Amazon Web Services and the EU
Just recently Amazon gave us European EC2 customers a well-deserved feature update. We got CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling. As an added bonus we also finally got SimpleDB access, which means less lag and no traffic costs when using SimpleDB from a European EC2 instance. Let me take that hook to talk about Amazon Web Services and the EU.
That’s right, today’s Wtf is not technical, at least not on the surface. It’s about the simple fact, that us Europeans are stuck waiting for new services and new features until Amazon feels like they’re ready for us to use after US customers gave them a thorough beating.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to use EU-based EC2 instances together with SimpleDB without having to pay traffic on both ends, because SimpleDB is only reachable on the cheap from within the US network of EC2? It sure would, and it finally is now, more than two years after the launch of SimpleDB.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could utilize Elastic Load Balacing or the awesome CloudWatch? Oh yes, it would. But we’re sort of left in an infinite loop, without estimates on when new features will launch on the old continent. Can we do that now? Check!
But in general all we can do is wait and hope for the best, and maybe a couple of months later, we’re served as well. Every time Amazon announces a new feature for one of their services, we’re sure to be left out. Maybe next time, instead of beta-testing new features in the US, why not let us Europeans have a go at it?
It’s been bugging me for a while now, and while I understand that there’s technical things to consider when new features are introduced, it’s still quite frustrating not being able to use them, just because we prefer using Amazon’s Web Services over here, on the old continent.
If you, Amazon, could do us one favor, it would be to not wait months or even years to introduce new features on our end of the planet. We’d very much appreciate that. Also, maybe you could try to give us a ballpark on when you’re planning on releasing new features in the EU. I’m not talking about an enterprisey roadmap, just a rough figure will do.
Sincerely, some of your (still happy) European customers.
