Amazon ElastiCache

On Aug. 22, AWS announced the public beta launch of Amazon ElastiCache, a new Web service that makes it easy to deploy, operate and scale an in-memory cache in the cloud. The service improves the performance of Web applications by allowing you to retrieve information from a fast, managed, in-memory caching system, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. Amazon ElastiCache is protocol-compliant with Memcached, a widely adopted memory object caching system, so that code, applications and tools that you use today with your existing Memcached environments will work seamlessly with the service.

Amazon’s AWS Elastic Beanstalk provides an easier way for developers to quickly deploy and manage applications in the AWS cloud. Easy to begin and impossible to outgrow, developers simply upload their application, and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling and application health monitoring. At the same time, Elastic Beanstalk developers retain full control over the AWS resources powering their application and can access the underlying resources at any time.

Amazon Elastic MapReduce is a Web service that enables businesses, researchers, data analysts and developers to easily and cost effectively process vast amounts of data. It uses a hosted Hadoop framework running on the Web-scale infrastructure of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Using Amazon Elastic MapReduce, you can instantly provision as much or as little capacity as you like to perform data-intensive tasks for applications, such as Web indexing, data mining, log file analysis, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation and bioinformatics research.

The AWS Toolkit for Eclipse is a plug-in for the Eclipse Java IDE that makes it easier for developers to develop, deploy and debug Java applications using Amazon Web Services. With the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse, developers are able to get started faster and be more productive when building AWS applications. The AWS Toolkit for Eclipse 2.0 features AWS Explorer, multiple AWS account support and AWS Elastic Beanstalk debugging.

AWS CloudFormation is a new service that gives developers and businesses an easy way to create a collection of AWS resources and provision them in an orderly and predictable fashion. Developers simply describe the AWS resources they need to run their application in a simple text file called a template, and AWS CloudFormation takes care of provisioning those resources in the right sequence and taking into account any dependencies between resources. Once provisioned, users can see all the AWS resources they need to run their application in a single view.

Amazon Web Services has launched the official AWS SDK for Ruby, enabling developers to get started building scalable Ruby Web applications in minutes. The SDK features AWS Ruby Gem, Rails integration and code samples.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) now enables identity federation, or the ability for you to use your existing corporate identities, to grant secure and direct access to AWS resources without creating a new AWS identity for those users. This capability enables you to programmatically request security credentials, with configurable expiration and permissions, which then grants your corporate identities access to AWS APIs and resources controlled by your business.

AWS has two mobile SDKs: AWS SDK for Google Android and AWS SDK for Apple iOS. The mobile SDKs make it easier for software developers to call an AWS Web service API directly from a mobile application. Previously, developers either wrote their own libraries to handle the HTTP connection, request retries and error handling, or build additional infrastructure to proxy the API requests through a server fleet. With the mobile SDKs, developers can write software that uses AWS infrastructure in their mobile applications, including storage, database and messaging.

AWS Direct Connect is a service that allows enterprises to establish a dedicated network connection from their data center, office or co-location environment to AWS. AWS Direct Connect allows you to bypass the public Internet when connecting to AWS, which in many cases can reduce your network costs, improve bandwidth throughput and provide a more consistent network experience.

The AWS SDK for Java makes it even easier for developers to build Java applications that tap into the AWS cloud. Using the SDK, developers can build solutions for Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon SimpleDB and more. With the AWS SDK for Java, developers get started in minutes with a single, downloadable package that includes the AWS Java library, code samples and documentation. Eclipse Java IDE users can get started with the SDK by easily using the AWS Toolkit for Eclipse.

AWS Management Console is a Web-based, point-and-click, graphical user interface that makes it easier to access and manage AWS Infrastructure Web Services. The console provides an online interface for Amazon EC2 and other AWS services. The console presents an intuitive, global picture of an organization’s cloud-computing environment so that they can control their AWS resources without programming directly to an API.

The AWS SDK for .NET makes it easier for Windows developers to build .NET applications that tap into the AWS cloud. Using the SDK, developers can build solutions for AWS infrastructure services, including Amazon S3, Amazon EC2 and Amazon SimpleDB. With the AWS SDK for .NET, developers get started in minutes with a single, downloadable package, complete with Visual Studio project templates, the AWS .NET library, C# code samples and documentation.

Amazon Relational Database Service is a Web service that makes it easy to set up, operate and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity, while managing database administration tasks, freeing users up to focus on their applications and business. Amazon RDS gives users access to the full capabilities of a familiar MySQL database. This means the code, applications and tools users already employ today with their existing MySQL databases work seamlessly with Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS supports Oracle and MySQL databases.

Amazon Web Services has also launched the official AWS SDK for PHP, enabling developers to get started building scalable PHP Web applications in minutes. The AWS SDK for PHP provides a library, code samples and documentation for developers to build PHP applications that tap into the AWS cloud, including Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon SimpleDB and more.

Amazon SimpleDB is a highly available, flexible and scalable non-relational data store that offloads the work of database administration. Developers simply store and query data items through Web services requests, and Amazon SimpleDB does the rest.