AWS Case Study: Queue-it

Based in Copenhagen, Denmark, Queue-it uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a flexible, affordable, and effective platform. The company uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for all of its servers; Amazon Elastic Load Balancing (Amazon ELB) to manage load balancing between European Union zones; Amazon Simple DB for data storage; Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) for message queuing; and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon CloudFront for serving static content. Additionally, C# and ASP.NET 4.0 using the AWS Software Development Kit (SDK) for .NET were the programming languages used in developing this solution.

Because the company’s business model is based on constant availability (24/7/365), Queue-it needed an infrastructure that provided easy and fast scaling for zero users, millions of users, and anything in between. The company’s research revealed that Amazon was the best solution, primarily because of “the elasticity of the infrastructure combined with the high availability offered by running in multiple regions and zones,” explains Martin Pronk, a Partner at Queue-it.

Although Queue-it has seen numerous benefits seen since switching to AWS, increased flexibility and reliability rank among the highest. Pronk explains, “Queue-it scales from a basic setup of six servers to hundreds in a few hours, which would have taken days, if not weeks, if we had done it with on-premise hardware. We promise our customers that we can handle their peak load, which requires approximately 1,200 servers to run our solution, but we only need this amount of servers for a few weeks per year. My guess is that we save several hundred thousand dollars per year, plus we get the high availability.” Looking to the future, Queue-it is exploring Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES), Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon AutoScale, and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) as a way to further streamline the production environment and maintenance.

Pronk reiterates the importance of the company's relationship with AWS: “Our business would not be able to operate cost-effectively without AWS, as our business model fundamentally requires constant availability and unlimited scaling.”

To learn more, visit http://queue-it.net/ .

Added March 17, 2011