I just got an email from Amazon about a new service.  Check it out...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=pe217010160930?node=689343011

This new EBS system for E2C just made the whole compute-cloud offering from Amazon an easy port from a regular web app to an Amazon hosted app.  Before, all your persistent data storage had to go to S3 which had a specific API you had to develop for.  Now, it can go to EBS which acts like a block device.  In other words, a virtual disk.  So just about any application should "just work" instead of needing modifications.

I had stayed away from EC2 because I didn't want to tie my apps to Amazon services.  But perhaps this fixes that problem.  I'll have to play with it sometime soon.