Great news!

I've been following with interest the software-as-a-service (SAAS) development that's being fueled by cloud computing these days. My immediate interest is for Point of Sale applications with our product Amicus.

There is a number of issues in the way of developing proper SAAS implementations of POS such as:

1. Cost of cloud computing in Australia - see my previous blog entry
2. Local Redundancy that's required for POS (business must be able to make sales)
3. Performance

As i've realised recently however there are a few developments inching their way towards Australia. Most noteably, Microsoft Azure which i didn't realise existed until this week, has a datacentre in Singapore. Microsoft's product is quite cost competitive for Windows, although not competitive with linux still unfotunately. One very nice thing they do have is a 'medium' sized instance, which offers high IO, 3.5GB RAM and more than enough HDD for what i need. I would love it if Amazon AWS offered this.

Reading around though i also found that Amazon is opening up a AWS datacentre in singapore. Hopefully, with the lost cost of labour and infrastructure in Singapore, it might even be as cheap as it is in the eastern USA.

While not quite in Australia, the lag time to singapore is almost as good as it is from Sydney to Australia (~40ms from hobart to Singapore Airlines - which i assume is hosted in Singapore...). I'll be buying a AWS linux VM based in Singapore the day they release them. Bring it on!

Needless to say, this totally blows the inflated pricing put forward by Melbourne IT's vCloudExpress completely out of the water. It is a shame really, I'd love to have a serious Australian player, I'd go with them hands down if they only got the price/performance model right.