Hundreds of Business Ideas Reviewed, Seven Finalists Pitched Panel of VC’s and
Amazon Business Leaders, and One Was Chosen
SEATTLE--(Business Wire)--
Amazon Web Services LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), today
announced that Yieldex is the winner of the second annual Amazon Web Services
Start-Up Challenge. Yieldex, a company providing forecasting for online
advertising inventory, will receive $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in Amazon Web
Service credits and an opportunity for an investment offer from Amazon.com.
Today’s announcement at a celebration in Seattle capped off an exciting final
round of the contest in which seven finalists presented their businesses to
judges from Amazon.com and venture capital firms. The winner was chosen based on
the originality of their idea, marketplace need, and their implementation of
AWS. Amazon Web Services provides reliable, scalable and secure infrastructure
services on demand. To learn more about Amazon Web Services visit
http://aws.amazon.com.
Yieldex forecasts online advertising inventory and optimizes advertising
campaign allocation placement for online publishers. Yieldex has built its
DynamicIQ™ platform on top of Amazon Web Services, using the Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to
address online publishers' growing need for accurate forecasting of overlapping
inventory, optimal campaign allocation and revenue operations. Yieldex tools
help publishers maximize advertising revenue from their premium inventory with
in-depth proposal analysis, scenario planning, and their proprietary yield
index.
“Yieldex needed an infrastructure solution hosting provider that would allow us
to focus on our core value proposition without having to invest significant
resources into operations that do not differentiate us from our competitors,”
said John Barr, Vice President of Engineering for Yieldex. “The ability to
systematically scale our server capacity up and down is ideal for the massive
amounts of data we process to meet our customers' needs. Amazon Web Services is
the perfect cost-effective, scalable and flexible solution for us as a start-up
company.”
“Yieldex is a great example of the type of dynamic new business leveraging AWS
to meet the needs of their rapidly growing business,” said Adam Selipsky, Vice
President of Product Management and Developer Relations, Amazon Web Services.
“Our seven exciting finalists demonstrate the innovation happening throughout
our community – companies who are avoiding capital expenditure, focusing on
ideas rather than on infrastructure, and getting to market faster.”
The Start-Up Challenge began on September 3rd with a call for entries. Hundreds
of applications were reviewed and seven finalists were chosen. For the Final
Round, AWS flew finalists to Amazon headquarters in Seattle to present their
ideas to a judging panel of representatives from Amazon.com. To complete the
competition, finalists participated in “Fast Pitch” sessions, where they each
had 10 minutes to present their ideas to representatives from venture capital
firms. Participating venture capital firms included BlueRun Ventures, CMEA
Ventures, Greylock Partners, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Madrona Venture
Group. At the end of the day, the judges selected the winner, who was announced
at an event with 200 members of the start-up community.
Details on the six runners up for the AWS Start-Up Challenge follow.
Encoding.com
Encoding.com makes video encoding accessible and scalable for video websites of
all sizes. Encoding.com combines the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)
with cutting-edge video encoding software and makes it available to clients via
a web interface, Watch Folder or XML API. Delivering video encoding as a web
service reduces the barrier of entry and provides limitless scalability to fuel
the growth of Internet and mobile video applications.
Knewton
Knewton breaks down content to the most granular components possible, tags it in
rich detail, and dynamically reassembles the material to adapt to the precise
needs of each student at each moment. From textbooks to test prep, Knewton
delivers content matching each student's ideal learning arc and preferred
medium. Amazon Web Services provides Knewton's technology infrastructure: Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) powers adaptive learning and testing engines,
the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) stores tens of thousands of
learning objects in multiple media, and Amazon Mechanical Turk is the on-demand
workforce delivering test-question calibration, usability analysis, and quality
assurance.
MedCommons
MedCommons provides cloud-based Health 2.0 application services for patients and
doctors, and enables third parties to customize and extend the MedCommons
Platform for their own needs. MedCommons utilizes the Amazon Elastic Compute
Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Simple
Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon DevPay, and the Amazon Flexible Payments
Service (Amazon FPS) to provide support of the MedCommons FPS Marketplace, where
patients can purchase services directly from doctors, both onsite, and over the
Internet, as well as MedCommons Family Accounts, where patients can maintain
their family's health records, X-rays, MRI, and CT scans in a secure,
comprehensive, and friendly environment.
Sonian
Sonian created its industry-leading hosted email archiving IP stack to take
advantage of the various Amazon Web Services and operates the entire
infrastructure on the AWS cloud platform. Sonian utilizes the Amazon Simple
Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) for
storage, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for on-demand scalable
compute, Amazon SimpleDB for meta-data storage and the Amazon Simple Queue
Service (Amazon SQS) for job control.
Pixily
Pixily is an interactive document management service that organizes paper and
electronic materials online so people can instantly find and share information
whenever and wherever they need it. For consumers, Pixily serves as a digital
organization assistant that reduces paper clutter and helps manage personal
information more efficiently. Businesses rely on Pixily as an affordable
on-demand document management service to streamline daily operations and be more
productive.
Zephyr
Zephyr’s flexible Test Management Platform enables enterprises to manage their
test departments more efficiently, boost productivity, reduce costs and provide
IT leaders with real-time visibility into all aspects of their software quality
cycle. Zephyr utilizes the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and the
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to deliver an enterprise test
management solution to global companies in a SaaS model. Additionally Zephyr
leverages AWS for running backend operations and business processes.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc., (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened
on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection.
Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where
customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and
endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and
other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in
categories such as books, movies, music & games, digital downloads, electronics
& computers, home & garden, toys, kids & baby, grocery, apparel, shoes &
jewelry, health & beauty, sports & outdoors, and tools, auto & industrial.
Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to
in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology
platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business.
Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon
SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), and Amazon Flexible Payments
Service (Amazon FPS).
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com,
www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca,
and the Joyo Amazon websites at www.joyo.cn and www.amazon.cn.
As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com,
Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of
Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's
expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties
that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth,
new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating
results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims,
fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements,
acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system
interruption, significant amount of indebtedness, inventory, government
regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that
potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in
Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its
Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, and subsequent
filings.
Amazon.com, Inc.
Media Hotline, 206-266-7180
Copyright Business Wire 2008
