- Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ:AMZN) has expanded its cloud storage service lineup by launching Elastic File System, a solution that lets multiple cloud computing (EC2) virtual machines use a common file system that automatically scales as more storage is needed, and can be managed with 3rd-party tools.
- Amazon argues the solution allows entire file systems to be handled the way that individual storage objects have been through its popular S3 object storage service. It sees "content repositories, development environments, web server farms, home directories, and Big Data applications" (all of which can contain a lot of files) as potential use cases.
- Also launching: Amazon Machine Learning, a service that lets developers create predictive models leveraging large amounts of data. The service aims to put machine learning tools (an area of interest for both Web giants and many startups) within the reach of developers lacking expertise in the field. It follows the launch of Kinesis, a service that provides real-time processing of huge data streams, and Redshift, a data warehousing service.
- In addition, two previously-announced services - Lambda, which automatically runs code in response to events, and the EC2 Container Service, a management service for Docker containers (lighweight virtual machines, increasingly popular), are now generally available.
- Amazon, widely seen as having a feature set lead over cloud infrastructure rivals, had 2014 "Other" revenue (AWS-dominated) of $5.6B (+42% Y/Y). AWS revenue will be broken out by itself starting with Amazon's Q1 report.
- Prior AWS service launches: Aurora (an enterprise-class database), Zocalo (a cloud storage/file-sharing platform for corporate users), WorkMail (a cloud corporate e-mail platform)