You will be able to use Amazon EC2 to host highly scalable ASP.NET sites, high performance computing (HPC) clusters, media transcoders, SQL Server, and more. You can run Visual Studio (or another development environment) on your desktop and run the finished code in the Amazon cloud.

The 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Server will be available and will be able to use all existing EC2 features such as Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and the Elastic Block Store. You'll be able to call any of the other Amazon Web Services from your application. You will, for example, be able to use the Amazon Simple Queue Service to glue cross-platform applications together.

Existing EC2 tools will be able to launch Windows-powered EC2 instances. Once launched, you can use the Windows Remote Desktop or the rdesktop tool to access your instances.

I fully expect to see this new level of flexibility used to create complex, highly scalable, heterogeneous EC2 applications using a mix of Linux, Solaris, and Windows instances, all on a pay-as-you-go basis.

The product is currently in a private beta and is scheduled for public release before the end of 2008. I will, of course, have more to say about this exciting new development as we get closer to the release date. If you'd like to be notified when this new offering is available, just let us know.

We'll be at the PDC (Professional Developers Conference) in Los Angeles at the end of October. Be sure to stop by our booth to say hello if you are at the conference.

Update: Windows instance pricing will be strictly pay-as-you-go, like our other services. Customers will only pay for as much or little as they actually use; of course the actual price will be higher than Linux-based instances, due to the cost of Windows licenses. We'll announce specific pricing when we make the service broadly available later this Fall.

-- Jeff;

Earlier today we rolled out a brand new release of DevPay. The new release has two important new features, lower fees and reduced risk.

How, you may ask, are lower fees a feature? Well, it turns out that many developers would like to use DevPay to simply pass their actual AWS charges through to their customers without marking them up. The new release makes this possible because the 3% DevPay fee is now charged only on the value added by the developer. There's still a 30 cent fee for processing each payment.

The new fee structure will be of value to developers using DevPay on top of EC2 because it allows them to pass on bandwidth charges directly. There is no longer a need to add an additional markup to cover the fees that were formerly charged on Amazon's share of the cost. This directly leads to a business model which is both better from an economic perspective and simpler from a structural perspective.

Also, with this new release, Amazon DevPay shares the risk of customer nonpayment with developers. You’re responsible for the cost of AWS services that a customer consumes only up to the amount that the customer pays. Based on your price, if the amount a customer owes is lower than the cost of AWS services that the customer consumed, you’re required to cover the difference, even if the customer does not pay.

The net result of these changes is that the fees developers will pay to use DevPay will be lower. Developers will also pay less in the event that their customers don't pay.

It is worth pointing out that both of these features were implemented as a direct result of customer feedback which started in a thread on the AWS Discussion Forum for DevPay. We're here, and we are listening, but you've got to speak up if you want to be heard!

-- Jeff;

You should check out the presentations posted on Slideshare.net, because they demonstrate the amazing range of innovation in the start-up community. One interesting observation about this year's event so far, vs. last year is that we are seeing more applications that target the Enterprise vs. online destinations. There is obviously a lot of innovation going on around tools and even complementary services.

We're not finished with the tour, of course. You can still sign up for our events in London (November 4, 2008), Amsterdam (November 6, 2008), and Seattle (November 20, 2008) by emailing rsvpstartup@amazon.com. Additional details are available at aws.amazon.com/startupproject/.

Finally, don't forget the Startup Challenge. This contest is a great opportunity to gain some exposure for your application and compete for a chance to win $100,000 in cash and AWS credits.

To enter, simply submit your business application, the entry period ends October 3rd. In November, all finalists will be flown to Amazon's offices in Seattle to participate in the final judging round and public event. I think this is an incredible opportunity: not only because of the monetary prizes--especially in the current tight funding environment, but also because of the publicity.

-- Mike

The new site offers better navigation and easier access to the content related to each service. All of the relevant options and links are available in a series of convenient pull-down menus.

It is now much easier to find AWS news, events, and media coverage. Dedicated sections on the right side provide convenient access to information of interest to developers (including the once elusive AMI directory) and to business managers. There's information about user groups (including some guidelines for starting your own) and an ever-growing set of case studies.

We also rolled out a series of AWS Quick Reference cards.

Available in PDF form, the cards summarize the most important data types, function calls, and command line tools for each service.

Cards are now available for AAWS, DevPay, EC2, FWS, Mechanical Turk, and SQS, with more to follow before too long.

Print these out, tape them above your desk, and show your colleagues that you are an AWS-powered developer!

-- Jeff;

As more and more enterprises take a look at the Amazon Web Services, they invariably ask about packaged software, particularly databases. With this announcement, AWS users now gain access to a commercial-grade, brand-name database, along with the necessary tools and middleware needed to build and host heavy duty enterprise applications in the Amazon cloud.

So, what's available?

The Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Enterprise Manager can now be licensed to run in the cloud on Amazon EC2. Customers can even use their existing software licenses with no additional license fees. Read more about cloud licensing here.

I should say a few words about licensing here because this question comes up all the time. The variability and flexibility of cloud-based licensing has perplexed users and vendors for some time now. Now that a large software vendor has made a clear statement of direction here, we should see more and more cloud-compatible licenses before too long.

These products, along with Oracle Enterprise Linux, are available in prepackaged, ready to run form, encapsulated within a set of free Amazon EC2 AMIs. Using these AMIs, new instances can be launched and ready within minutes. Of course, Oracle's development tools -- Oracle Application Express, Oracle JDeveloper, Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse, and Oracle Workshop for WebLogic -- can all be used to build applications for this new environment.

What does this mean? Instead of budgeting for and acquiring hardware, setting it up, installing an operating system and several layers of complex packages, you can simply launch one of these AMIs on EC2 and be up and  running in minutes. This is definitely no-fuss, no-muss application development and deployment.

But wait, there's more...

Oracle Enterprise Linux on EC2 is fully supported by Oracle Unbreakable Support and Amazon Premium Support. Once again, another potential adoption barrier has been lowered. If you've got a problem, Oracle and Amazon are ready to help out.

There's also a secure backup solution for database servers running on EC2 or within the corporate network. The new Oracle Secure Backup Cloud Module allows customers to use Amazon S3 as a backup destination with virtually unlimited capacity, obviating the need to deal with local backup devices. The module encrypts backups and makes use of multiple connections to S3 to maximize throughput.

Need I even talk about how painful and expensive backup used to be? Buying expensive devices and media, keeping the media safe and secure offsite (yet still available if needed for a recovery), dealing with physical space issues, and 100 other things. Now, simply send your bits to Amazon S3 and forget about dealing with all of these other issues.

And if that's not enough, Oracle has also unveiled a new Cloud Management Portal. This is a free, web-based way to manage Oracle software running in the cloud.

These products will be on display at Oracle OpenWorld, which is taking place this week at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. If you are at the conference, please stop by the AWS booth to say hello and to learn more.

I'll be speaking at the Storage Developer Conference in Santa Clara tomorrow (September 23) and will talk about this offering as well. Once again, say hello.

Here are some very useful white papers and other resources:

1. Oracle's Cloud Computing Center, chock full of links, demos, and information.
2. A data sheet, Oracle In The Cloud.
3. A white paper, Oracle Data Backup in the Cloud.
4. Oracle's Cloud Computing FAQ.
5. Dynamic demo showing how to launch the Oracle Database on EC2.

And here are the AMIs:

1. Oracle Database 10g Release 2 Express Edition - 32 Bit
2. Oracle Database 11g Release 1 Enterprise Edition - 32 Bit
3. Oracle Database 11g Release 1 Enterprise Edition - 64 Bit
4. Oracle Database 11g Release 1 Standard Edition/Standard Edition One - 32 Bit

-- Jeff;

Before the end of the year we are planning to release a new service for content delivery. This new (and as yet unnamed) service will provide you with a high performance way to distribute popular, publicly readable content to your customers all over the world, with low latency and high data transfer rates.

The new service was designed to meet the following goals:

• Allow developers and businesses to get started easily, with no dollar or volume commitments. Like our other services, this one will be pay-as-you-go.
• Be simple and easy to use. In fact, a single API call is all that's needed for you to start delivering your content.
• Work seamlessly with Amazon S3, for durable storage of the definitive versions of your content.
• Have a global presence, using edge locations on three continents in order to deliver your content from the most appropriate location.

You will start by storing your content in an Amazon S3 bucket and then marking the content as publicly readable. Next you'll make a single API call to register the bucket. The call will return a domain name that you'll use to refer to your content in your web page or application. When clients request the object via the returned domain name they'll be routed to the nearest edge location, for high performance delivery.

As I noted above, we plan to have this service available before the end of the year. If you'd like to be notified when we launch, you can express your interest here.

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels has also written about Expanding The Cloud.

-- Jeff;

• Benjamin Kudria just wrapped up an internship at the New York Times. He wrote a detailed recap of his experience and noted that he had the opportunity to use Amazon EC2 and S3. As he notes, "had never worked with AWS before, and I was amazed at how easy it was to have my managers agree to offload a pretty significant part of our functionality to Amazon’s servers. I ended up learned a lot about S3 and EC2!"
• rPath will be sponsoring a Cloud Computing Meetup in New York City next week at the Westin in Times Square. The meetup will take place after conclusion of the AWS Start-Up event at the same location.
• SubCloud is an enterprise file system implemented on top of Amazon S3 using FUSE. It has a rich feature list, lots of documentation, and is available for trial use via a time-limited license key. Files are stored directly into S3, which means that they can also be accessed using other S3 tools.
• There's a new release of Bucket Explorer, with support for copying, renaming, and moving files, local vs. remote file comparison, reporting, and much more. Version for Windows, Linux, and the Mac are available.
• Adam Kalsey of Workhabit wrote to tell me that they've used EC2 and EBS to create a fully managed, autoscaling Drupal hosting platform. You can read more in the blog post and you can learn even more about it here. The platform takes care of all of the dirty work. As they say:
  
  
  We took everything we know about scaling Drupal and built it into a turn-key cluster called Elastic2 that's pre-tuned to run Drupal. Simply place your Drupal app on the cluster and you'll be able to run and scale your site. We continually monitor your servers and traffic and automatically add capacity to the cluster as needed.
  You can also watch Adam discuss his new pride and joy.
• Next week, folks from BioTeam, Univa UD and AWS will jointly deliver a live webinar: "Cloud and Clusters: Running UniCluster in Amazon's EC2." The webinar is free but you'd better sign up ahead of time. They'll provide an overview of HPC (High Performance Computing) using EC2, who's doing it and how.
• My friend Adam Rifkin sent me a link to a really interesting blog post by Andy Baio. Andy used the Amazon Mechanical Turk to uncover release dates for a list of hundreds of sound clips used inside of a music mashup. He was very happy with the quality and speed of the work -- "Within an hour, all but 4 answers were submitted.  The median time to finish a request was an impressive 26 seconds." I've also tagged a couple of other good Mechanical Turk success stories on Delicous.
• Damien Tanner wrote to tell me that New Bamboo has released Panda, an open source solution for video uploading, encoding, and streaming. Running entirely within the AWS cloud, Panda makes use of EC2, S3, and SimpleDB. Panda is available as an EC2 AMI (Amazon Machine Image) for easy launching. There's also a complete getting started guide. Once running, Panda is accessed using a REST API.
• Since I just mentioned SimpleDB, I should also note that we have a job opening for a Business Development Manager for SimpleDB. Details are in the job description -- you'll need 5-7 years of relevant experience, a technical degree, and great communication skills. If you click the link and land on a different job, go here and search for "SimpleDB."

Ok, I think that about does it for tonight. If you've built something interesting using an Amazon Web Service, drop me a line and I'll do my best to mention it here.

-- Jeff;

We've just published the first version of the AWS Security white paper. The paper provides answers to a number of questions about certifications, physical security, backups, and issues specific to particular services.

-- Jeff;

Learn more about the contest and enter your great idea today.

-- Jeff;

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- much of what we do at Amazon is driven by real feedback from real customers. If you are using or are thinking about using SimpleDB, please take a look at the spec and let us know (via a post to the forum) what you think.

-- Jeff;