Benjamin Black was trying to avoid writing this post and had succeeded at that goal for almost 2 years.
In 2003 I was working at Amazon for the best manager I’ve ever had, Chris Pinkham... page 
>After presenting the “executive brief” paper to Jeff, the realities of turning this hare-brained scheme into a real service meant involving the smartest folks around (i.e., not me). In the Amazon style of “starting from the customer and working backwards”, we produced a “press release” and a FAQ to further detail the how and why of what would become EC2. At this point attention turned from these paper pushing exercises to specifics of getting it built. Most importantly, who would lead the effort?