2015-04-24 Jeff Bezos’s Letters to Amazon Shareholders
To our shareowners:
A dreamy business offering has at least four characteristics. Customers love it, it can grow to very large size, it has strong returns on capital, and it’s durable in time – with the potential to endure for decades. When you find one of these, don’t just swipe right, get married.
一个令人神往的业务模式至少具备四个特征：客户喜爱、可成长至庞大规模、资本回报率强劲，以及经久耐用——有望持续数十年。当你发现这样的机会时，可别只是轻轻右滑，要与之终身相伴。
Well, I’m pleased to report that Amazon hasn’t been monogamous in this regard. After two decades of risk taking and teamwork, and with generous helpings of good fortune all along the way, we are now happily wed to what I believe are three such life partners: Marketplace, Prime, and AWS. Each of these offerings was a bold bet at first, and sensible people worried (often!) that they could not work. But at this point, it’s become pretty clear how special they are and how lucky we are to have them. It’s also clear that there are no sinecures in business. We know it’s our job to always nourish and fortify them.
好消息是，Amazon 在这方面并非一夫一妻制。经过二十年的冒险与团队协作，再加上一路上的诸多幸运，我们如今已与我认为的三位“终身伴侣”喜结连理：Marketplace、Prime 和 AWS。最初，这些业务都是大胆的赌注，理性的人常常（真的很常）担忧它们行不通。但现在很明显，它们有多么与众不同，我们又何其幸运能够拥有它们。同样清楚的是，商业世界没有铁饭碗，我们必须不断滋养并强化它们。
有一些巴菲特的成分。
We’ll approach the job with our usual tools: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, heartfelt passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and a willingness to think long-term. With good execution and a bit of continuing good luck, Marketplace, Prime, and AWS can be serving customers and earning financial returns for many years to come.
我们将继续运用一贯的工具来完成这项工作：以客户为中心而非盯着竞争对手、对创新的由衷热情、对卓越运营的执着，以及长期思考的意愿。只要执行到位，再加上一点持续的好运气，Marketplace、Prime 和 AWS 将能够在未来许多年里持续服务客户、创造财务回报。
Marketplace
Marketplace’s early days were not easy. First, we launched Amazon Auctions. I think seven people came, if you count my parents and siblings. Auctions transformed into zShops, which was basically a fixed price version of Auctions. Again, no customers. But then we morphed zShops into Marketplace. Internally, Marketplace was known as SDP for Single Detail Page. The idea was to take our most valuable retail real estate – our product detail pages – and let third-party sellers compete against our own retail category managers. It was more convenient for customers, and within a year, it accounted for 5% of units. Today, more than 40% of our units are sold by more than two million third-party sellers worldwide. Customers ordered more than two billion units from sellers in 2014.
Marketplace 早期并不轻松。首先，我们推出了 Amazon Auctions。我想大概只有七个人光顾，如果把我的父母和兄弟姐妹都算上的话。Auctions 又演变成 zShops，基本上是 Auctions 的固定价格版本。依旧没有客户。随后我们把 zShops 蛻变成了 Marketplace。内部将 Marketplace 称作 SDP，即 Single Detail Page。其理念是把我们最宝贵的零售“地段”——商品详情页——拿出来，让第三方卖家与公司自营品类经理同场竞逐。这对客户更方便，不到一年就贡献了 5% 的订单量。如今，全球有逾 200 万第三方卖家通过 Marketplace 销售商品，超过 40% 的订单量来自他们。仅在 2014 年，客户就从卖家处下单超过 20 亿件商品。
The success of this hybrid model accelerated the Amazon flywheel. Customers were initially drawn by our fast-growing selection of Amazon-sold products at great prices with a great customer experience. By then allowing third parties to offer products side-by-side, we became more attractive to customers, which drew even more sellers. This also added to our economies of scale, which we passed along by lowering prices and eliminating shipping fees for qualifying orders. Having introduced these programs in the U.S., we rolled them out as quickly as we could to our other geographies. The result was a marketplace that became seamlessly integrated with all of our global websites.
