Amazon’s Jeff Barr links to several posts about buiding scalable web services on S3 (web storage) and EC2 (on-demand server instances).

I have not had time to look into the detail of these new initiatives, but the concept is compelling. This is where Amazon’s programmatic approach pays off in a big way. Let me summarise:

1. You have some web application or service. Anything you like. Football results; online store; share dealing; news service; video streaming; you name it.

2. Demand of course fluctuates. When your server gets busy, the application automatically fires up new server instances and performance does not suffer. When demand tails off, the application automatically shuts down server instances, saving you money and making those resources available to other EC2 users.

3. Storage is not an issue; S3 has unlimited expandibility.

This approach makes huge sense. Smart programming replaces brute force hardware investment. I like it a lot.