Simplicissimus provides e-content distribution, self-publishing, and retail platforms powered by AWS. Their main assets - Stealth, Narcissus, Ultima Kiosk, and Ultima Books - leverage AWS services like S3, EC2, RDS, and auto-scaling for reliability and flexibility. By adopting AWS, Simplicissimus avoids hardware costs and issues while gaining scalability, disaster recovery, and reduced time to market. Cost optimization strategies include reserved instances and horizontal scaling based on user demand.

1. Simplicissimus Web
Services
Overview of the Simplicissimus Cloud Infrastructure
AWS for Media, Entertainment, and Internet | Milan | October 26, 2011
Giacomo D'Angelo
CTO, Simplicissimus Book Farm S.R.L.

2. Help everyone to understand
the transition to the creative industry
as an opportunity to improve
the quality of everyone life
Our MISSION

3. Our Market:
The Digital Publishing World
Ebooks
Digital Magazines
Digital Newspapers
Publishers
Authors
...
Digital Contents and all Stackeholders
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

4. Simplicissimus Business Units
1. Hardware: ereaders and tablets distribution
2. Ebooks production
3. Newspapers and Magazines production
4. E-content Distribution Platform
5. E-content Retail Platform
6. Self Publishing Platform
7. Web and Mobile Dedicated Apps
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

5. Simplicissimus Main Assets on AWS
Stealth: sbfstealth.com, @sbfstealth
Narcissus: sbfnarcissus.com, @sbfnarcissus
Ultima Kiosk: ultimakiosk.com, @ultimakiosk
Ultima Books: ultimabooks.it, @ultimabooks
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

6. Stealth: the E-content Distribution
Platform
Content providers can Resellers and stores
upload their contents can utilize the Stealth
into our web API to sell content
applications, in one without any concerns
single place, with about technology, file
descriptive metadatas, mngt (reliability and
price, availability and security) and
protection details burocracy
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

7. Narcissus: the Self Publishing Platform
Artists can upload
Thanks to our
their contents and
distribution asset,
manage them on
Stealth, all Narcissus
Narcissus, with
contents can be
metadatas, price and
distributed to all main
availability control,
E-content stores and
sales control, without
resellers
any intermediary
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

8. Ultima Kiosk: the Publishing Platform
for Magazines, Comics and Newspaper
Different skins:
● The coolest kiosk to ● Unique app with
purchase contents contents from
● The most effective different publishers
way to read ● White-label and
contents: free-app single-publisher
● The only way to app
publish digital ● White-label and
contents: gratis single-magazine (or
newspaper) app
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

9. Ultima Books: the E-content Retail
Platform
● The coolest online Main tech features:
library to purchase ● User-customizable
contents shelves based on
● The only one with a semantic engine
digital bookseller in ● Multi platform
flesh and blood :) frontend (ereader)
● The only one with a ● Ecommerce as as
weekly useful service
newsletter (try it!) (UltimaBooks PRO)
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

10. Main issues
before adopting AWS
1. Hardware related issues
2. High startup cost for every single project
3. No scaling, no long tail
4. No flexibility for developing and testing
purposes
5. No High Reliability
6. No Smart Recovery Strategy
7. Many daily activities for sysadmins
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11. Why AWS: our main benefits
1. The only hardware in our office are our
personal notebooks :)
2. Flexybility for daily operations (test, deploy,
dev, backup)
3. Startup of new projects without concerns
4. Automatic disaster recovery strategy
5. Scalability
6. Agility
7. Reduced Time to Market
8. Cross technology platform
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

12. Main Costs
due to the AWS adoptions
1. Learn how to architecting for the clouds
2. Build multi-AZ systems
3. Build customized management tool based on
AWS API
4. Fewer sysadmins activities but more specific
then before
5. Suggestion to avoid lockin: build a
decoupling software layer from AWS API
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

13. Stealth, Narcissus, Ultima Kiosk and
Ultima Books are powered by AWS
1. S3 as long-time and reliable repository
2. EC2 instances as web server
3. EC2 instances as processing server
4. EC2 instances as semantic information
processing platform (IDOL, Authonomy
Technology)
5. Load Balancer + Auto Scaling + CloudWatch
to manage the peaks of traffic
6. RDS database
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14. AWS Optimization:
Costs
The biggest projects are on reserved instances,
every new project starts on on-demand ones.
Example:
● Stealth -> Reserved
● Narcissus -> On Demand
● Ultima Books -> Reserved
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

15. AWS Optimization:
Costs and Reliability
Lots of small instances in load-balancing with
auto-scaling through multiple A-Z
Example:
Ultima Books
● 1 AWS Load Balancer
● 4+ EC2 in Auto Scaling
● Multi AZ RDS Database
● 2 Availability Zones
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

16. AWS Optimization:
Costs
Cloud Horizontal Scaling benefits:
● The needed computing capacity is
not constant during the week
● Increase and decrease the
capacity following the users
demand
● The infrastructure should be
elastic
by Simplicissimus Book Farm

17. Thanks!
Q & A, if you want :)
CONTACT ME:
LINKS:
Presentation: http://slidesha.re/SBFServicesOnAWS Giacomo D'Angelo
@giacomodangelo
Simplicissimus: http://simplicissimus.it giacomo.dangelo@simplicissimus.it
Stealth: http://sbfstealth.com
Narcissus: http://sbfnarcissus.com CTO, Simplicissimus Book Farm S.R.L.
Ultima Kiosk: http://ultimakiosk.com
Ultima Books: http://ultimabooks.it
TWITTER:
@simplicissimus, @sbfstealth, @sbfnarcissus, @ultimabooks, @ultimakiosk