Amazon is setting the standard for cloud computing services.  AWS just announced a beta import/export service to allow 2TB of data to be imported or exported globally from AWS S3.

AWS Import/Export Goes Global

AWS Import/Export is a fast and reliable alternative to sending large volumes of data across the internet. You can send us a blank storage device and we'll copy the contents of one or more Amazon S3 buckets to it before shipping it back to you. Or, you can send us a storage device full of data and we'll copy it to the S3 buckets of your choice.

Until now, this service was limited to US shipping addresses and to S3's US Standard Region. We've lifted both of those restrictions; developers the world over now have access to AWS Import/Export. Here's what's new:

• Storage devices can now be shipped to an AWS address in the EU for use with S3's EU (Ireland) Region.At this time, devices shipped to our AWS locations in the EU most originate from and be returned to an address within the European Union.
• Storage devices can be shipped from almost anywhere in the world to a specified AWS address in the US for data loads into and out of buckets in the US Standard Region. Previously, devices could only be shipped from and returned to addresses in the United States.

What would use this for? 

Common Uses for AWS Import/Export

AWS Import/Export makes it easy to quickly transfer large amounts of data into and out of the AWS cloud. You can use AWS Import/Export for:

• Data Migration – If you have data you need to upload into the AWS cloud for the first time, AWSImport/Export is often much faster than transferring that data via the Internet.
• Offsite Backup – Send full or incremental backups to Amazon S3 for reliable and redundant offsite storage.
• Direct Data Interchange – If you regularly receive content on portable storage devices from your business associates, you can have them send it directly to AWS for import into your Amazon S3 buckets.
• Disaster Recovery – In the event you need to quickly retrieve a large backup stored in Amazon S3, use AWSImport/Export to transfer the data to a portable storage device and deliver it to your site.

When should you consider this service?  AWS answers this as well.

When to Use AWS Import/Export

If you have large amounts of data to load and an Internet connection with limited bandwidth, the time required to prepare and ship a portable storage device to AWS can be a small percentage of the time it would take to transfer your data over the internet. If loading your data over the Internet would take a week or more, you should consider using AWS Import/Export.

Below is a table that gives guidance around common internet connection speeds on: (1) how long it will take to transfer 1TB of data over the Internet into AWS (see the middle column for this estimate); and, (2) what volume of total data will require a week to transfer over the Internet into AWS, and therefore warrant consideration of AWSImport/Export (see the right-hand column). For example, if you have a 10Mbps connection and expect to utilize 80% of your network capacity for the data transfer, transferring 1TB of data over the Internet to AWS will take 13 days. The volume at which this same set-up will take at least a week, is 600GB, so if you have 600GB of data or more to transfer, and you want it to take less than a week to get into AWS, we recommend you using AWSImport/Export.

Available Internet Connection
Theoretical Min. Number of Days to Transfer 1TB at 80% Network Utilization
When to Consider AWSImport/Export?

T1 (1.544Mbps)
82 days
100GB or more

10Mbps
13 days
600GB or more

T3 (44.736Mbps)
3 days
2TB or more

100Mbps
1 to 2 days
5TB or more

1000Mbps
Less than 1 day
60TB or more

If anyone can efficiently receive and ship items it is amazon, and it was smart they added this capability to AWS.  We’ll see how long before other cloud computing providers add this service.  My bet is you’ll have to wait a while as few would have thought to set up shipping and receiving in their cloud computing internal network.

Amazon Web Services has a post on the Economics of AWS.

The Economics of AWS

For the past several years, many people have claimed that cloud computing can reduce a company's costs, improve cash flow, reduce risks, and maximize revenue opportunities. Until now, prospective customers have had to do a lot of leg work to compare the costs of a flexible solution based on cloud computing to a more traditional static model. Doing a genuine "apples to apples" comparison turns out to be complex — it is easy to neglect internal costs which are hidden away as "overhead".

We want to make sure that anyone evaluating the economics of AWS has the tools and information needed to do an accurate and thorough job. To that end, today we released a pair of white papers and an Amazon EC2 Cost Comparison Calculator spreadsheet as part of our brand new AWS Economics Center. This center will contain the resources that developers and financial decision makers need in order to make an informed choice. We have had many in-depth conversations with CIO's, IT Directors, and other IT staff, and most of them have told us that their infrastructure costs are structured in a unique way and difficult to understand. Performing a truly accurate analysis will still require deep, thoughtful analysis of an enterprise's costs, but we hope that the resources and tools below will provide a good springboard for that investigation.

The AWS team has laid out the costs of AWS Cloud vs. owned IT infrastructure.

The Economics of the AWS Cloud vs. Owned IT Infrastructure. This paper identifies the direct and indirect costs of running a data center. Direct costs include the level of asset utilization, hardware costs, power efficiency, redundancy overhead, security, supply chain management, and personnel. Indirect factors include the opportunity cost of building and running high-availability infrastructure instead of focusing on core businesses, achieving high reliability, and access to capital needed to build, extend, and replace IT infrastructure.

If you have every wished for a spreadsheet to help you calculate data center costs, AWS has this.

The Amazon EC2 Cost Comparison Calculator is a rich Excel spreadsheet that serves as a starting point for your own analysis. Designed to allow for detailed, fact-based comparison of the relative costs of hosting on Amazon EC2, hosting on dedicated in-house hardware, or hosting at a co-location facility, this detailed spreadsheet will help you to identify the major costs associated with each option. We've supplied the spreadsheet because we suspect many of our customers will want to customize the tool for their own use and the unique aspects of their own business.

And, they launched an Economics Center.

The AWS Economics Center provides access to information, tools, and resources to compare the costs of Amazon Web Services with IT infrastructure alternatives. Our goal is to help developers and business leaders quantify the economic benefits (and costs) of cloud computing.

Overview

Amazon Web Services (AWS) gives your business access to compute, storage, database, and other in-the-cloud IT infrastructure services on demand, charging you only for the resources you actually use. With AWS you can reduce costs, improve cash flow, minimize business risks, and maximize revenue opportunities for your business.

• Reduce costs and improve cash flow.
  Avoid the capital expense of owning servers or operating data centers by using AWS’s reliable, scalable, and elastic infrastructure platform. AWSallows you to add or remove resources as needed based on the real-time demands of your applications. You can lower IT operating costs and improve your cash flow by avoiding the upfront costs of building infrastructure and paying only for those resources you actually use.

• Minimize your financial and business risks.
  Simplify capacity planning and minimize both the financial risk of owning too many servers and the business risk of not owning enough servers by usingAWS’s elastic, on-demand cloud infrastructure. SinceAWS is available without contracts or long-term commitments and supports multiple programming languages and operating systems, you retain maximum flexibility. And for many businesses, the security and reliability of the AWS platform often exceeds what they could develop affordably on their own.

• Maximize your revenue opportunities.
  Maximize your revenue opportunities with AWS by allocating more of your time and resources to activities that differentiate your business to your customers – instead of focusing on IT infrastructure “heavy lifting.” Use AWS to provision IT resources on-demand within minutes so your business’s applications launch in days instead of months. UseAWS as a low-cost test environment to sample new business models, execute one-time projects, or perform experiments aimed at new revenue opportunities.

Capacity vs. Usage Comparison

This last graph is the Christmas wish list for enlightened green IT thinkers.  IT load that tracks to demand.