这种混合模式的成功加速了 Amazon 的飞轮效应。起初，客户被我们快速增长的自营商品选择、优惠价格和卓越体验所吸引。随后允许第三方卖家并列展示商品后，我们对客户的吸引力进一步提升，更多卖家随之涌入。这又增强了我们的规模经济，并以更低的价格和为符合条件的订单免运费的方式回馈客户。我们先在美国推出这些计划，然后尽快推向其他地区，最终打造出一个与所有全球站点无缝集成的 Marketplace。
We work hard to reduce the workload for sellers and increase the success of their businesses. Through our Selling Coach program, we generate a steady stream of automated machine-learned “nudges” (more than 70 million in a typical week) – alerting sellers about opportunities to avoid going out-of-stock, add selection that’s selling, and sharpen their prices to be more competitive. These nudges translate to billions in increased sales to sellers.
我们努力减轻卖家的工作负担，帮助他们取得更大成功。通过 Selling Coach 计划，我们持续向卖家发出基于机器学习的自动化“提示”（在一个普通周内超过 7000 万次），提醒他们抓住机会防止缺货、补充热销品类，并优化定价以提升竞争力。这些提示为卖家带来了数十亿美元的额外销售额。
To further globalize Marketplace, we’re now helping sellers in each of our geographies – and in countries where we don’t have a presence – reach out to our customers in countries outside their home geographies. We hosted merchants from more than 100 different countries last year, and helped them connect with customers in 185 nations.
为了进一步实现 Marketplace 的全球化，我们正在帮助各区域以及尚未设立业务的国家的卖家，触达其本土之外的客户。去年我们接待了来自 100 多个国家的商家，并帮助他们与 185 个国家的客户建立联系。
Almost one-fifth of our overall third-party sales now occur outside the sellers’ home countries, and our merchants’ cross-border sales nearly doubled last year. In the EU, sellers can open a single account, manage their business in multiple languages, and make products available across our five EU websites. More recently, we’ve started consolidating cross-border shipments for sellers and helping them obtain ocean shipping from Asia to Europe and North America at preferential, bulk rates.
目前，我们整体第三方销售中近五分之一发生在卖家本国以外，且商家的跨境销售额去年几乎翻倍。在欧盟，卖家只需开立一个账户，便可使用多语言管理业务，并在我们的五个欧盟网站上销售商品。更近期，我们开始为卖家整合跨境货运，并协助他们以优惠的批量费率，从亚洲向欧洲和北美获取海运服务。
Marketplace is the heart of our fast-growing operations in India, since all of our selection in India is offered by third-party sellers. Amazon.in now offers more selection than any other e-commerce site in India – with more than 20 million products offered from over 21,000 sellers. With our Easy Ship service, we pick up products from a seller and handle delivery all the way to the end customer. Building upon Easy Ship, the India team recently piloted Kirana Now, a service that delivers everyday essentials from local kirana (mom and pop) stores to customers in two to four hours, adding convenience for our customers and increasing sales for the stores participating in the service.
在印度，Marketplace 是我们高速增长业务的核心，因为我们在印度的全部商品都由第三方卖家提供。Amazon.in 目前提供的商品数量已超过印度任何其他电商网站——超过 21,000 名卖家提供的商品总数超过 2,000 万件。通过 Easy Ship 服务，我们上门取件并将包裹直接送达终端客户。在 Easy Ship 的基础上，印度团队最近试点了 Kirana Now 服务，可在 2 至 4 小时内将当地 kirana（夫妻店）提供的日常必需品送到客户手中，为客户带来便利，也提升了参与商店的销售额。
Perhaps most important for sellers, we’ve created Fulfillment by Amazon. But I’ll save that for after we discuss Prime.
对卖家而言，也许最重要的是我们推出了 Fulfillment by Amazon。不过，在谈到 Prime 之前，我会暂且按下不表。
Amazon Prime
Ten years ago, we launched Amazon Prime, originally designed as an all-you-can-eat free and fast shipping program. We were told repeatedly that it was a risky move, and in some ways it was. In its first year, we gave up many millions of dollars in shipping revenue, and there was no simple math to show that it would be worth it. Our decision to go ahead was built on the positive results we’d seen earlier when we introduced Free Super Saver Shipping, and an intuition that customers would quickly grasp that they were being offered the best deal in the history of shopping. In addition, analysis told us that, if we achieved scale, we would be able to significantly lower the cost of fast shipping.
