Who's got the most cloud?

Amazon has a bunch of cloud-computing initiatives. In case you don't know what "cloud computing" is, you're not alone. It's not so easy to describe because the definition is developing and changing with each passing day and the new initiatives it brings.

Basically, computing in the cloud means using the services of remote data centers -- like the very ones that Amazon and Google have built their empires upon -- for such tasks as storage, Web page delivery, database maintenance and querying, or just about anything you need a server-grade computer for. Except that a) you don't have to maintain and power the server(s) yourself, b) you can scale up or down without adding or removing/idling hardware and c) you pay for what you use (and don't pay for what you don't).

That was a long explanation, but I'm here today to introduce the Amazon Simple Storage Service, or Amazon S3.

Here's what it'll cost you to work with your data on the Amazon S3:

Storage
$0.15 per GB-Month of storage used

Data Transfer
$0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
$0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
$0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
$0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Requests
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests

And here are the words I like: "there is no minimum fee." So use it a little, pay a little, use it a lot, pay more. And while some corporations might be reticent about trusting their data to an offsite company, I bet many more will be happy to find somebody more qualified, with better equipment and practices, than Joe in IT.

Anyhow ... on the face of it, Amazon S3 seems pretty techy/geeky. Here's where the startups come in. There are more than a few companies coming up with stand-alone software or compatible Web-based applications designed to let you and me -- the average computer user -- tap the Amazon S3 cloud to back up our own data.

I normally say that every computer needs not one, but two backup drives. You need a backup for the backup, with one of those drives being kept in a separate location so you don't get robbed/burned/quaked/struck by lightning and lose the main drive and the backup and have nothing.

But with backup in the cloud, I still thing you should keep one backup around, although you definitely don't need a second backup drive, since you have your backup in the cloud. You could even rely on the cloud alone. I think it's that far along, but it's still nice to have a second backup -- maybe on a second cloud, should one offer this same service.

Actually, AOL -- remember them? -- has had a service called Xdrive for quite awhile. You get 5 GB of storage free, and 50 GB for $9.95 per month or $99.50 per year. What if you need/want 500 GB? I have no idea. I used the service a bit, maybe a year ago, and I found it mind-numbingly slow. Also, I wasn't crazy about installing the automatic-backup app for Windows, especially since there was no software for Mac or Linux.

Luckily the Amazon S3 -- and those working with it -- are more forgiving.

One of the services I'm anxious to try is Jungle Disk, which offers a software program (free 30-day trial, $20 thereafter) for Windows, Mac or Linux that taps the Amazon S3 service and makes it as easy to use as clicking a hard-drive icon on your desktop. I don't know exactly how Jungle Disk is going to make money -- even at $20 a pop for software -- but in the Mac world a program called SuperDuper does similar backups, but to your own external hard drive, at a cost of $27.95. I don't know how SuperDuper will fare in the age of Time Machine, but services like Amazon S3, coupled with easy-to-use interfaces like Jungle Disk, will move storage and backup off of failure-prone hard drives and onto a massive cloud with built-in redundancy.

I haven't had the time to check them out, but there are quite a few other storage and backup offerings that use the Amazon S3 service. One I did know about is the Zonbu, a small, power-sipping Linux computer (supply your own monitor/keyboard/mouse) that costs only $279 plus $14.95 per month, which gets you updates to the Gentoo Linux-based system, all the software you need, plus storage in the Amazon S3 cloud. Yep, the Zonbu runs on a small, solid-state disk and stores all your files up there, in the cloud.

Other services include:

Athena Backup, with 50 GB of storage for $4.95/month.

Infinite Bits, a product that doesn't cost anything beyond what you owe Amazon S3, and which accesses files with any Web browser or FTP program.

BeInSync seems to be one of the more sophisticated Amazon S3-based systems. Among its features are automatic backup, file sharing and PC synchronization (having the data on two or more PCs mirror each other ... at least that's what I think it is). The pricing is all over the place, starting at $10/month for a single user, $59.95 for a year of service, $149.95 for "lifetime" use, with everything costing more for more users and more data.

And did I mention that with any Amazon S3 provider (or Amazon itself) your files travel there and back via a secure, encrypted connection? That's important, especially when you're using unsecured, unencrypted WiFi, where you should never type in a password or do anything but view static Web pages without a secure connection.

Anyhow, at this point I'm looking hard at Jungle Disk. I'm not one to pay for software, but $20 is more than reasonable for something that delivers so much value.

But there are quite a few programs, many that are free, that tap into the Amazon S3, some of which I learned about here, that warrant a look.