Amazon web services launches amazon elasticache – a managed caching
service in the cloud
Seattle--(business wire)--amazon web services llc, an amazon.com company (nasdaq:amzn), today introduced amazon elasticache, a new web service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory cache for web applications running in the aws cloud. the new service improves the performance of web applications by enabling customers to retrieve information from a fast, managed, in-memory caching system in the cloud, instead of relying on slower disk-based databases. amazon elasticache is compliant with memcached, a widely adopted memory object caching system, so code, applications, and tools that developers use today with their existing memcached environments work seamlessly with the service, easing the migration process. the service also simplifies and offloads the management, monitoring and operation of in-memory cache environments, enabling businesses to focus their engineering resources on the differentiating parts of their applications. amazon elasticache is ideal for read-heavy workloads such as social networking, gaming and media sharing sites or compute intensive workloads such as recommendation engines. to learn more about amazon elasticache and to get started visit, www.aws.amazon.com/elasticache. “caching is a core part of so many web applications today, but running your own caching infrastructure is time-consuming and rarely adds differentiated value for your business,” said raju gulabani, vice president of database services, amazon web services. “until today, businesses have had little choice but to shoulder this responsibility themselves -- and indeed, many aws customers have built and managed caching solutions on top of aws for some time. amazon elasticache answers one of the most highly requested functionalities of aws customers by providing a managed, flexible and resilient caching service in the cloud.” using amazon elasticache, customers can add an in-memory cache to their application architecture in a matter of minutes. with a few clicks of the aws management console, users can launch a cache cluster consisting of a collection of cache nodes, each running memcached software. customers can scale the amount of memory associated with a cache cluster in minutes by adding or deleting cache nodes to meet the demands of changing workloads. in addition, amazon elasticache automatically detects and replaces failed cache nodes, providing a resilient system that mitigates the risk of overloaded databases, which slow website and application load times. through integration with amazon cloudwatch, amazon elasticache provides visibility into key performance metrics associated with cache nodes. “amazon elasticache will make it very easy for pbs to deploy and manage our distributed memcached environment. we can have multi-node cache environments configured, up and running in minutes,” said jon brendsel, vice president of product development at pbs. “amazon elasticache also takes care of ongoing administrative functions including failure recovery and patching, allowing us to focus more on delivering great web experiences to our viewers.” ticketleap, a self-service online ticketing and event marketing platform, has benefited from the scalability of aws. “we sell tickets for a number of extremely popular events across the world, so our application demands get very spiky. amazon elasticache provides us the ability to deploy and scale out distributed cache clusters in minutes,” said keith fitzgerald, vice president of engineering at ticketleap. “moving forward, we intend to use the service to rapidly increase or decrease our cache footprint to meet our application demand. the detailed monitoring capabilities will help us quickly diagnose and fix throughput or latency issues.” “tapjoy’s mobile app network spans over 9,000 applications and 250 million global consumers on smartphones and tablet devices. we cache real-time statistics and metadata associated with mobile applications for faster access. amazon elasticache has significantly reduced our exposure to cache node failures by continuously monitoring the health of our cache cluster and automatically replacing failed nodes,” said ryan johns, vice president of technology at tapjoy. “we are very thrilled about the management capabilities of amazon elasticache and are using it in production to power some of our mission-critical and very high throughput applications.” amazon elasticache, in conjunction with application servers in amazon elastic compute cloud (amazon ec2) and database servers in amazon relational database service (amazon rds), provides customers with an integrated platform to run fully managed application stacks in the cloud. like all aws services, amazon elasticache is available on demand and users pay only for the resources used. pricing for amazon elasticache is based on the size of the cache nodes used and begins as low as $0.095 per hour. the service is currently available in the us east (virginia) region, and will be available in other aws regions in the coming months. enterprises and developers can get started with amazon elasticache today and deploy a cache environment in minutes by visiting www.aws.amazon.com/elasticache. about amazon.com amazon.com, inc. (nasdaq:amzn), a fortune 500 company based in seattle, opened on the world wide web in july 1995 and today offers earth’s biggest selection. amazon.com, inc. seeks to be earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as books; movies, music & games; digital downloads; electronics & computers; home & garden; toys, kids & baby; grocery; apparel, shoes & jewelry; health & beauty; sports & outdoors; and tools, auto & industrial. amazon web services provides amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. kindle, kindle 3g, kindle with special offers and kindle dx are the revolutionary portable readers that wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. kindle 3g and kindle dx utilize the same 3g wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a wi-fi hotspot. kindle is the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items sold on amazon. amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, and www.amazon.it. as used herein, “amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include amazon.com, inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise. forward-looking statements this announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of section 27a of the securities act of 1933 and section 21e of the securities exchange act of 1934. actual results may differ significantly from management’s expectations. these forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. more information about factors that potentially could affect amazon.com’s financial results is included in amazon.com’s filings with the securities and exchange commission, including its most recent annual report on form 10-k and subsequent filings.
