Werner Vogels
Encyclopedia
Dr. Werner Vogels is the Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Amazon.com
in Seattle, Washington
. In charge of driving technology innovation within the company, Vogels has broad internal and external responsibilities. He is the only executive apart from Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos
to speak publicly on behalf of Amazon.com. He joined Amazon in September 2004 as the Director of Systems Research. He was named Chief Technology Officer in January 2005 and Vice President
, World-wide Architecture in March of that year.
Prior to joining Amazon.com, from 1994 until 2004, Dr. Vogels was a research scientist at the Computer Science
Department of Cornell University
. He mainly conducted research in scalable reliable enterprise systems. From 1999 through 2002 he also held a Vice President and Chief Technology position at Reliable Network Solutions, Inc. From 1991 through 1994 he was a senior researcher at INESC in Lisbon, Portugal. Vogels received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Vrije Universiteit
in Amsterdam, The Netherlands with Prof. Henri Bal
and Prof. Andy Tanenbaum as his advisors. He is the author of many conference and journal articles, mainly on distributed systems technologies for enterprise computing systems.
Vogels maintains a technology oriented weblog named “All Things Distributed” which he started in 2001 while he was still a scientist at Cornell. It was mainly used to discuss early results of his research. After he joined Amazon.com the nature of the weblog changed to more product oriented with some general technology and industry writings.
Vogels described the deep technical nature of Amazon's infrastructure work in a paper about Amazon's Dynamo
, the storage engine for the Amazon Shopping Cart. He is in general regarded as one of the world's top experts on ultra-scalable systems and he uses his weblog to educate the community about issues such as eventual consistency
.
During 2008 it became evident that Vogels was one of the architects behind Amazon’s approach to Cloud Computing
, the Amazon Web Services
(AWS). During that year Vogels was continuously on the road to promote Cloud Computing and AWS and its benefits to the industry. Information Week recognized Vogels for this educational and promotional role in Cloud Computing with the 2008 CIO/CTO of the Year award. In an accompanying interview with Vogels provides some details of the history of his work at Amazon.
Other awards include the 2009 Media Momentum Personality of the Year Award. In 2010 readers of ReadWriteWeb
voted on the "Cloud's Most Influential Executive" and selected Vogels with a double digit margin.
Vogels is married to Annet Vogels, a former musician with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
. They have two daughters, Laura Vogels and Kim Vogels, who both studied Drama and Theater Arts in London, UK and moved to New York City after completing their studies.
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
. In charge of driving technology innovation within the company, Vogels has broad internal and external responsibilities. He is the only executive apart from Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos is the founder, president, chief executive officer , and chairman of the board of Amazon.com.-Early life and background:...
to speak publicly on behalf of Amazon.com. He joined Amazon in September 2004 as the Director of Systems Research. He was named Chief Technology Officer in January 2005 and Vice President
Vice president
A vice president is an officer in government or business who is below a president in rank. The name comes from the Latin vice meaning 'in place of'. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president...
, World-wide Architecture in March of that year.
Prior to joining Amazon.com, from 1994 until 2004, Dr. Vogels was a research scientist at the Computer Science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
Department of Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. He mainly conducted research in scalable reliable enterprise systems. From 1999 through 2002 he also held a Vice President and Chief Technology position at Reliable Network Solutions, Inc. From 1991 through 1994 he was a senior researcher at INESC in Lisbon, Portugal. Vogels received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Vrije Universiteit
Vrije Universiteit
The Vrije Universiteit is a university in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Dutch name is often abbreviated as VU and in English the university uses the name "VU University". The university is located on a compact urban campus in the southern part of Amsterdam in the Buitenveldert district...
in Amsterdam, The Netherlands with Prof. Henri Bal
Henri Bal
Henri Elle Bal is a professor of Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He is a well-known researcher in computer systems with a specialization in parallel computer systems, languages, and applications....
and Prof. Andy Tanenbaum as his advisors. He is the author of many conference and journal articles, mainly on distributed systems technologies for enterprise computing systems.
Vogels maintains a technology oriented weblog named “All Things Distributed” which he started in 2001 while he was still a scientist at Cornell. It was mainly used to discuss early results of his research. After he joined Amazon.com the nature of the weblog changed to more product oriented with some general technology and industry writings.
Vogels described the deep technical nature of Amazon's infrastructure work in a paper about Amazon's Dynamo
Dynamo (storage system)
Dynamo is a highly available, proprietary key-value structured storage system or a distributed data store. It has properties of both databases and distributed hash tables...
, the storage engine for the Amazon Shopping Cart. He is in general regarded as one of the world's top experts on ultra-scalable systems and he uses his weblog to educate the community about issues such as eventual consistency
Eventual consistency
Eventual consistency is one of the consistency models used in the domain of parallel programming, for example in distributed shared memory, distributed transactions, and optimistic replication, it means that given a sufficiently long period of time over which no changes are sent, all updates can be...
.
During 2008 it became evident that Vogels was one of the architects behind Amazon’s approach to Cloud Computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
, the Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Web Services is a collection of remote computing services that together make up a cloud computing platform, offered over the Internet by Amazon.com...
(AWS). During that year Vogels was continuously on the road to promote Cloud Computing and AWS and its benefits to the industry. Information Week recognized Vogels for this educational and promotional role in Cloud Computing with the 2008 CIO/CTO of the Year award. In an accompanying interview with Vogels provides some details of the history of his work at Amazon.
Other awards include the 2009 Media Momentum Personality of the Year Award. In 2010 readers of ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb
ReadWriteWeb is a Web technology blog launched in 2003. RWW covers Web 2.0 and Web technology in general, and provides industry news, reviews, and analysis. Founded by Richard MacManus, Technorati ranked ReadWriteWeb at number 12 in its list of top 100 blogs worldwide, as of October 9, 2010. RWW...
voted on the "Cloud's Most Influential Executive" and selected Vogels with a double digit margin.
Vogels is married to Annet Vogels, a former musician with the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based primarily in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The NedPhO was formed in 1985 from the merger of three orchestras, the Amsterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Utrecht Symphony Orchestra Utrecht and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra...
. They have two daughters, Laura Vogels and Kim Vogels, who both studied Drama and Theater Arts in London, UK and moved to New York City after completing their studies.
External links
- A conversation with Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon, ACM Queue vol.4, no.4 - May 2006.
- A podcast interview with Vogels on architecture and distributed systems, Software Engineering Radio, Episode 40, Dec 2006.
- Discipline and Focus, ACM QueueCast Interview, 2006