Wharton Tech Blog

By, Kelly Ramsey, WG’09
Worldwide Corporate Finance (Intern)

I spent the summer working on a corporate finance on a project for the worldwide financial planning and accounting group.  While my role was in finance my project was actually focused on the strategy of the shared service organization. There are three shared service centers and they are located in Austin, Texas; cork Ireland and Singapore. Shared service centers handle all the accounting transactions for a company from the cash register transactions in a retail shop in Sydney to corporate billing of best buy in Indiana. It is a large part of the organization employing over 1200 people. My project focused on developing a benchmark and perforating tracking strategy that would standardize reporting across all three centers and produce a report for executive management. The project had various stages from research, development and presentation. The project was great because it allowed me to use a variety of skill from finance to global strategy. It also gave me visibility to how Apple functions globally and the ability to speak to many high level finance executive throughout the company. A typical day for me looked something like this:
 

8:15 - Apple provides free shuttle to from San Francisco to campus, however I lived in San Jose and had a car so I drove to work. 
 

8:30 - Arrive at work, setup my laptop and get coffee at the shop downstairs.
 

8:45 – Read emails and look over the schedule for the day
 

9:15 – Depending on where I was in my project I would get to work on that phase in my project plan. The research phase consisted of interviews with the finance director at each service center, interviews with the heads of shared services at other companies, and online research. The development phase focused on creating a strategy process plan and mock ups of reports. I also developed an implementation plan that involved understanding the current systems and resources. The final phase was the presentation which was the main deliverable.
 

11:00 – Usually had a meeting of some sort around this time. Meetings would either be with my manager, an executive who I was interviewing for this project or a finance executive whom I was having an informational interview with about how Apple finance works. 
 

12:00 – Speaker series and lunch. Pick up lunch in Café Macs, which offers an array of food from every ethnic group. There was always fresh fish so on a typical day I would have grilled miso salmon with steamed broccoli and mushroom risotto. Everything is gourmet, amazing and cheap. Then head off to listen to one of Apple’s chief executives discuss their work and why they love what they do. The sessions were great and gave me an amazing visibility into the way the company operates and who is leading it, from Steve Jobs (CEO) to Johnny Ives (head of product design). The internship program also had lunches tailored to functional areas. Therefore, on certain days lunches were set up for MBA interns in finance to have lunch with the CFO and CAO. This allowed me to have one on one time with the CFO to discuss his career at Apple and prior to Apple.
 

1:30 – Back in my office and continuing to work on the applicable phase in my project.  
 

4:00 – Frozen yogurt time at the coffee shop down stairs they made this amazing gourmet yogurt. It was addicting and a nice break to sit in the sun and chat with interns from other schools. 
 

6:30 – Wrapping things up for the day and head over to the Apple gym for a work out.  Then head home for dinner or to an intern dinner event.
I loved Apple, it was an amazing experience. Everyone I worked with was intelligent, driven and I felt that each of them was willing to do whatever they could to help me succeed. It was definitely the most collaborative environment I have worked in. But it was also the most effective collaboration I have ever witnessed.

by Sudip Chakrabarti

That was precisely how my engineering professor reacted when I mentioned Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computing to him. Granted he is old school, but like him, a majority of us still think of Amazon as the online Walmart and nothing more. But quietly yet surely, Amazon has been transforming itself into the provider of computing power to the whole wide world.

So, what exactly is elastic cloud computing (or EC2 in techie speak)? In plain English, it is a paradigm that allows users to access IT-related services from the Internet (“the cloud”) without knowledge of, expertise with, or control over the technology infrastructure that supports them. Like one gets electricity by plugging into an electric outlet, users can access unlimited computing capability by “plugging” into the cloud computing infrastructure. It is elastic because computing power can be added or reduced as necessary, with the user paying only for the services used.

