When we finally do get around to developing informatics projects that are targettted at aging, something like Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) might be of use. After reading through some of their tech pubs and forums it still sounds like they have quite a few kinks to pound out (the whole process seems horribly cumbersome for even engineers) but then again, we've got some work still on our plate to come up with some viable models and projects that we can deploy.
Q: What can developers now do that they could not before?
Until now, small developers did not have the capital to acquire massive compute resources and insure they had the capacity they needed to handle unexpected spikes in load. Amazon EC2 enables any developer to leverage Amazon's own benefits of massive scale with no up-front investment or performance compromises. Developers are now free to innovate knowing that no matter how successful their businesses become, it will be inexpensive and simple to ensure they have the compute capacity they need to meet their business requirements.
The "Elastic" nature of the service allows developers to instantly scale to meet spikes in traffic or demand. When computing requirements unexpectedly change (up or down), Amazon EC2 can instantly respond, meaning that developers have the ability to control how many resources are in use at any given point in time. In contrast, traditional hosting services generally provide a fixed number of resources for a fixed amount of time, meaning that users have a limited ability to easily respond when their usage is rapidly changing, unpredictable, or is known to experience large peaks at various intervals.
Edited by maestro949, 24 March 2007 - 07:01 AM.
