SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today introduced Amazon Simple Workflow Service (Amazon SWF), a workflow service for building scalable, resilient applications. Whether automating business processes for finance or insurance applications, building sophisticated data analytics applications, or managing cloud infrastructure services, Amazon SWF reliably coordinates all of the processing steps within an application. To get started using Amazon SWF, visit: www.aws.amazon.com/swf.
With traditional development approaches, it is both time-consuming and costly to build and track processing steps that run at different processing times and have different durations, while ensuring they are executed reliably and without duplication. When the execution of applications is distributed across multiple systems, the coordination of processing steps across those systems presents an added challenge. Using Amazon SWF, developers can structure the various processing steps in an application as “tasks” that drive work in distributed applications, and Amazon SWF coordinates these tasks in a reliable and scalable manner. Amazon SWF manages task execution dependencies, scheduling, and concurrency based on a developer’s application logic. The service stores tasks, reliably dispatches them to application components, tracks their progress, and keeps their latest state.
“With Amazon SWF, developers can now easily coordinate distributed application components across on-premises and cloud environments using their choice of programming languages,” said Reto Kramer, General Manager, Application Connection Services, AWS. “By relying on Amazon SWF to handle the coordination of distributed task execution, developers can now focus on building the differentiating aspects of their applications and leave the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building and managing workflow engines to AWS.”
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) uses Amazon SWF as part of several space and earth science missions including the Mars Exploration Rover. Amazon Simple Workflow Service gives JPL the ability to leverage resources inside and outside of its environment enabling their applications to dynamically scale and run in a truly distributed manner. NASA JPL has integrated Amazon SWF into their Cloud Oriented Architecture and its reference implementation, Polyphony. Amazon SWF is now an integral part of the software engineer’s toolbox at JPL.
Sage Bionetworks leverages Amazon SWF in its computation platform for processing molecular and clinical datasets. “With Amazon SWF managing the state of several data analytics pipelines, the concerns of workflow execution and the coordination of the distributed systems performing the work of the pipeline, are technical issues we just don’t need to worry about,” said Dr. Michael Kellen, Director of Technology and Software Development at Sage Bionetworks. Adds Brig Mecham, Post-doctoral researcher and one of the scientists using Amazon SWF, “Amazon SWF has enabled us to build a system that gets done in days what used to take months. Of all the benefits we’ve obtained, the most important is that the service allows us to start using these data for their true purpose – identifying cures for human diseases.”
According to Thorsten von Eicken, CTO of RightScale, “Using Amazon SWF, we are able to reduce the time to market for our higher level infrastructure automation features. We are able to focus on our value-add without having to worry about the challenges that are associated with implementing a distributed workflow engine. In the end we are able to ship new features faster and don't have to concern ourselves with maintaining that engine.”
More details about the features in Amazon SWF and the benefits of building applications using Amazon SWF can be found by visiting www.aws.amazon.com/swf. The service is currently available in the US East (Virginia) Region and will be available in other AWS Regions in the coming months.
About Amazon Web Services
Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began exposing key infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services -- now widely known as cloud computing. The ultimate benefit of cloud computing, and AWS, is the ability to leverage a new business model and turn capital infrastructure expenses into variable costs. Businesses no longer need to plan and procure servers and other IT resources weeks or months in advance. Using AWS, businesses can take advantage of Amazon's expertise and economies of scale to access resources when their business needs them, delivering results faster and at a lower cost. Today, Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of enterprise, government and startup customers businesses in 190 countries around the world. AWS offers over 21 different services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). AWS services are available to customers from data center locations in the U.S., Brazil, Europe, Japan and Singapore.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. The new latest generation Kindle is the lightest, most compact Kindle ever and features the same 6-inch, most advanced electronic ink display that reads like real paper even in bright sunlight. Kindle Touch is a new addition to the Kindle family with an easy-to-use touch screen that makes it easier than ever to turn pages, search, shop, and take notes – still with all the benefits of the most advanced electronic ink display. Kindle Touch 3G is the top of the line e-reader and offers the same new design and features of Kindle Touch, with the unparalleled added convenience of free 3G. Kindle Fire is the Kindle for movies, TV shows, music, books, magazines, apps, games and web browsing with all the content, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, Whispersync, Amazon Silk (Amazon’s new revolutionary cloud-accelerated web browser), vibrant color touch screen, and powerful dual-core processor.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.it, and www.amazon.es. As used herein, “Amazon.com,” “we,” “our” and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to competition, management of growth, new products, services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.