Amazon's (AMZN) AWS Rolls Out S3 Z-IA, Focuses On Innovation

Amazon.com, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) subsidiary Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) recently launched a storage service called Amazon S3 Z-IA, which combines the beneficial features of Amazon S3 with the facility of one zone-infrequent access (Z-IA).

The new service will allow users to store their infrequently accessed data into a single availability zone instead of multiple zones of AWS that S3 Standard-IA provides. Additionally, secondary backup copies of on-premises data as well as data which is stored and is already simulated on other AWS regions for disaster recovery are also facilitated by S3 Z-IA. Also, the latest service seems to be customer friendly as it costs 20 percent cheaper than S3 Standard-IA.

Amazon announced that S3 Z-IA is available in all commercial AWS Regions.

We believe the service will strengthen the product portfolio of AWS and increase customer base aided by its low cost benefits. Moreover the top-line growth and market share of the company will gain momentum.

Coming to the price performance, the shares of Amazon have returned 57% over a year, outperforming the industry’s rally of 44.8%.

Improving AWS

AWS, which started its offerings in 2006, has been successful in catering to the growing demand for cloud services all over the world.

Amazon S3 Z-IA is an addition to the Amazon S3 family, which comprises S3 Standard, S3 Standard-Infrequent Access, S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access and Amazon Glacier. S3 was among the first few services offered by AWS.

Apart from S3, other AWS products include Amazon Aurora, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Snowball, Amazon Storage Gateway, Amazon EBS.

Further, AWS recently launched a new region in France and a second AWS Region in China during the quarter. The company plans to open 12 more Availability Zones (“AZ”) across four regions (Bahrain, Hong Kong, Sweden and a second GovCloud Region in the United States) by 2019.

Additionally, AWS witnessed the highest market share (62%) in the last quarter when compared with Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Azure (20%) and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) , Google Cloud (12%). AWS generated $17.5 billion revenues in 2017, which was up 43% on a year-over-year basis.

Recently, the company announced the general availability of Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Translate which will help customers to harness its machine learning services.

According to a report from Markets and Markets, the global cloud storage market is expected grow at a CAGR of 23.7% between 2017 and 2022 and to reach $88.9 billion by 2022.

Growing Clientele

Amazon’s AWS client base is strongly benefiting from its continued focus on innovation and expanding product portfolio.

Amazon S3 clients include Shutterfly, Nearmap, Keepsafe and many more.

Further, with the emerging trend of machine learning and artificial intelligence, adoption rate of Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Machine Images and AWS DeepLens has increased. Currently, 10,000 customers are using AWS machine learning services.

Companies like Articulate, Cathay Pacific, Cerner, Cookpad, Cox Automotive, DailyLook, DigitalGlobe, Dow Jones, Expedia (NASDAQ:EXPE).com, GE Healthcare are few of the huge client base who are using AWS machine learning services.

Additionally, per the company’s latest announcement, Amazon Aurora is gaining traction which is evident from its increasing customers. Currently, there are 10,000 customers using this particular service.

It recently acquired clients are the likes of ADP, Autodesk (NASDAQ:ADSK), Choice Hotels, TIBCO, Trend Micro, Cloudability, ZipRecruiter, BMLL Tech, Beachbody, Arizona State University, RecoChoku, FirstFuel, Mitel and Wappa and existing clients being Verizon, Capital One, GE, Dow Jones, Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Nielsen, Airbnb, Expedia, NASDAQ and Pearson (LON:PSON).

Hence, all these factors are expected to have a solid impact on the company’s top-line growth.

Zacks Rank & Another Stock to Consider

Currently, Amazon carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Investors interested in the retail-wholesale sector can consider Stamps.com (NASDAQ:STMP) . The stock sports a Zacks Ranks #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Long-term earnings growth rate for Stamps.com is currently pegged at 15%.

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