Green ICT Blog

Author Graeme Philipson
Sydney, 1 September 2009

Amazon Web Services (AWS - part of amazon.com) was set up in 2006 to provide companies with "an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud" (is that where angels sit?). What we're actually talking about here is an on-demand computing resources provide through Amazon.com’s global infrastructure.

Anyway, the company revealed an interesting development on Wednesday (via a blog post) with the launch of the Amazon VPC. The service enables enterprises to connect their existing infrastructure to AWS resources via a Virtual Private Network and also extend existing in-house capabilities, such as security services, firewalls and intrusion detection systems, to include the AWS resources.

Amazon does not require any long-term contracts, minimum spend or up-front investments to use the service and customers pay-as-they-go only for the resources they use.

So what, I hear you ask, has this got to do with green IT?

Well if it works (and its still only in beta, with limited availability) it can add significant flexibility to companies in managing infrastructure resources, for example; 

• The service can bridge the gap between needing more infrastructure and having a new, under-used datacentre, with all the energy use that entails.
• It can accommodate business or seasonal peaks and troughs, avoiding unnecessary investment in resources that are rarely used.
• Large data centres, such as those run by Amazon, are typically significantly more energy efficient (although I have no specific info on Amazon's achievements in that respect).

Amazon is not the only company offering online infrastructure resources, but this announcement adds to the flexibility and potential uptake. It's not going to save the world, but its a potential advance in green IT.

 Graeme Philipson © Connection Research