Amazon EC2 Adding 50,000 Instances A Day

Amazon doesn't release a lot of detail about the growth and profitability of its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing operation. But a recent analysis found that Amazon EC2 launched more than 50,000 new instances in a 24-hour period in just one region. Cloud technologist Guy Rosen analyzed activity on EC2 using Amazon resource IDs, and estimates that the service has launched 8.4 million instances since its debut.

Amazon EC2 allows customers to rent computer resources in Amazon data centers to run applications. EC2 allows scalable deployment of applications by providing a web services interface through which customers can request Virtual Machines (server instances) on which they can load any software of their choice.

The new analysis follows up on previous research by Rosen on the number of web sites hosted on EC2  and other leading cloud providers. He noted that the data is a one-day snapshot, and could be skewed by a number of factors, but says the numbers are "impressive, to say the least."