Amazon Web Services speeds up data transfers

Amazon claims AWS Import/Export is fast and cost-effective

Amazon Web Services is offering access to a new interface that the company claims will make it easier to transfer and manage data.

AWS Import/Export has been available for parallel processing and email archiving, and is "significantly faster than internet transfer" for particularly large data sets, and more cost-effective than upgrading enterprise networks, according to Amazon.

"Companies have used AWS Import/Export for everything from time-sensitive imports at the end of a datacentre lease, to exporting large data sets to customers and disaster recovery," said Alyssa Henry, general manager of Amazon Web Services. "We are excited to make the service generally available and even easier to use."

The service may seem like a technological backwards step, as data is delivered on portable storage devices, but Amazon expects that bypassing the internet for transfers will save time and expense.

Greg Arnette, chief technology officer at email archiving firm Sonian, said that migration of historical customer data had been limited by available network bandwidth, and that the company is using AWS Import/Export to "quickly archive unlimited terabytes of data to the cloud".

UK customers can send data to the Amazon datacentre in Ireland. Companies must register to use the service, which costs $80 (£54) per storage item transferred.