Do large organizations use Amazon web services?

Question

I was impressed with Amazon's new Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). Amazon has lots of other really impressive web app building blocks. Are there examples of large organizations using AWS? They seem impressive but the downside is you outsource your processing to a third party which could be considered pretty risky.

Answer 1

Netflix has a VERY large AWS deployment.

Here's a talk from Adrian Cockcroft, their "Cloud Architect": http://blip.tv/file/4252897

Also, http://cloudscaling.com/blog/cloud-computing/cloud-innovators-netflix-strategy-reflects-google-philosophy and http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2010/05/31/NetflixOnAWS.aspx

PBS for content delivery: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/pbs/

Virgin Atlantic's travel site: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/vtravelled/

Ericsson's set-top-box content service: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/ericsson/

Hitachi for a video delivery service: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/hitachi-systems/

Washington Post for document processing: http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/washington-post/

Then there's a slew of backup providers that resell S3 storage and organizations that back their own data into S3.

Plus tons of familiar web brands like Yelp, Reddit, SmugMug, AirBnB, UrbanSpoon, PlayFish, and tons of others.