Amazon Web Services LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), today launched the Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), a new persistent storage feature for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Amazon EC2 is an infrastructure service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. With Amazon EBS, storage volumes can be programmatically created, attached to Amazon EC2 instances, and if even more durability is desired, can be backed with a snapshot to the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). To get started using Amazon EC2 and Amazon EBS today, visit http://aws.amazon.com/ec2.

Prior to Amazon EBS, storage within an Amazon EC2 instance was tied to the instance itself so that when the instance was terminated, the data within the instance was lost. Now with Amazon EBS, users can choose to allocate storage volumes that persist reliably and independently from Amazon EC2 instances. Additionally, for even more durable backups and an easy way to create new volumes, Amazon EBS provides the ability to create point-in-time, consistent snapshots of volumes that are then stored to Amazon S3.

"For over two years, we've focused on delivering a cost-effective, web scale infrastructure to developers, giving them complete flexibility in the kinds of solutions they deliver," said Peter De Santis, General Manager of Amazon EC2. "Persistent block storage has been among the top requests of developers using Amazon EC2, and we're excited to deliver Amazon Elastic Block Storage designed specifically for our cloud-based, elastic computing environment."

Amazon EBS is well suited for databases, as well as many other applications that require running a file system or access to raw block-level storage. As Amazon EC2 instances are started and stopped, the information saved in your database or application is preserved in much the same way it is with traditional physical servers.

"First, Amazon EC2 rewrote the rules of cloud computing, offering companies an intuitive and reliable means for accessing unlimited computing power. With Amazon EBS, Amazon has turned the industry on its head again, providing unlimited storage potential," said Paul Fisher, Manager of Technology for Wired.com/CondeNet. "At Wired.com, we're leveraging Amazon EC2 to power our embeddable widgets and Wired Product Reviews. Using EC2, we've been able to build and deploy applications more quickly and reliably. EBS is the missing link -- the last piece in the cloud computing puzzle -- that enables start-ups and large corporations alike to conjure the resources they need to build any application possible. Persistence is key to most applications, and EBS provides more flexibility in this area than anything previously available. We are developing a platform in the semantic web space with requirements for unlimited, fast, reliable persistence. EC2 and EBS not only make this application feasible, they make it cost-effective and scalable."

"ShareThis has received tremendous benefits from working with Amazon Web Services for our leading sharing platform," said Manu Murkerji, Senior Software Developer for ShareThis, a service providing a one click way to instantly post, tag and send content via email, instant messaging and text messaging. "Amazon EBS has enabled us to create large-scale, enterprise-level databases that allow us to run and maintain various, disparate applications. EC2 and EBS together provide a cost-effective, flexible system that allows us to crunch data faster than we had been previously able -- giving us a much needed advantage for our business."

"Sun's MySQL is the one of the most popular databases on Amazon EC2. With the introduction of EBS, MySQL users will be able to increase the durability and portability of their database applications deployed in the cloud," said Juan Carlos Soto, VP of Global Market Development at Sun Microsystems. "With Sun also recently making the OpenSolaris platform available on EC2, Web companies can now access the unique features of the ZFS file system--such as Rollback and 128-bit checksum capabilities--to enable the highest level of data integrity on EC2."

"With the release of Amazon Elastic Block Store, the ability to deploy any application, anywhere, including the cloud, is a reality. By providing a persistent and consistent compute environment, both on-premise and in the cloud, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss EAP on Amazon EC2 will help achieve the vision of the virtual datacenter," said Scott Crenshaw, Vice President of Platform Business Unit, Red Hat. "Now with the highly anticipated release of Amazon EBS, our enterprise EC2 customers have the ability to persist virtual machine configuration and application data across instantiations and manage their cloud solutions in as consistent a manner as their on-premise deployments."

"Amazon EBS adds significant value to the product development effort at Elastra. We're able to provide our customers with seamless, automated database recovery, and an enhanced persistent data solution with faster throughput, all without their needing to manage cumbersome scripting," said Nate Smith, Vice President of Product Management for Elastra. "These are the types of capabilities our customers, especially the ISVs and enterprises, are looking for. Amazon EBS functionality allows our team to focus on delivering more advanced capabilities for our offering where scaling relational databases is essential. The resulting benefit to our customers is that they save time and can in turn devote their resources to business-differentiating activities, which drive innovation and new revenue streams."

Businesses in a variety of industries are taking advantage of the instant scalability that Amazon Web Services provides. Amazon EC2 enables use cases such as web hosting, graphics rendering, web crawling, genomics analysis, large parallelized batch processing, financial modeling, and much more. Now, Amazon Elastic Block Store affords even more opportunities and use cases for developers looking to cost-effectively deploy scalable solutions including relational databases, distributed file systems and Hadoop processing clusters. Over 400,000 developers have registered to use Amazon Web Services. Sign up to use Amazon EC2 on the Amazon Web Services website at http://aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon EC2

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Amazon EC2's simple web service interface allows businesses to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon's proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.

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. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS), and Amazon Mechanical Turk.

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, and the Joyo Amazon websites at www.joyo.cn and www.amazon.cn.

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, significant amount of indebtedness, 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 Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, and subsequent filings.

SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc.

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