Simple Storage Service for Developers by Amazon

CGIDir
Friday, March 17, 2006; 03:19 AM

Online retailer Amazon announced the start of its new Amazon S3 service.  It offers decentralized web storage in order to avoid bottlenecks and critical points of failure. The new service is designed to make web-scale computing easier for software developers by maximizing the benefits of scale.

According to Amazon’s website, “Amazon S3 provides a simple web services interface [which] gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network…”

The service is intentionally designed with a minimal set of features.  This should allow the system to run robustly and securely.  Users can Write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes of data each. Authentication mechanisms are provided to ensure that data is kept secure from unauthorized access. Objects can be made private or public, and rights can be granted to specific users.  The service uses standard protocols and interfaces, and is flexible enough to allow future additions.

The pricing scheme does not include start-up cost. Users pay $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used, and $0.20 per GB of data transferred.