![]() Customers who are particularly cautious can choose to enter only a partial credit card number over the Internet and then provide the rest by phone once the online order is submitted. ![]() It stores all credit card numbers in a separate database that's not Internet-accessible, cutting off that possible entry point for hackers. Amazon employs the Netscape Secure Commerce Server using the SSL (secure socket layer) protocol (see How Encryption Works to learn about SSL). In addition to automatically encrypting credit card numbers during the checkout process, Amazon lets users choose to encrypt every piece of information they enter, like their name, address and gender. Amazon's sales volume means that hundreds of thousands of people send their credit card numbers to Amazon's servers every day, and security is a major concern. ![]() In the 2003 holiday season, Amazon processed a top-end 1 million shipments and 20 million inventory updates in one day. According to a report released by Oracle after it helped migrate Amazon's data warehouse to Linux in 20, the central task process looks something like this: Amazon's technology architecture handles millions of back-end operations every day as well as queries from more than half a million third-party sellers. The query servers (24.7 TB capacity) contain 15 TB of raw data in 2005 the click history servers (18.5 TB capacity) hold 14 TB of raw data and the ETL cluster (7.8 TB capacity) contains 5 TB of raw data. The data warehouse is roughly divided into three functions: query, historical data and ETL ( extract, transform, and load - a primary database function that pulls data from one source and integrates it into another). The central Amazon data warehouse is made up of 28 Hewlett Packard servers, with four CPUs per node, running Oracle 9i database software. As of 2005, Amazon has the world's three largest Linux databases, with a total capacity of 7.8 terabytes (TB), 18.5 TB and 24.7 TB respectively. The massive technology core that keeps Amazon running is entirely Linux-based. Amazon has become a software developer's playground.īefore we dig deeper into Amazon's e-commerce methods, let's take a quick look at the technology infrastructure that makes the whole thing possible. As long as any purchases go through Amazon, you can build a site called, pull products directly from Amazon's servers, write your own guides and recommendations and earn a cut of any sales. They can literally create mini Amazon Web sites if they want to, building on Amazon's huge database of products and applications for their own purposes. In addition to the affiliate program that lets anybody post Amazon links earn a commission on click-through sales, there's now a program that lets those affiliates (Amazon calls them "associates") build entire Web sites based on Amazon's platform. You could say that Amazon is simply the ultimate hub for selling merchandise on the Web, except that the company has recently added a more extroverted angle to its strategy. You can find used goods, refurbished goods and auctions. Since 2000, you can also find goods listed by third-party sellers - individuals, small companies and retailers like Target and Toys 'R Us. You can find straight sales of merchandise sold directly by Amazon, like the books it sold back in the mid-'90s out of Jeff Bezos' garage - only now they're shipped from a very big warehouse. lets almost anyone sell almost anything using its platform. The other main feature that puts on another level is the multi-leveled e-commerce strategy it employs. If you let the Web site stick a cookie on your hard drive, you'll find yourself on the receiving end of all sorts of useful features that make your shopping experience pretty cool, like recommendations based on past purchases and lists of reviews and guides written by users who purchased the products you're looking at. Customer tracking is an Amazon stronghold. The embedded marketing techniques that Amazon employs to personalize your experience are probably the best example of the company's overall approach to sales: Know your customer very, very well.
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