十年前，我们推出了 Amazon Prime，最初的定位是一项“无限量”免费快速配送计划。很多人反复告诉我们这一步很冒险，某种程度上确实如此。在第一年里，我们放弃了数千万美元的运费收入，而且没有简单的数学模型能证明这笔投入物有所值。之所以仍决定推进，是因为我们先前推出 Free Super Saver Shipping 时已取得积极成果，再加上直觉相信消费者会迅速意识到这是购物史上最划算的优惠。此外，我们的分析表明，只要达到规模，就能大幅降低快速配送的成本。
Our owned-inventory retail business was the foundation of Prime. In addition to creating retail teams to build each of our category-specific online “stores,” we have created large-scale systems to automate much of inventory replenishment, inventory placement, and product pricing. The precise delivery-date promise of Prime required operating our fulfillment centers in a new way, and pulling all of this together is one of the great accomplishments of our global operations team. Our worldwide network of fulfillment centers has expanded from 13 in 2005, when we launched Prime, to 109 this year. We are now on our eighth generation of fulfillment center design, employing proprietary software to manage receipt, stowing, picking, and shipment. Amazon Robotics, which began with our acquisition of Kiva in 2012, has now deployed more than 15,000 robots to support the stowing and retrieval of products at a higher density and lower cost than ever before. Our owned-inventory retail business remains our best customer-acquisition vehicle for Prime and a critical part of building out categories that attract traffic and third-party sellers.
自营库存零售业务是 Prime 的基础。除了组建零售团队，为各个品类打造在线“商店”，我们还建立了大型系统，自动化处理库存补货、库存布局和产品定价。Prime 精准的送达日期承诺要求我们以全新的方式运营履约中心，而将这些要素整合在一起，是全球运营团队的重大成就之一。自 2005 年 Prime 上线时的 13 个履约中心起，全球网络已扩张至今年的 109 个。我们现在进入了第八代履约中心设计，采用专有软件管理收货、存放、拣选和出货流程。2012 年收购 Kiva 后启动的 Amazon Robotics，已部署超过 15,000 台机器人，以更高密度、更低成本支持货物存放和取货。自营库存零售业务仍然是 Prime 最佳的客户获取渠道，也是建设吸引流量和第三方卖家的关键品类的核心组成部分。
Though fast delivery remains a core Prime benefit, we are finding new ways to pump energy into Prime. Two of the most important are digital and devices.
虽然快速配送仍是 Prime 的核心优势，但我们正在寻找新的方式为 Prime 注入活力，其中最重要的两项是数字内容与设备。
差异化。
In 2011 we added Prime Instant Video as a benefit, now with tens of thousands of movies and TV episodes available for unlimited streaming in the U.S., and we’ve started expanding the program into the U.K. and Germany as well. We’re investing a significant amount on this content, and it’s important that we monitor its impact. We ask ourselves, is it worth it? Is it driving Prime? Among other things, we watch Prime free trial starts, conversion to paid membership, renewal rates, and product purchase rates by members entering through this channel. We like what we see so far and plan to keep investing here.
2011 年，我们将 Prime Instant Video 作为一项福利加入，目前在美国可无限量观看数万部电影和电视剧集，同时我们也已开始将该项目扩展到 U.K. 和 Germany。我们在此内容上投入了大量资金，因此监测其影响至关重要。我们会自问：这值得吗？它能推动 Prime 吗？我们重点关注 Prime 免费试用的开启次数、转化为付费会员的比例、续订率，以及通过该渠道进入的会员的商品购买率。到目前为止，这些数据都令我们满意，我们计划继续加大投资。
While most of our PIV spend is on licensed content, we’re also starting to develop original content. The team is off to a strong start. Our show Transparent became the first from a streaming service to win a Golden Globe for best series and Tumble Leaf won the Annie for best animated series for preschoolers. In addition to the critical acclaim, the numbers are promising. An advantage of our original programming is that its first run is on Prime – it hasn’t already appeared anywhere else. Together with the quality of the shows, that first run status appears to be one of the factors leading to the attractive numbers. We also like the fixed cost nature of original programming. We get to spread that fixed cost across our large membership base. Finally, our business model for original content is unique. I’m pretty sure we’re the first company to have figured out how to make winning a Golden Globe pay off in increased sales of power tools and baby wipes!
