The Bezos mandate – is it still working?

Back in the day (well 2002 to be precise) Jeff Bezos rallied Amazon with the following directive:

1) All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces.

2) Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.

3) There will be no other form of interprocess communication allowed: no direct linking, no direct reads of another team’s data store, no shared-memory model, no back-doors whatsoever

4) It doesn’t matter what technology they use

5) All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up to be
externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.

6) Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired.