Amazon launches AWS Database Migration Service out of preview to all customers

Amazon has launched a new service that makes it easier for companies to move their databases to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and promises that firms can “set up their migrations in less than 10 minutes.”

The launch comes five months after Amazon first debuted the AWS Database Migration Service in preview, and a day after reports first circulated that the Internet giant was preparing to officially introduce the service to all companies.

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Since January 1, Amazon said that more than 1,000 databases have been migrated to AWS — which is the company’s popular suite of cloud-computing services. Now, Amazon is encouraging all companies to move their on-premises data from the likes of MySQL, Oracle, and MariaDB to Amazon’s cloud with the promise of “virtually no downtime” during the transfer.

“Hundreds of customers moved more than a thousand of their on-premises databases to Amazon Aurora, other Amazon RDS engines, or databases running on Amazon EC2 during the preview of the AWS Database Migration Service,” said Hal Berenson, vice president of relational database services at AWS, in a press release. “Customers repeatedly told us they wanted help moving their on-premises databases to AWS, and also moving to more open database engine options, but the response to the AWS Database Migration Service has been even stronger than we expected. In the preview, one-third of the database migrations used the AWS Database Migration Service to not only move databases to the AWS Cloud, but also to switch database engines in the process.”

There are a number of notable players in the cloud services realm, such as IBM, but Amazon has emerged as a major player with AWS netting the company $7.8 billion in revenue last year, a figure that rises to almost $10 billion if you annualize its Q4 $2.4 billion. But with many companies still to embrace the cloud, there is still room for growth — not to mention opportunities to lure customers over from the competition.

Today’s news comes a week after Microsoft announced the new version of its own database management system — SQL Server 2016 — and opened a new program that encourages companies to migrate their existing applications using free SQL Server licenses. Elsewhere, Google too has been ramping up its cloud offering with a myriad of updates and new services in the past couple of months, as well as nabbing big-name new customers such as Spotify.

The cost of AWS migration will vary depending on the size of the data to be transferred, but Amazon said that it can cost companies “as little” as $3 per terabyte. And to tackle a pain point that often deters potential customers from attempting a migration, Amazon promises that companies will experience very little downtime through the process.

Amazon’s Database Migration Service is only open in eight geographic regions for now — U.S. East (N. Virginia), U.S. West (Oregon), U.S. West (N. California), E.U. (Ireland), E.U. (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo). Additional regions, such as Brazil, will be added “in the coming months.”