虽然我们的 PIV 支出大部分用于许可内容，但我们也开始开发原创内容。团队的起步非常强劲。我们的剧集 Transparent 成为首个获得 Golden Globe 最佳剧集奖的流媒体作品，Tumble Leaf 则赢得 Annie 最佳学龄前动画系列奖。除了业界好评，数据也十分可观。原创节目的一个优势在于其首播在 Prime——之前没有在任何其他平台出现。加上节目的高质量，首播地位似乎是带来亮眼数据的因素之一。我们也喜欢原创节目固定成本的特性，可以将这笔固定成本分摊到庞大的会员基数上。最后，我们的原创内容商业模式独一无二。我几乎可以肯定，我们是首家让赢得 Golden Globe 带动电动工具和婴儿湿巾销量增长的公司！
短视频和电商结合的更好。
Amazon designed and manufactured devices – from Kindle to Fire TV to Echo – also pump energy into Prime services such as Prime Instant Video and Prime Music, and generally drive higher engagement with every element of the Amazon ecosystem. And there’s more to come – our device team has a strong and exciting roadmap ahead.
Amazon 自主设计并制造的设备——从 Kindle 到 Fire TV，再到 Echo——也为 Prime Instant Video、Prime Music 等 Prime 服务注入活力，并普遍提升 Amazon 生态系统各项元素的用户参与度。而且后续还有更多惊喜——我们的设备团队拥有一条强劲且令人兴奋的产品路线图。
Prime isn’t done improving on its original fast and free shipping promise either. The recently launched Prime Now offers Prime members free two-hour delivery on tens of thousands of items or one-hour delivery for a \$7.99 fee. Lots of early reviews read like this one, “In the past six weeks my husband and I have made an embarrassing number of orders through Amazon Prime Now. It’s cheap, easy, and insanely fast.” We’ve launched in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Miami, Baltimore, Dallas, Atlanta, and Austin, and more cities are coming soon.
Prime 也在不断升级其最初的免费快速配送承诺。最近推出的 Prime Now 为 Prime 会员提供数万件商品的两小时免费配送，或支付 7.99 美元即可享受一小时送达。大量早期评价如此写道：“过去六周里，我和丈夫通过 Amazon Prime Now 下了令人尴尬数量的订单。它便宜、方便、速度惊人。”我们已在 Manhattan、Brooklyn、Miami、Baltimore、Dallas、Atlanta 和 Austin 上线，更多城市即将推出。
Now, I’d like to talk about Fulfillment by Amazon. FBA is so important because it is glue that inextricably links Marketplace and Prime. Thanks to FBA, Marketplace and Prime are no longer two things. In fact, at this point, I can’t really think about them separately. Their economics and customer experiences are now happily and deeply intertwined.
现在，我想谈谈 Fulfillment by Amazon。FBA 之所以如此重要，是因为它是 Marketplace 与 Prime 不可分割的纽带。多亏了 FBA，Marketplace 和 Prime 不再是两个独立的事物。事实上，此刻我已很难将它们分开思考。它们的经济效益和客户体验如今愉快且深度地交织在一起。
FBA is a service for Marketplace sellers. When a seller decides to use FBA, they stow their inventory in our fulfillment centers. We take on all logistics, customer service, and product returns. If a customer orders an FBA item and an Amazon owned-inventory item, we can ship both items to the customer in one box – a huge efficiency gain. But even more important, when a seller joins FBA, their items can become Prime eligible.
FBA 是面向 Marketplace 卖家的服务。当卖家决定使用 FBA 时，他们把库存存放在我们的履约中心。我们承担所有物流、客服和退货。如果客户同时订购一件 FBA 商品和一件 Amazon 自营商品，我们可以将两件商品装在一个包裹里寄给客户——显著提升效率。但更重要的是，当卖家加入 FBA 后，他们的商品可以获得 Prime 资格。
Maintaining a firm grasp of the obvious is more difficult than one would think it should be. But it’s useful to try. If you ask, what do sellers want? The correct (and obvious) answer is: they want more sales. So, what happens when sellers join FBA and their items become Prime eligible? They get more sales.
