AWS Case Study: Jungle Disk

Data backup is a process many computer users find too technical and expensive. In the past years, with the promise of making data backup an easy task, many Web-based companies have tried to attract customers. Although Web-based data backup services can be convenient, the majority of computer users find it difficult to estimate the amount of storage they will need over time, and realize that paying a flat fee for a pre-determined amount of storage is just not cost-effective.

After analyzing the back-up storage market, Jungle Disk realized that the complexity of the solutions available on the market and their pricing models were preventing consumers and small companies from getting the best storage service for their money.

Jungle Disk set out to improve the Web-based storage customer experience by providing a simple, reliable and affordable product, leveraging the power of Amazon S3. Amazon S3 is “storage for the internet,” with a simple Web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the Web. Amazon designed S3 to make Web-scale computing easier for developers by giving them access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of Web sites.

With Amazon S3, Jungle Disk was able to develop an efficient online data backup solution with a pay-per-use pricing model that makes more sense for consumers. Using Jungle Disk, consumers can store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the Web. Users only pay for what they consume—15 cents per gigabyte of storage per month and 20 cents per gigabyte of data transferred—and there is no minimum fee.

“From a developer’s perspective, the ease-of-use of Amazon S3 is a huge benefit,” said Dave Wright, lead developer for Jungle Disk. “For our customers, the affordable pricing is key.”

To start backing up data using Jungle Disk, customers simply download the free application. Jungle Disk customers are required to sign up for an Amazon S3 account in order to establish a storage and billing relationship. Jungle Disk makes the Amazon S3 sign-up process easy by providing prompts and links to the correct pages on Amazon.com. Once the download and sign-up is complete, a Jungle Disk folder is automatically created in the user’s “My Network Places” folder. Users can then drag and drop any files they would like to backup into this folder. All files saved in this folder are automatically stored on Amazon S3, making them available to the user from any computer with an internet connection.

“The beauty of this backup solution is that Jungle Disk is providing its customers with a simple interface to work with Amazon S3,” said Wright. “Our customers benefit from the peace of mind they have in knowing their important data is stored with Amazon, a company they can trust to safeguard it for years to come.”

Jungle Disk customers are billed directly by Amazon for the storage they use on a monthly basis. They can also go online at any time, log into their account and view a usage summary.

Jungle Disk found that Amazon S3 was so simple to work with, it took less than 30 days to get its offering up and running online. The entire application was written in C++ code and developed using Visual Studio on Windows, Eclipse on Linux and XCode on Mac.

http://www.jungledisk.com