Amazon Web Services - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• Open source innovation is now all about vendor on-ramps

  AWS, Microsoft, and Google are all racing to figure out how to turn their innovations into open source on-ramps to their proprietary services

• The critics are wrong about AWS’s open source approach

  Open source contributions aren’t selfless charity but a virtuous intersection of corporate, user, and community benefit. Which is how AWS approaches open source

• Black Hat: 9 free security tools for defense & attacking

  When Black Hat convenes next week in Las Vegas, it will be a rich environment for gathering tools that can be used to tighten security but also - in the wrong hands - to carry out exploits.

• Why Dropbox dropped Amazon's Cloud

  Dropbox has culminated a multi-year project to build a customised infrastructure environment that company officials say is finely tuned to their specific needs, allowing them to reap savings compared with how they used Amazon Web Services' cloud. Should you get out of the cloud too?

• Standards are coming for containers

  A list of leading cloud, storage and virtualization companies are backing a new effort named the Open Container Project, which aims to create a set of standards for the fast-growing technology.

• How to set up Amazon Web Services for your small business

  Cloud computing technology has matured significantly over the years, and now offers a compelling list of advantages over on-site deployments, especially for small businesses and start-ups that may not have the capital to purchase servers and other hardware appliances.

• In case you aren't suitably impressed by the scale of Amazon Web Services

  Although the video has been up for awhile, if you haven't had the chance to watch Amazon Web Service's VP & Distinguished Engineer James Hamilton spell out AWS facts at the re:Invent conference last November, do yourself a favor and pull up a chair. Fascinating stuff that gives you some insight into the rapidly evolving world of cloud computing.

• Docker Inc., leave Docker tools alone

  Several new Docker tools are out there: Docker Machine, Docker Swarm, and Docker Compose. They come from Docker Inc. itself, which has has the advantage of being designed by the same folks who developed the Docker container.

• An inside look into VMware's new hybrid Cloud strategy

  During the past week VMware has been making power play moves in the Cloud computing market to position its offering as the premier enterprise hybrid Cloud computing platform. As it does so, however, analysts question how well the grand plan VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger has put together stacks up with heavyweights of the cloud computing market, most specifically Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

• Cloud upstarts: Too cheap to trust?

  Hosting provider Atlantic.net launched a $0.99 per month cloud server this fall, which is significantly less expensive than the $0.013 per hour starting price for market-leader Amazon Web Services' on-demand Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) virtual machines.

• Gartner's Cloud showdown: Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft Azure

  Gartner IaaS research director, Kyle Hilgendorf, says one of the most common questions he gets from enterprise customers looking to go to the Cloud is: AWS or Azure?

• Cloud giants do battle backed by distinctly different partner networks

  When evaluating the marketplaces of the big three public IaaS cloud providers - Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft - AWS stands out in terms of the maturity of its platform for partners to offer products and services on top of its cloud. But Microsoft, too, has a formidable partner program that could rival Amazon's in the future, analysts predict.

• Amazon Web Services Sharpens Focus on Public Sector

  Hardly content to rest on its laurels, Amazon is adding clients in the government, education and nonprofit sectors, vying for public-sector contracts and looking to build its apps marketplace into a research and development hub.

• How to Use OpenStack in Your Small Business

  The OpenStack cloud platform works well for companies that aim to deploy software or infrastructure as a service but remain wary of doing so using public cloud services. Here's how to find out if OpenStack is right for your business.

• CTO Says Cloud Services Earn Vote of International Election Monitoring Group

  The National Democratic Institute has workers in 65 countries -- not all of them friendly. To support its growing global mission, and to improve efficiency without buying more hardware, the nonpartisan nonprofit has spent the last four years migrating to the cloud.