Alan Williamson's Blog

Amazon announced today they are changing the price for their S3 data storage service.

In face of current credit crunch, they are bucking the trend and making their services even cheaper, particuraly for the seriously high volume users. If you are pushing a lot traffic through Amazon S3 then you will notice a small decrease in your monthly bill come the 1st of November.

Amazon are not the only service provider offering large data farms. Another great service that we've been using of late is Nirvanix. Granted, they are not as cheap as Amazon, but they do offer a lot more flexibility. I will be writing up a full comparison report on the two very soon. So stay tuned.

In the meantime, as a very rough guide as to how much these guys cost to use for your own requirements, we've released a simple online cloud storage comparison calculator so you can easily see the differences. We'll be adding more providers to it soon.

But whoever you choose, a word of caution if you will.

Always make sure you have a back up of your data sitting in the cloud. Always work on the assumption that one day even Amazon will disappear and leave you data-less. A good administrator will not have all their all eggs in one basket, no matter how cheap that basket is!

Cloud Computing Bootcamp Announced
Being held for the first time at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA, on November 19, 2008, the Cloud Computing Bootcamp will show you how to take advantage of the cloud.

Cloud computing is an opportunity for businesses to implement low-cost, low-power and high-efficiency systems to deliver scalable infrastructure. But moving to a cloud infrastructure is not necessarily as nice and clean as the providers would want you to think. With cloud infrastructures problems don't magically go away; they just shift: you don't have scalability or storage problems any more, but you need to constantly monitor the cloud and your application in it.

Led by Alan Williamson, the Cloud Computing Bootcamp will illustrate all the major players and provide a hands-on program with configuration samples, live demos and working setups you can further adapt and play with.

Alan Williamson, founder of Blog-City.com, is a Sun Java Champion and creator of OpenBlueDragon (an open source Java CFML runtime engine). He is currently engaged with a number of startups providing technology and expertise. He has worked with SpikeSource for nearly three years as technical evangelist and architect in SpikeLabs. He has assisted VCs in preparing technical overview and due diligence, was editor-in-chief of Java Developer's Journal, founding editor of LinuxWorld Magazine, and has more than 16 years of experience in the world of software development.

Click Here to Register Now and Save!

Join Alan Williamson and your fellow attendees at the Cloud Computing Bootcamp on November 19, 2008, from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. We'll see you in San Jose, California!

Cloud Computing Bootcamp is timed to coincide with SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Expo (19-21 November, 2008), also being held at The Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, CA.