To give enterprises an option of connecting to Amazon Virtual Private Cloud directly via Internet, and thereby bypassing the virtual private network (VPN), Amazon Web Services (News - Alert) LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company, has expanded the functionality of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). Thus, by letting enterprises specify which of their Amazon VPC resources they wish to make directly accessible to the Internet and which they do not, AWS has broadened an enterprise's networking options with Amazon VPC.

Prior to this functionality, customers of Amazon EC2 could provision a private, isolated section of the AWS cloud (called an Amazon VPC) and launch AWS resources into that VPC that were only accessible via a VPN connection to an existing enterprise data center, said AWS. Consequently, Amazon VPC was not directly accessible to the Internet. With this move, enterprises no longer need a VPN or existing infrastructure resources in order to leverage Amazon VPC, stated AWS.

With this offering AWS said that enterprises can now define a virtual network topology in Amazon VPC that closely resembles a traditional network that they might operate in their own data center. Thus, customers have complete control over the virtual networking environment, including selection of IP address range, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways, AWS said.

Also, users can easily customize the network configuration for Amazon VPC. For example, added AWS, creating a public-facing subnet for web servers that have access to the Internet, and placing backend systems such as databases or application servers in a private-facing subnet with no Internet access.

Enterprises can continue to choose to connect Amazon VPC to their own existing IT infrastructure with an encrypted VPN connection, extending enterprises' existing security and management policies to Amazon VPC instances as if they were running within an existing datacenter, said AWS.

In a statement, Peter De Santis, general manager of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, said "Amazon VPC has been the first stop for many enterprises as they build migration plans to the cloud. The service has provided a secure bridge between an existing data center and the AWS cloud via a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and enables enterprises to extend their existing security and management policies to AWS."

"Starting today, enterprises can also choose to connect to AWS without a VPN, by setting up virtual networks within the AWS cloud that they can control and customize. We're excited to make available this level of security and simplicity," added De Santis.

Similarly, commented Wolfram Jost, CTO and member of the executive board, Software AG., "We are very excited about this new offering from Amazon Web Services and how it will help with software deployment in the cloud." "Using AWS to deploy software is a trend that we have seen many of our customers looking to adopt. With Amazon's VPC Internet Gateway (News - Alert), customers will create network configurations that are familiar to what they have in their data center. It gives them the power to support their enterprise software deployments without having to reconfigure or reinvent their networking configuration. With Amazon's VPC Internet Gateway, customers have the flexibility to adapt their deployed software as their needs change and their implementations grow. As we look to our vision for the cloud, ensuring that our customers can deploy their SOA and BPM based solutions built on web Methods software in an environment that is seamless to their on-premise solutions is a key need."

Another supporting comment came from Terry Plath, vice president of Cloud and Managed Services, Lawson Software, a global provider of enterprise software: "This is a significant enhancement for our Cloud-based ERP offerings. Amazon VPC will enable Lawson to easily provision and maintain our multi-tier ERP applications safely and securely in the Amazon Web Services Cloud,” he said. “The flexible options for connectivity, combined with the virtual networking capabilities, will allow us to manage our customers' Cloud environments as we have historically managed in physical data centers, but with the simplicity and cost savings of the cloud."