mail, order entry, customer management, Web software—sits on someone else's hardware and is someone else's problem.

“这东西最终能起作用，”安迪·贝托谢姆（Andy Bechtolsheim）建议道。“如果是一家新创企业，就永远都不用再建什么数据中心了。”贝托谢姆联合创立了Sun微系统公司，并建成了该公司第一台计算机工作站，在1980年代掀起了一场低成本商业系统的革命。他是首批开支票给谷歌和大型企业软件制造商VMware的投资家之一，为此赚下数十亿。在贝托谢姆看来，云技术对新公司，如他最新投资的Arista网络公司是大势所趋。在Arista公司内部，唯一至关重要的硬件便是出售给别家公司用于搭建大型云计算系统的高速交换机。其他的一切——电子邮件、订单录入、客户管理、Web软件等——全放在别人的硬件之上，全是别人的问题。

Or take the case of Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade goods. It rents hundreds of Amazon computers every night to analyze data from the 1 billion monthly views of its website. When Etsy's engineers get to work in the morning, they have a wealth of data showing what types of clothes, furniture, and jewelry appeal to what types of people. Etsy has used this information to create product recommendation systems that let people rank their interest in a series of products and then end up with a list of 100 or 200 they might like. Consumers can also grant Etsy permission to trawl through their Facebook accounts and find products friends might like as gifts. If, for example, Etsy sees a person "liking" something related to Michael Jackson, it will offer up some Michael Jackson dolls or vintage clothes. Jason Davis, the lead scientist at Etsy, loves that he's got his hands on technical tools that used to be available only to retailers the size of Gap (GPS) or Ikea. "This wouldn't have been possible five years ago," he says.

或以Etsy为例，这是一家手工艺品的网上集市。每晚，它租用数百台亚马逊的计算机对每月10亿网站浏览量进行数据分析。当Etsy的工程师早上去上班时，他们已经有了丰富的数据来显示何种类型的服饰、家具和珠宝对何种类型的人具有吸引力。Etsy已经使用这些信息来建立商品推荐系统，让人们对一系列商品的感兴趣程度进行打分，最终得到他们可能喜欢的100种或200种商品的清单。用户也可以授权Etsy搜索他们的Facebook账号，以便找出可以送好友当礼物的商品。例如，如果Etsy看到有人“喜欢”与迈克尔·杰克逊相关的东西，它就会提供一些杰克逊的玩偶或复古服饰。Etsy首席科学家贾森·戴维斯（Jason Davis）欣喜于能用上过去常常只在盖普或宜家这等规模的零售商才有的技术工具。“这要放在5年前是根本不可能的，”他坦言道。

Five years ago that flexibility eluded big companies, too. For all their resources, large institutions tend not to encourage technological initiative. The classic chain of events: When someone in an IT department wants to try out a new idea, that person has to justify the expense in budget approvals and PowerPoint supplications, and then wait weeks, if lucky, for the gear to arrive and start working properly. Heaven forbid someone in marketing or sales wants to try out a new idea. That means more approvals, justifications, and delays.

5年前，要拥有这般的灵活性，就连大公司也一筹莫展。对于名下的全部资源，大型机构往往不鼓励技术创新。经典的事件链是：当IT部门有人想尝试某种新想法，那他必须在预算许可与ppt申请中证明预算花费的合理性，如果幸运通过，还要等上几个星期，设备才能到位，才能正常运转。千万别让营销或销售人员去尝试新想法，那意味着审批更繁复、证明更麻烦、等得更长。

It was this type of tech-hungry underling who drove the initial interest in the cloud. Unbeknownst to their bosses, software developers were running off to cloud services—in particular, Amazon's—to test out ideas, often using their own credit cards to pay for work. For the first time, cube dwellers with ambition had the freedom to tinker on serious computing systems without much overhead. When something clicked, the developers could then take it to their bosses.

正是这类“技术饥饿”的下属最先对云技术产生了兴趣。用不着让老板知晓，软件开发者便能迅速使用云服务（特别是亚马逊的）来测试新想法，往往用他们自己的信用卡来支付即可。那些闷在隔断里的有抱负者首次可以在不用多少开销的情况下自由改进重要的计算机系统。在想法明朗了之后，开发者可再将其提交给老板。

Just such a thing happened at Northrop Grumman (NOC), where a research and development team used Amazon's cloud service to develop an advanced cybersecurity system. The team rented Amazon's computers for less than a day to train machine-learning algorithms on more than 1.3 million files. When Justin Kessler, an applied mathematician at Northrop Grumman Information Systems, showed the results of the project to his managers, they were struck by the low price tag. "It was eye-opening, and they were thrilled at how efficiently we solved the problem on someone else's infrastructure," he says.

在诺斯罗普·格鲁门（Northrop Grumman）就发生了一桩这样的事情，这儿有一个研究开发团队使用了亚马逊的云服务来开发高级网络安全系统。该团队租用亚马逊的计算机还不到一天，就对130多万个文件进行了机器学习算法的训练。当诺斯罗普·格鲁门信息系统公司的应用数学家贾斯廷·凯斯勒（Justin Kessler）将该项目的成果展示给他的经理们时，他们都被如此低廉的价格所震惊。“真让人瞠目结舌，对于我们在别人的基础设施上解决问题的高效，他们倍感兴奋。”他说道。

Other global corporations such as Bechtel, Eli Lilly