Amazon Com Stock Price, News & Analysis

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has introduced extended return policies for the 2020 holiday season, allowing items purchased between October 1 and December 31, 2020, to be returned until January 31, 2021. Customers can enjoy easy returns with no box or label needed at over 500 Whole Foods Market locations, as well as various Amazon physical stores. This initiative is aimed at providing convenience and support during an unpredictable holiday season, enhancing customer confidence with a seamless return experience.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that Star Alliance is migrating its entire IT infrastructure to AWS, aiming to reduce costs and enhance operational flexibility. By moving to the cloud, Star Alliance expects a 25% reduction in total cost of ownership and a 30% decrease in infrastructure expenses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The transition enables faster application development and improved customer services, including real-time baggage tracking. AWS's extensive cloud services will allow Star Alliance to innovate and adapt to changing travel demands, enhancing customer experience and operational resilience.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is strengthening its partnership with Nationwide, a leading insurance provider, by becoming its preferred cloud provider. Nationwide is migrating over 850 critical applications, including its flagship website, to AWS as part of its digital transformation. This move is facilitated by the AWS Enterprise Next program, enabling Nationwide to leverage advanced services like machine learning for enhanced customer service. The collaboration aims to speed up policy processing and improve customer engagement, positioning Nationwide competitively in the financial services sector.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced that Arm will migrate the majority of its electronic design automation (EDA) workloads to AWS, utilizing Graviton2-based instances. This transition is expected to enhance simulation capabilities, achieving a 6x performance improvement in EDA workflows. Arm aims to reduce its global datacenter footprint by at least 45% and on-premises compute by 80%. The collaboration allows Arm to optimize costs, improve engineering efficiency, and accelerate project timelines while leveraging AWS’s vast storage and computing resources.

Amazon has announced that 13 new companies, including Microsoft, Unilever, and Coca-Cola European Partners, have joined The Climate Pledge, committing to achieve net-zero carbon by 2040. The initiative aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly ahead of the Paris Agreement timelines. Signatories will report emissions regularly and implement strategies for decarbonization. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos emphasized the importance of collaboration and innovation to meet climate goals, highlighting a growing demand for sustainable technologies.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched Amazon HealthLake, a HIPAA-eligible service aimed at enhancing data aggregation for healthcare organizations. This service consolidates diverse health data into a centralized data lake, utilizing machine learning to normalize and structure the information into the FHIR format. By improving data accessibility, Amazon HealthLake enables healthcare providers to analyze and predict health trends effectively. Key benefits include reduced data transformation time, enhanced predictive analytics capabilities, and better patient health outcomes.

At AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services announced nine new features for Amazon SageMaker, enhancing its machine learning capabilities. The updates include faster data preparation, a dedicated feature repository, automated workflows, and improved model monitoring, enabling developers to automate and scale the machine learning process. These enhancements aim to simplify the creation of machine learning models for a broader audience, addressing the traditionally complex tasks involved in data preparation and model training. Notable customers like 3M and Deloitte highlighted the value of these updates.