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After server issues, Amazon aims for Lady Gaga do-over

By | May 26, 2011, 5:16am PDT

Summary: The e-commerce giant used its server meltdown as a marketing opportunity and acknowledged that Lady Gaga “definitely melted some servers.” Amazon also promised that “this time we’re ready.”

Amazon on Thursday said it will offer Lady Gaga’s new album for 99 cents again after its servers struggled to meet demand on Monday.

The e-commerce giant used its server meltdown as a marketing opportunity and acknowledged that Lady Gaga “definitely melted some servers.” Amazon also promised that “this time we’re ready.”

Cheeky press release aside, it’s a bit unclear how this Lady Gaga do-over will fare. The bigger picture here is that Amazon wasn’t able to scale to meet demand for Lady Gaga’s album demand.

If you’re a follower of Amazon you have to wonder if it provisioned enough capacity from its own cloud.

Related: Amazon’s key weapon in cloud music wars: Lady Gaga, price

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Amazon.com Inc., Servers, Hardware, Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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So, let me great this straight..
Cloud Guy 26th May
Amazon talks about capacity on demand and elastic usage and scalability. Then, when it comes time to actually exhibit those wonderful qualities, it does not have them. I think the whole cloud elasticity thing is bogus from all cloud vendors. Someone should investigate EXACTLY how they provide such a heady and unproven capability.
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RE: After server issues, Amazon aims for Lady Gaga do-over
LoverockDavidson 26th May
I'll buy it for 99 cents. Not a big fan of hers but she does have some catchy tunes.
0 Votes
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So, let me great this straight..
Cloud Guy 26th May
Amazon talks about capacity on demand and elastic usage and scalability. Then, when it comes time to actually exhibit those wonderful qualities, it does not have them. I think the whole cloud elasticity thing is bogus from all cloud vendors. Someone should investigate EXACTLY how they provide such a heady and unproven capability.

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