保持对显而易见之事的清醒认识，其难度往往超出想象。但这么做很有价值。如果你问：卖家想要什么？正确（且显而易见）的答案是：他们想要更多销量。那么，当卖家加入 FBA、商品获得 Prime 资格时会发生什么？他们获得更多销量。
Notice also what happens from a Prime member’s point of view. Every time a seller joins FBA, Prime members get more Prime eligible selection. The value of membership goes up. This is powerful for our flywheel. FBA completes the circle: Marketplace pumps energy into Prime, and Prime pumps energy into Marketplace.
再从 Prime 会员的角度观察。每当有卖家加入 FBA，Prime 会员可选的 Prime 资格商品就会增加，会员价值随之提升。这对我们的飞轮作用极大。FBA 让循环闭合：Marketplace 为 Prime 注入能量，Prime 又为 Marketplace 注入能量。
In a 2014 survey of U.S. sellers, 71% of FBA merchants reported more than a 20% increase in unit sales after joining FBA. In the holiday period, worldwide FBA units shipped grew 50% over the prior year and represented more than 40% of paid third-party units. Paid Prime memberships grew more than 50% in the U.S. last year and 53% worldwide. FBA is a win for customers and a win for sellers.
在 2014 年针对美国卖家的调查中，71% 的 FBA 商家报告称加入 FBA 后其商品销量增长超过 20%。在假日季期间，全球 FBA 货件量同比增长 50%，占付费第三方订单的 40% 以上。去年，美国付费 Prime 会员增长超过 50%，全球增长 53%。FBA 让客户与卖家双赢。
Amazon Web Services
A radical idea when it was launched nine years ago, Amazon Web Services is now big and growing fast. Startups were the early adopters. On-demand, pay-as-you-go cloud storage and compute resources dramatically increased the speed of starting a new business. Companies like Pinterest, Dropbox, and Airbnb all used AWS services and remain customers today.
九年前推出时，Amazon Web Services 还是一个激进的创意，如今它已规模庞大且增长迅猛。初创公司是最早的采用者。按需、按使用量付费的云存储与计算资源极大提升了创业速度。Pinterest、Dropbox、Airbnb 等公司都使用 AWS 服务并持续至今。
Since then, large enterprises have been coming on board as well, and they’re choosing to use AWS for the same primary reason the startups did: speed and agility. Having lower IT cost is attractive, and sometimes the absolute cost savings can be enormous. But cost savings alone could never overcome deficiencies in performance or functionality. Enterprises are dependent on IT – it’s mission critical. So, the proposition, “I can save you a significant amount on your annual IT bill and my service is almost as good as what you have now,” won’t get too many customers. What customers really want in this arena is “better and faster,” and if “better and faster” can come with a side dish of cost savings, terrific. But the cost savings is the gravy, not the steak.
此后，大型企业也陆续加入，他们选择 AWS 的主要理由与初创公司相同：速度与灵活性。较低的 IT 成本固然诱人，有时节省金额可观，但仅靠成本节省无法弥补性能或功能不足。企业依赖 IT——它事关使命关键。因此，“我能让你大幅削减年度 IT 费用，且服务几乎与现有水平相当”这样的说法难以吸引客户。客户真正想要的是“更好、更快”，如果“更好、更快”还能附带成本节省，那当然再好不过。但成本节省只是配菜，不是主菜。
IT is so high leverage. You don’t want to imagine a competitor whose IT department is more nimble than yours. Every company has a list of technology projects that the business would like to see implemented as soon as possible. The painful reality is that tough triage decisions are always made, and many projects never get done. Even those that get resourced are often delivered late or with incomplete functionality. If an IT department can figure out how to deliver a larger number of business-enabling technology projects faster, they’ll be creating significant and real value for their organization.
