4 ms·

This is a great signal to Amazon AWS customers that EC2 is endorsed for large enterprise use. I'm not saying that it is ready or that it's actually endorsed.

This is a great signal to Amazon AWS customers that EC2 is endorsed for large enterprise use. I'm not saying that it is ready or that it's actually endorsed. However, that's what Blue shops will think. I wonder if existing Websphere/DB2 users will see value in switching over given that they've already paid for their licenses. Will IBM cut a three-way deal with Amazon to reduce per-hour costs? It's not likely that organizations considering EC2 for new development will choose IBM on EC2 -- forward thinking folk aren't too keen on $20K/server licenses when the Open Source stuff is better. So, I'm left to conclude that Amazon is the winner here. They get credibility with organizations that value what Big Blue says, and those organizations might choose to deploy non-Blue systems on EC2.

nradov 18y ago
The entry-level editions of DB2 and WebSphere Application Server are both free. They aren't open source, but you certainly don't have to pay $20K. DB2 has far superior XML support than any open source database, so forward thinking developers can get a lot of value there for certain applications. http://www-01.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/community/ http://www-01.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/community/ http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/ http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/db2/express/
- ShabbyDoo 18y ago
  I agree on the merits of DB2 -- I've used it before, and it seems pretty nice. The free versions are great until you want to scale vertically: * Processor: 2 cores * Memory: 2 GB That's the limits unless you pay for support. It goes up from there.