IAR: Amazon Brings Web Services to its Vendors

E-commerce companies face a type of horizontal distribution consolidation that goes beyond even the typical business-to-business distribution oligopolies that face offline businesses. In addition to margin-skimming distributors and wholesalers, e-commerce firms are beginning to participate in technical standards efforts that make e-commerce services automated. Amazon.com, for instance, just signed a long-term deal with Systinet to provide an enforced standard to which vendors to Amazon.com must conform.

While not the sexy sort of consumer-oriented deal that grabs headlines, this deal will have a much greater long-term effect on future e-commerce systems and even the levels of competition in those markets.