Online bookseller Amazon extends its cloud service by a new component named Elasticache, just entering a Beta phase. It's intended to accelerate read-heavy web sites running on the Amazon EC2 cloud service. To this end data read from a distributed cache in memory instead of permanent storage on either hard disk or the Amazon storage. Elasticache is based on the open source Memcache software.

With Amazon's management tools it is possible to create a distributed cache that can replace failed nodes on its own. Cloud administrators can increase or decrease the amount of cache memory by adding and removing individual caching nodes. Through the integration of Elasticache in the Clodwatch service it is possible to monitor cache usage graphically. Currently the Elasticache service is available in the region "US East (Virginia)" only, but will be made available to other Amazon cloud installations during the next months. Prices for the Elasticache service range from US Dollar 0,095 and 2,24 per hour.