Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Amazon Boots Up Web Services Start-Up Challenge

Amazon Web Services, the web services arm of Amazon.com, said this morning that today is the first day of its fourth annual "Start-Up Challenge", the firm's contest to recognize applications built on its AWS cloud computing platform. According to Amazon, it will award $2,500 in AWS credits to regional semi-finalists, $10,000 in AWS credits to global finalists, and $50,000 in cash plus $50,000 in AWS credits to the grand price winner. The competition pits various application developers using Amazon's AWS for their computing infrastructure. This is the first year that the competition has included regional award winners, split between the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe. Amazon said that the deadline for this year's entries are October 31st. Amazon said eligible contestants must have no more than $10M in outside funding, and have generated no more than $10M in annual revenue.