Amazon Web Services, which had the online storage market largely to itself back in 2006 and 2007 but is seeing a lot of new competitors, is spiffing up the data transfer apparatus for its Simple Storage Service.
Amazon.com on June 10 launched AWS Import/Export for S3 to accelerate data transfers and migrations.
AWS Import/Export speeds up the process of moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS by using portable storage devices for transport, the company said. For large data sets, AWS Import/Export is designed to be significantly faster than [standard] Internet transfer and more cost-effective than upgrading a network infrastructure, the company said.
As with all AWS services, users pay only for the resources they use. Pricing includes fees for each storage device used and for the number of hours it takes to load the data (data-loading-hours), Amazon said.
U.S. pricing for AWS Import/Export is as follows: For device handling, $80 per storage device handled; for data loading, $2.49 per data-loading-hour (partial data-loading-hours being billed as full hours); and for data wiping, $2.49 per data-wiping-hour (partial data-wiping-hours being billed as full hours).
AWS also announced new support for Amazon S3 in the AWS Management Console. The AWS Management Console provides management of compute, storage and other AWS cloud resources through a point-and-click, Web-based interface.
S3 users can now create buckets, upload objects and set access controls, all from a browser and without writing code, Amazon said. For more information, go here.