IT 的杠杆效应极大。你不会想要面对一家 IT 部门比你更敏捷的竞争对手。每家公司都有一份技术项目清单，希望尽快实施。痛苦的现实是，常常需要做艰难的优先取舍，许多项目最终从未完成。即使获得资源的项目，也常常延期交付或功能不完整。如果 IT 部门能够设法更快地交付更多推动业务的技术项目，他们就能为组织创造显著而真实的价值。
These are the main reasons AWS is growing so quickly. IT departments are recognizing that when they adopt AWS, they get more done. They spend less time on low value-add activities like managing datacenters, networking, operating system patches, capacity planning, database scaling, and so on and so on. Just as important, they get access to powerful APIs and tools that dramatically simplify building scalable, secure, robust, high-performance systems. And those APIs and tools are continuously and seamlessly upgraded behind the scenes, without customer effort.
这就是 AWS 迅速增长的主要原因。IT 部门认识到，采用 AWS 后，他们完成的工作更多。他们花在数据中心管理、网络、操作系统补丁、容量规划、数据库扩展等低附加值活动上的时间更少。同样重要的是，他们可以使用强大的 API 和工具，大幅简化构建可扩展、安全、稳健、高性能系统的过程。而且这些 API 和工具在幕后持续无缝升级，无需客户付出额外努力。
Today, AWS has more than a million active customers as companies and organizations of all sizes use AWS in every imaginable business segment. AWS usage grew by approximately 90% in the fourth quarter of 2014 versus the prior year. Companies like GE, Major League Baseball, Tata Motors, and Qantas are building new applications on AWS – these range from apps for crowdsourcing and personalized healthcare to mobile apps for managing fleets of trucks. Other customers, like NTT DOCOMO, the Financial Times, and the Securities and Exchange Commission are using AWS to analyze and take action on vast amounts of data. And many customers like Condé Nast, Kellogg’s, and News Corp are migrating legacy critical applications and, in some cases, entire datacenters to AWS.
如今，AWS 拥有超过一百万名活跃客户，各种规模的公司和组织在各行各业使用 AWS。AWS 的使用量在 2014 年第四季度同比增长约 90%。GE、Major League Baseball、Tata Motors 和 Qantas 等公司正在 AWS 上构建新的应用——从众包和个性化医疗到管理卡车车队的移动应用；其他客户，如 NTT DOCOMO、Financial Times 和 Securities and Exchange Commission，则利用 AWS 分析并处理海量数据；还有许多客户，例如 Condé Nast、Kellogg’s 和 News Corp，正在将关键遗留应用，甚至在某些情况下整个数据中心迁移到 AWS。
We’ve increased our pace of innovation as we’ve gone along – from nearly 160 new features and services in 2012, to 280 in 2013, and 516 last year. There are many that would be interesting to talk about – from WorkDocs and WorkMail to AWS Lambda and the EC2 Container Service to the AWS Marketplace – but for purposes of brevity, I’m going to limit myself to one: our recently introduced Amazon Aurora. We hope Aurora will offer customers a new normal for a very important (but also very problematic) technology that is a critical underpinning of many applications: the relational database. Aurora is a MySQL-compatible database engine that offers the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost effectiveness of open source databases. Aurora’s performance is up to 5x better than typical MySQL databases, at one-tenth the cost of commercial database packages. Relational databases is an arena that’s been a pain point for organizations and developers for a long time, and we’re very excited about Aurora.
我们在创新节奏上不断加快——从 2012 年的近 160 项新功能和服务，到 2013 年的 280 项，再到去年达到 516 项。有许多值得讨论的内容——从 WorkDocs 和 WorkMail，到 AWS Lambda、EC2 Container Service，再到 AWS Marketplace——但为了简洁起见，我只聚焦于一项：我们最近推出的 Amazon Aurora。我们希望 Aurora 为一项非常重要（同时也问题多多）的技术——关系型数据库——为客户带来全新的常态，它是众多应用的关键支撑。Aurora 是一款与 MySQL 兼容的数据库引擎，兼具高端商业数据库的速度与可用性，以及开源数据库的简单和高性价比。Aurora 的性能比典型 MySQL 数据库高出最多 5 倍，而成本仅为商业数据库套件的十分之一。关系型数据库长期以来都是组织和开发者的痛点，我们对 Aurora 感到非常兴奋。
I believe AWS is one of those dreamy business offerings that can be serving customers and earning financial returns for many years into the future. Why am I optimistic? For one thing, the size of the opportunity is big, ultimately encompassing global spend on servers, networking, datacenters, infrastructure software, databases, data warehouses, and more. Similar to the way I think about Amazon retail, for all practical purposes, I believe AWS is market-size unconstrained.
