Amazon's EC2 Cloud Built in South Africa
Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) allows users to rent virtual computers to run various applications, is set to make a impact on the cloud computing movement. Development of the system has been going on for years and utilises a number of new technologies not easily developed by just anybody. So when Chris Pinkham, Amazon's vice president of IT Infrastructure decided to move back to his home country South Africa, Amazon convinced him to keep his job and build EC2 from South Africa.
Pinkham in turn convinced Chris Brown (CTO of Opscode) to join him in South Africa. Together they formed a team in Cape Town that for the next two years would undertake the mammoth task of building EC2. This all goes to show that SA has the skills and resources to take on significant IT projects. Combined with projects such as Silicone Cape it is with great excitement we watch SA take its place on the world technology stage.