Amazon goes after cloud app

service for applications, Amazon ElastiCache, so applications can summon application logic and data from memory instead of disk, says Information Week.

The move pulls the Amazon cloud environment, where customers tap into the services they need in an automated, self-service fashion, closer to being on par with enterprise environments where using in-memory processing is already a well established technique.

Applications with business logic code objects or data in memory can speed up their response times, avoiding the waits of going to disk. In-memory techniques are also frequently used by social networking systems, online games, and high volume content delivery applications.

Amazon says that its ElastiCache is compliant with Memcached, a popular and widely used memory object caching system, writes Mobile Marketing Watch.

“Caching is a core part of so many web applications today, but running your own caching infrastructure is time-consuming and rarely adds differentiated value for your business,” says Raju Gulabani, VP of Database Services, AWS.

According to SaaS Directory, the main use of the service is to improve latency for heavy workloads, including social networking, gaming, media sharing and Q&A portals.

ElastiCache stores selected bits of date relating to the task in its memory so that it can be quickly referred back to the next time that task is carried out.