我相信 AWS 是那种能够在未来很多年持续为客户服务并实现财务回报的梦想业务之一。我为何如此乐观？其一，市场机会巨大，最终涵盖全球在服务器、网络、数据中心、基础设施软件、数据库、数据仓库等领域的支出。与我对 Amazon 零售业务的看法类似，实际而言，我认为 AWS 在市场规模上不受限制。
Second, its current leadership position (which is significant) is a strong ongoing advantage. We work hard – very hard – to make AWS as easy to use as possible. Even so, it’s still a necessarily complex set of tools with rich functionality and a non-trivial learning curve. Once you’ve become proficient at building complex systems with AWS, you do not want to have to learn a new set of tools and APIs assuming the set you already understand works for you. This is in no way something we can rest on, but if we continue to serve our customers in a truly outstanding way, they will have a rational preference to stick with us.
其次，AWS 目前具有显著的领先地位，这是一项持续的强大优势。我们付出了艰苦——非常艰苦——的努力，让 AWS 尽可能易于使用。即便如此，它仍是一套功能丰富且必然复杂的工具，学习曲线不容小觑。一旦你熟练掌握使用 AWS 构建复杂系统，就不会愿意再去学习一整套新的工具和 API，前提是你已经掌握的工具对你有效。这绝不是我们可以高枕无忧的理由，但只要我们继续以真正卓越的方式服务客户，客户就会理性地选择继续与我们合作。
In addition, also because of our leadership position, we now have thousands of what are effectively AWS ambassadors roaming the world. Software developers changing jobs, moving from one company to another, become our best sales people: “We used AWS where I used to work, and we should consider it here. I think we’d get more done.” It’s a good sign that proficiency with AWS and its services is already something software developers are adding to their resumes.
此外，也正因我们的领先地位，如今有数以千计实际上充当 AWS 形象大使的人遍布世界各地。软件开发者跳槽，从一家企业转到另一家企业，成为我们最出色的销售人员：“我上一家公司使用 AWS，我们在这里也应该考虑，我觉得这样能做成更多事情。” 一个积极的信号是，熟练掌握 AWS 及其服务已成为软件开发者简历上的加分项。
Finally, I’m optimistic that AWS will have strong returns on capital. This is one we as a team examine because AWS is capital intensive. The good news is we like what we see when we do these analyses. Structurally, AWS is far less capital intensive than the mode it’s replacing – do-it-yourself datacenters – which have low utilization rates, almost always below 20%. Pooling of workloads across customers gives AWS much higher utilization rates, and correspondingly higher capital efficiency. Further, once again our leadership position helps: scale economies can provide us a relative advantage on capital efficiency. We’ll continue to watch and shape the business for good returns on capital.
最后，我对 AWS 将获得强劲的资本回报持乐观态度。这一点我们团队十分关注，因为 AWS 资本密集度高。好消息是，当我们进行这些分析时，结果让我们颇为满意。从结构上看，AWS 的资本密集度远低于其所取代的自建数据中心模式——那种模式的利用率低，几乎始终低于 20%。跨客户共享工作负载使 AWS 拥有更高的利用率，从而提高资本效率。此外，我们的领先地位再次发挥作用：规模经济能在资本效率方面赋予我们相对优势。我们将继续密切关注并优化业务，以实现良好的资本回报。
AWS is young, and it is still growing and evolving. We think we can continue to lead if we continue to execute with our customers’ needs foremost in mind.
AWS 仍然年轻，依旧在不断成长和演进。只要我们始终把客户需求放在首位并付诸执行，就有信心继续保持领先。
Career Choice
职业选择
Before closing, I want to take a moment to update shareowners on something we’re excited about and proud of. Three years ago we launched an innovative employee benefit – the Career Choice program, where we pre-pay 95% of tuition for employees to take courses for in-demand fields, such as airplane mechanic or nursing, regardless of whether the skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. The idea was simple: enable choice.
