Amazon Web Services (AWS) — a white paper on cities

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a series of white papers available for download. For this discussion thread, you will download the white paper, “How Cities Can Stop Wasting Money, Move Faster, and Innovate.”

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This white paper was not written by a previous student in WRTG 393. As a result, it does not have the same sections that the student white papers had.

This white paper a title page, a table of contents on page 4, an abstract on page 4, and then the body of the white paper on pages 5-16. It does not cite any sources, but rather uses testimonies from various cities and municipalities to give credibility to its claims.

Please answer the following questions, answering each one in one to three sentences or so.

1. Who is the audience for this white paper? In other words, what potential clients is it trying to attract?

2. Examine pages 5-7. Is this white paper “marketing” AWS a bit too much? Remember the lecture from the Purdue OWL in which the narrator mentioned at the 3:28 mark that white papers are sometimes written by companies and, therefore, “we should be cautious of viewing all white paper reports as neutral or objective, informative research.” If you were to gather information about cloud services, and you were to read this white paper as part of your research in your information gathering, what considerations would you keep in mind as you gleaned the information from this white paper?

3. Notice the headings in the white paper. They are not typical academic headings. They are designed to catch the reader’s attention. This strategy resonates with a strategy given in the Purdue OWL lecture. What strategy did the Purdue OWL mention in this regard?

4. Please comment on whether the graphics in this white paper help communicate the message. You can see Figure 1 on page 6 and Figure 2 on page 14.