Amazon Delivers Premium Support to the CloudAmazon Delivers Premium Support to the Cloud

Amazon has launched a paid live technical support program for users of its online computing and storage platforms.The service is for customers of any of Amazon's Web Services: the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for application development and deployment; the Simple Storage Service (S3); and the Simple Queue Service (SQS) for query processing. the Silver support plan offers response times ranging from four business hours to two business days for less serious problems, at a cost of $100/month or 10 percent of total monthly usage fees, whichever is greater. The Gold plan provides 24-hour phone support and response times of one hour for $400 per month or 10 to 20 percent of total monthly usage. There is no limit on the number of support calls. Free support will still be available through the existing online forums, FAQs, and resource center.

Amazon's hosted services were originally aimed at Web startups, but more and more businesses are signing up for them.Information Week, CNET News