在结束之前，我想花点时间向股东们汇报一件令我们既兴奋又自豪的事情。三年前，我们推出了一项创新的员工福利——Career Choice 计划，我们预付 95% 的学费，支持员工在飞机机械师、护理等热门领域学习课程，而不论这些技能是否与他们在 Amazon 的职业相关。理念很简单：赋予选择。
We know that, for some of our fulfillment and customer service center employees, Amazon will be a career. For others, Amazon might be a stepping stone on the way to a job somewhere else – a job that may require new skills. If the right training can make the difference, we want to help, and so far we have been able to help over 2,000 employees who have participated in the program in eight different countries. There’s been so much interest that we are now building onsite classrooms so college and technical classes can be taught inside our fulfillment centers, making it even easier for associates to achieve these goals.
我们知道，对于部分履约中心和客服中心的员工而言，Amazon 将是一份长期职业；而对另一些人来说，Amazon 可能是通往其他工作的跳板——那份工作可能需要新的技能。如果合适的培训能够带来改变，我们乐于提供帮助。迄今为止，该计划已在八个国家帮助了 2,000 多名员工。由于需求旺盛，我们正在建设现场教室，把大学与技术课程直接引入履约中心，让员工更轻松地实现这些目标。
There are now eight FCs offering 15 classes taught onsite in our purpose-built classrooms with high-end technology features, and designed with glass walls to inspire others to participate and generate encouragement from peers. We believe Career Choice is an innovative way to draw great talent to serve customers in our fulfillment and customer service centers. These jobs can become gateways to great careers with Amazon as we expand around the world or enable employees the opportunity to follow their passion in other in-demand technical fields, like our very first Career Choice graduate did when she started a new career as a nurse in her community.
目前已有八个履约中心在专门打造的教室内提供 15 门现场课程，这些教室配备先进技术设施，并采用玻璃墙设计，以激励他人参与并获得同侪鼓励。我们相信 Career Choice 计划是一种吸引优秀人才在我们的履约和客服中心服务客户的创新方式。随着我们在全球扩张，这些岗位可以成为加入 Amazon 的职业跳板，或使员工有机会在其他紧缺技术领域追随自己的热情——正如首位 Career Choice 毕业生在社区开启护士新职业生涯时所展示的那样。
I would also like to invite you to come join the more than 24,000 people who have signed up so far to see the magic that happens after you click buy on Amazon.com by touring one of our fulfillment centers. In addition to U.S. tours, we are now offering tours at sites around the world, including Rugeley in the U.K. and Graben in Germany and continuing to expand. You can sign up for a tour at (http://www.amazon.com/fctours).
我还想邀请您加入目前已报名的逾 24,000 人行列，亲临参观我们的履约中心，见证在 Amazon.com 点击“购买”之后发生的神奇过程。除了美国的参观行程外，我们现已在全球各地开放参观，包括英国 Rugeley、德国 Graben，并将持续扩展。您可访问(http://www.amazon.com/fctours) 报名参观。
＊＊＊
Marketplace, Prime, and Amazon Web Services are three big ideas. We’re lucky to have them, and we’re determined to improve and nurture them – make them even better for customers. You can also count on us to work hard to find a fourth. We’ve already got a number of candidates in work, and as we promised some twenty years ago, we’ll continue to make bold bets. With the opportunities unfolding in front of us to serve customers better through invention, we assure you we won’t stop trying.
Marketplace、Prime 以及 Amazon Web Services 是三大创想。我们很幸运拥有它们，并决心不断改进和培育它们——让它们为客户变得更出色。您也可以相信，我们会努力寻找第四个创想。我们已在推进多项候选项目，正如二十年前所承诺的那样，我们将继续大胆下注。面对通过创新更好服务客户的机遇，我们保证永不停歇。
As always, I attach a copy of our original 1997 letter. Our approach remains the same, because it’s still Day 1.
一如既往，我随信附上 1997 年的原始信件。我们的理念依然如初，因为现在仍是 Day 1。
Jeffrey P. Bezos
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Amazon.com, Inc.
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