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Amazon Is Finally Going To Reveal How Much It Makes From Web And Cloud Services

By Benjamin Simon
Published on: 05:49 PST, Jan 30, 2015

One of the biggest industry giants of the web, Amazon, has been secretive in the past about the earnings from their online Amazon Web Services and public cloud business. Some even claimed that Amazon was going out of their way to hide the data of their financial earnings from the public, much to the dismay of people tracking the cloud and having to estimate the company’s financial standings. But that’s all about to change.

According to Venture Beat, Amazon will shortly be revealing their financial figures for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and cloud services as a separate category from their basic services. Revenue from the cloud will have to be clearly disclosed in each quarterly report, distinct from the rest of Amazon’s earnings. This will allow data analysts, costumers and other companies to more easily keep track of Amazon’s cloud service and determine the financial stability of AWS.

Amazon’s decision to reveal their earnings wasn’t an example of the company giving way to pressure, but a requirement based on federal accounting standards. Companies like Amazon are expected to split apart portions of the business when one particular area (such as AWS) begins to make a profit that exceeds 10 percent of the company’s overall revenue.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon officials announced their plans to reveal their quarterly cloud earnings on Thursday.

“We just think it’s an appropriate way to look at our business in 2015,” said Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak in a conference call. “We are investing very heavily both in people and in capital [of online services]. We think it’s a great opportunity.”

According to Tech Times, Amazon reported earnings of $1.7 billion in the “other” category for their fourth quarter of 2014. Because of Amazon’s decision to keep the earnings from AWS secret, nobody could be certain how much of that $1.7 billion is a direct result of cloud services. Under the new Amazon policy, users and competitors will know exactly how much the company is making and where exactly it’s coming from.

Amazon Web Services boasts more than one million cloud users across the globe, and the service is constantly growing. Szkutak said Amazon has every intention of investing further in online and cloud services. The company is already a major pioneer of cloud storage. And while some are weary of the security of the Amazon cloud due to recent hacking events such as the infamous Fappening, many users are eager to trust their personal data with companies like Amazon.

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