Zappos’s Website Frozen for Two Years as it Integrates with Amazon
Here's an interesting nugget from a wonderfully written and deeply interesting article by Roger Hodge in the New Republic: A radical experiment at Zappos to end the office workplace as we know it:
Zappos's customer-facing web site has been basically frozen for the last few years while the company migrates its backend systems to Amazon's platforms, a multiyear project known as Supercloud.
It's a testament to Zappos that they still sell well with a frozen website while most of the rest of the world has adopted a model of continuous deployment and constant evolution across multiple platforms.
Amazon is requiring the move, otherwise a company like Zappos would probably be sensitive to the Conway's law implication of such a deep integration. Keep in mind Facebook is reportedly keeping WhatsApp and Instagram independent. This stop the world plan must mean something, unfortunately I don't have the strategic insight to understand why this might be. Any thoughts?
The article has more tantalizing details about what's going on with the move: