Amazon: 762 Billion Objects Stored on S3 Cloud

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The past year has seen extraordinary growth for Amazon Web Services' S3 cloud storage service. (Image: Amazon Web Services)

Amazon doesn't release financial data about its cloud computing operations, but it periodically shares some numbers about the scale of its operations. How fast is Amazon Web Services growing? The number of objects stored on the company's S3 cloud storage service tripled in the 12-month period between the final quarters of 2010 and 2011. S3 now stores an amazing 762 billion objects, according to AWS cloud evangelist Jeff Barr.

By any measure, that's extraordinary growth. That total works out to 108 objects for each of the earth's 7 billion citizens. And how many operations that have been operating as long as S3 have 290 percent annual growth?

It also reinforces Amazon's leadership position in the cloud computing sector. This isn't a new market anymore. Cloud services is an extremely competitive field. To see this kind of growth from the market leader is impressive.

Does huge growth in objects stored translate into business and revenue growth? Very likely it does, but Amazon has yet to disclose financials for AWS.