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We’ve used Amazon Web Services in my department, but I wasn’t very close to the project. So when I had a chance to take a deeper dive, I jumped at it. Here are some of the things I learned.
1. AWS Dropped prices on their SimpleDB service by 83% on December 1, 2008. Holy. Moly. Talk about a great illustration of the difference between storing stuff in the cloud and doing it yourself. And there’s a fair chance you’ll be able to use it for free.
2. One government agency was looking to do a proof of concept on a project. If they would have bought computers, they would have had to spend about $30,000. They couldn’t get approval so one of the people involved launched it on AWS’s EC2 service. Total cost? $5. You read that right. Five dollars.
3. Animoto, the coolest photo to video site on the web, scaled from about 40 servers to almost 5000 in three days. 40 to 5000. Wow! If they were handling their servers any other way, they wouldn’t have been able to do that.
4. All kinds of organizations are doing interesting things on AWS. From the New York Times to Harvard Medical School to …. you name ‘em, they’re probably doing something on it.
5. There are 490,000 AWS developers. That’s about the population of Cleveland. Imagine.
5.5. It’s easy to do complex tasks. Watch for a new open source contribution from me on this one soon.
[...] AWS Factoids [...]