December 17, 2007 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Amazon.com Inc. (http://www.amazon.com) has launched a web-based database service, it was announced recently. The service, currently offered on a limited-release basis, is designed to compliment S3, the company’s online storage service, and EC2, its application hosting service. Those wishing to participate in Amazon.com’s beta service must either already have an account with the company or register for one.
Named SimpleDB, the company is targeting application developers who might benefit from a database that can run real-time queries, but is not a full relational database. The database will, according to the company, index data and monitor its own performance, fine-tuning itself for effective performance. This, the company suggests, will allow developers to avoid the costs of database administrators.
Amazon.com is best known as one of the Internet’s founding etailers, but has recently moved into the area of cloud-based computing, competing with players like Microsoft and IBM The popularity of its services is driven by cost-effective pricing - 1GB of data can be stored on S3 for only 15 cents per month. SimpleDB is expected to cost US$1.50 per gigabyte per month, with database requests cost 14 cents per machine of processing time. Outward data transfers will start at 18 cents per gigabyte for the first 10TB.
