2019-05-27

(Not) Real Scientific Proof that AMI has #3syllables

AWS has 26, (yes) I counted them, different products with exactly 3 letters in them (or derivatives of) - lets go through them one at a time.


  • A-C-M AWS Certificate Manager - Is not pronounced ac-em (also not hack-em) 
  • D-M-S Database Migration Service - Is not pronounced dems nor dee-miss (and also not dimms)
  • E-B-S Elastic Block Store - Is not pronounced ebbs (and we are not being washed back out to sea), nor ee-bzz (people might be allergic to bees) 
  • E-C-2 (Well it should actually be E-C-C - but EC2 sounds so much sexier) Elastic Compute Cloud - Is not pronounced ek-2 (or even eck - otherwise people might get confused with "what the heck2")
  • E-C-R - Elastic Container Registry - Is not pronounced Ecker-R (sounds too much like pecker) 
  • E-C-S - Elastic Container Service - Is not pronounced eh-ckes neither ee-cees nor Ex (People would be wary to use a product named Amazon X - they might think that AWS is taking after Google with their Alphabet) 
  • E-F-S - Elastic File System - Is not pronounced ef-s neither ee-fees nor eefs
  • E-K-S - Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes - pronouncing this x-kay (ECS-K) would sound too much like Xray (another AWS product). Also see above about E-C-S 
  • E-M-R Elastic MapReduce - We don't call it ee-mer - nor emmer (otherwise all the Dutch people might think that this is an S3 look-alike) 
  • F-S-X - I can't find what this stands for - except for FSx :) - not ef-sex (that is not politically correct..) 
  • I-A-M - Identity and Access Managment - no-one uses I-AM - (Dr. Suess would be happy with I-AM-SAM - SAM-I-AM
  • I-O-T - Internet Of Things - Not eye-ot (people might think there are more than 7 dwarfs in the service - eye-o, eye-o it's off to work we go..) 
  • K-M-S Key Management Service - Is not pronounced kems - nor kee-mes (keemes - the new AWS meme-as-a-service product is probably not a good idea either) 
  • L-E-X - this is actually the product name - Amazon Lex - even though the French might have enjoyed it if it was actually Le'X (but then again people don't like having their Ex in the spotlight) 
  • M-S-K - Managed Streaming for Kafka - Is not pronounced musk (Elon might not like it), em-sek (could be too fast for us to use). And of course AWS had to name a product after me.
  • P-H-D - Personal Health Dashboard - Is not pronounced pee-hud and phud - would get them in trouble with spreading Fear Uncertainty and Doubt
  • R-A-M - Resource Access Manager - Not (a battering) ram (nor the the ancient Indian king Raam
  • R-D-S - Relational Database Service - Is not pronounced ar-dis, nor ar-dees (and definitely not the new time machine service - tardis) 
  • S3 - Simple Storage Service - This is a 3 letter product - S-S-S (S3 is so much sexier) - Not sss (people might think there are snakes) - here I conceded - ess-ess-ess brings up really bad vibes 
  • S-E-S - Simple Email Service - Is not pronounced Sess nor sees (otherwise us customers might think this is a new tax in eu-west-1 or ap-south-1) 
  • S-N-S - Simple Notification Service - Is not pronounced S-ness, neither sneeze nor Sans (and not nessie either - she is still somewhere in the Loch) 
  • S-Q-S - Simple Queue Service - Is not pronounced see-ques - nor squeeze 
  • S-S-O - Single Sign On - Is not pronounced sa-so neither ses-o nor se-so (just because I say so) 
  • S-W-F - Simple Workflow Service - Is not pronounced see-wiff - nor Swiff 
  • V-P-C - Virtual Private Cloud - Is not pronounced vee-pic, neither ve-peec nor veep-see 
  • W-A-F - Web Application Firewall - I concede - this one is #1syllable - there I said it! BUT IT IS NOT #2syllables !!

Except for three exceptions (S3, LEX and WAF) - all the three letter products in AWS - are all pronounced with three syllables!!!!

Just like A-M-I - which has #3syllables 

I rest my case.