Of all the companies that are venturing into cloud computing, Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) has been the most prominent so far. AWS consists of three key pieces: 

• EC2 instances: EC2 instances are the actual machines that a user owns for the time he / she pays for. Depending on the computing capability and RAM required, one can buy a small, large or extra-large instance for a price ranging from 10 to 80 cents an hour.
• Simple Storage Service (S3): Amazon S3 is storage on the Internet. Users can store their data in unique “buckets” that are similar to directories, and access that data via unique keys that are similar to file paths. Once again, a user only pays for the storage and the amount of data transferred in or out.
• Simple Queue Service (SQS): SQS offers a reliable way of passing messages and data between EC2 instances. By using Amazon SQS, users can move data between distributed components of their applications that perform different tasks, without losing messages or requiring each component to be always available.

Using these three pieces of AWS, one could very easily build a distributed application that runs on several EC2 instances, writes and reads data to and from S3, and uses SQS to coordinate between the instances. Most importantly, the number of EC2 instances can be dynamically increased or decreased depending on the load on the application.

The opportunities and benefits of elastic cloud computing are simply enormous. It offers two guys and a dog working out of a garage the computing power to match the big boys at a cost of a few hundred dollars per month. It is no wonder the Google’s of the world are already jumping on the bandwagon. So far, however, Amazon’s offering has gained significant traction because of ease of use and companies such as RightScale that are selling services to manage AWS. It, however, remains to be seen whether AWS and similar cloud computing services can meet the stringent SLA requirements of enterprise users.
 

Useful links:
Amazon Web Services: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws
 

A step-by-step guide to get started on AWS: http://paulstamatiou.com/2008/04/05/how-to-getting-started-with-amazon-ec2
 

Calculator to compute monthly AWS costs: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

by, Dan Richards, WG’09
Strategic Partner Development Manager (Intern)

I spent the summer on the Local/Core Content group in the Content Partnerships team (http://contentcentral.blogspot.com/).  As you may or may not have heard, Google is not a “media” company, in that they don’t “create” content - they just aggregate it from different sources and make it accessible and usable to the user.  Whenever Google can’t access certain content by crawling websites, that’s when the Content Partnership team steps in to negotiate deals with content providers and the like.  My role within this team was part business development, part strategy.  It was a very busy summer, but very enjoyable and fulfilling.  A typical day for me looked something like this:

8:00 - While Google provides free shuttle services to most areas from San Francisco to San Jose and up the East Bay, I lived in Los Altos Hills, which meant I would hop on the VTA (public bus) for a 20 min ride to the Googleplex. 

8:30 - Arrive and get settled at my desk.  I was usually the first one from my group there at this time.

8:35 - Head over to Cafe Moma for pancakes with strawberry syrup and whipped cream (which quickly turned into cold cereal and a banana after I gained 5 lbs in my first couple weeks).  I’d usually take breakfast back to my desk and start sifting through emails.  I worked with quite a few folks in Europe and Asia, so often had emails from them waiting for me when I got to work in the morning.

9:00 - I’d usually spend the next hour or so trying to make a dent in my to-do list.  Some days it seemed that I’d check one thing off and three new things got added automatically.

10:00 - The next hour could be spent sitting down with a product manager, legal counsel, or marketing manager to discuss a certain project.  Google is a VERY collaborative environment, and I learned that if you don’t reach out and work with as many different people as possible, you’ll get left behind. 

11:00 - Late morning is usually a good time to get some BizDev related partner calls in - whether they’re on the West Coast or East Coast, it’s usually a good time to chat with people.  I’d either make calls from my desk or reserve a private room on Google’s elaborate (but easy to use) internal network.

12:30 - This was always the toughest part of the day.  Tough because I’d have to decide in which of the 20+ world class cafes I’d eat lunch that day.  Each cafe has their own theme - from Pinxto (everything made from organic ingredients grown within ~150 miles of Google) to Andale (Larry and Sergey’s favorite Mexican restaurant that they convinced to expand from Palo Alto to the Googleplex).  The best part about the free lunch is that it makes it so easy to sit down with people from around the company.  My weeks often filled up quickly with lunch appointments with different people.  Whether I was working on a project with them or just wanted to learn about the next version of their product, people were very accommodating.  It’s a very open culture and people love to chat over free (and tasty) food.

2:00 - More meetings over the next couple hours.  From one-on-one’s with your boss (or bosses, in my case) to weekly team meetings to more project-centric meetings, early afternoon was usually the best time for this.  Google has a great video conferencing network with all their offices around the world.  I could reserve almost any conference room in Mountian View and be “face to face” with someone in the Dublin office, or in the next building over, within seconds. 

4:00 - This is where the “real work” began for me.  I’d usually try to block out this time to hack away at my to-do list, make some more calls and send some more emails.  Sometimes I’d book a private room in order to avoid distractions. 

6:00 - At this point, I’d either be wrapping things up and heading home or would grab dinner at one of the above-mentioned cafes and stick around for another hour, depending on how busy things were.  I’d try to hit the gym before I went home, but that happened with much less frequency as the summer progressed.  I convinced myself that riding the beach cruisers from building to building for meetings, along with the occasional mid-day basketball game, was enough exercise for me. 

All in all, it was a great summer.  It was busier and a bit more strenuous then I expected, but it was very rewarding and worthwhile.  I learned a lot, received great feedback from my managers, and was happy with how it turned out.  And if anyone ever tells you there’s no such thing as a “free lunch”, don’t believe them!

By Stephanie Chu | WG’09 | Product Manager Intern

This summer I interned as a Product Manager at Amazon.com in Seattle. I had a great experience with my projects, the business team I worked with (Grocery), and the company as a whole. I thought I’d try to share some of my experiences with you through a typical day.

7am - I start the day by making breakfast in my apartment. Amazon puts up summer interns in Harbor Steps, a fully furnished upscale apartment building in downtown Seattle with views of the water.

8am - I meet one of the other MBA summer interns downstairs in the lobby and walk to work together. Our offices are only a 15 minute walk from where we live, so it’s a nice way to start the work day. We grab coffee at Tully’s, then get to our desks.

8:30am - Check email, review to-do list for the day.

9am - Talk with logistics companies and put together a request for proposal. One of my summer projects is to figure out a fulfillment solution for Amazon to be able to offer some new grocery categories. This has included getting up to speed quickly on all of the relevant supply chain needs for the business, researching and reaching out to prospective logistics partners, and starting to build out a solution. My background prior to Wharton was in e-commerce product management, where I focused mainly on website product development and marketing initiatives, so it has been really fun to delve into the operations side of retail. In fact, this is one of the things I really enjoyed about Amazon - the breadth of the product management position means that you are able to get involved in many aspects of the business.

11:30am - Catch the Amazon shuttle to one of the other Amazon buildings for today’s Executive Speaker Series. Amazon sets up an amazing line up of executive speakers for its MBA interns including many of the Senior VPs as well as Jeff Bezos. This is in addition to the company-wide Fishbowl speaker series, which are typically writers, artists, and other relevant public personalities.

1:30pm - Meeting with the senior developer for Amazon’s pricing tools. My other summer project is around competitive price optimization for the Grocery business. I am meeting with him to understand how Amazon’s pricing tools work, so I can optimize the data quality and pricing algorithm in order to improve pricing to increase sales and optimize margins. I was impressed that both of my projects this summer were very hands-on. The work I did had a tangible impact on the business, and were also areas that needed attention, so the team seemed happy to have my help.

3pm - Kick-off meeting with the market research agency who is helping us collect additional competitive pricing data to inform our pricing strategy. Both Grocery (dry goods) and Fresh (Amazon’s local grocery delivery business) are doing pricing optimization projects this summer, so we are working together with the agency to deliver a research product that suits both groups’ needs.

4:30pm - Return some calls to West coast logistics companies.

6pm - Head out for the night. There is an Amazon MBA intern happy hour down the street, so I plan to stop by there for a couple hours, then join friends for dinner at Quinn’s, a new gastro-pub in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.