Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2)

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.

Amazon EC2’s simple web service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2 reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use. Amazon EC2 provides developers the tools to build failure resilient applications and isolate themselves from common failure scenarios.

Website and WebPortal Differentiation !!!

Authentication:
Portal: It provides facility of Logging-In. Provides you with information based on who you are.
e.g. mail.yahoo.com, gmail.com, rediffmail.com
Website: No log-in.
e.g. www.yahoo.com

Personalization:
Portal: Limited, focused content. Eliminates the need to visit many different sites.
e.g. You type in your user name and password and see your yahoo mail only.
Website: Extensive, unfocused content written to accommodate anonymous users needs.

Customization :
Portal: You will select and organize the materials you want to access. Organized with the materials you want to access.
Website: Searchable, but not customizable. All content is there for every visitor.
e.g. you can navigate to yahoo mail, yahoo shopping, geo cities, yahoo group. If you wish to use any of these services you will either have to authenticate yourself and see things personalized to you or you can simply visit sections that are for everyone like yahoo news were if you are not signed in then the default sign in is guest.