The Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) Web Services family expanded this week with the addition of Simple Workflow (SWF), an enterprise program for companies wanting to develop in-house workflow applications. SWF allows developers to build the applications on Amazon’s cloud storage system, a process designed to save time and money in the long run.
SWF is aimed at businesses needing proprietary billing, analytic, or planning applications that can be easily pulled up and utilized. SWF is designed to track and record program activity, and to allow easy application maintenance. The process is based what Amazon is calling the “decider,” a concept Amazon’s chief technical officer, Werner Vogels, explained on the company’s official blog: “Tasks represent logical units of work and are performed by application components that can take any form, including executable code, scripts, web service calls, and human actions. Developers have full control over implementing and orchestrating tasks, without worrying about underlying complexities such as tracking their progress and keeping their state.”
The service relies on Amazon’s massive cloud storage system, a data storage and backup method hosted by the company that allows clients to rent the amount of service space they need. The cloud is most familiar to consumers for its unlimited support of the Kindle Fire and other music and book-related purchases through the site. Amazon has recently marketed new business products to bring in more enterprise customers. The company’s AWS Storage Gateway is an entry-level cloud service for businesses unsure if the method will be a good fit, while DynamoDB is a more advanced cloud interface.
SWF and Amazon’s other enterprise products are pitched as relatively low-cost services that require modest client upkeep. SWS is still in its beta, or testing, phase, although current subscribers include the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab.
Amazon has been lighting up the consumer side of its portfolio, with the Kindle Fire maintaining strong sales and the Amazon Appstore proving profitable for developers. Its continued efforts to connect with a wide variety of business needs help put the company in a stronger position, one that could attract customers currently using other enterprise solution providers.
Zacks Investment Research on Wednesday declared the company its “Bear of the Day,” assigning it an underperform rating and a sell recommendation with a price target of $166. Zacks lists the expansion of Amazon’s fulfillment centers, established to deal with the wide range of Amazon products, as an ongoing financial concern.
