SEATTLE, Dec. 6 -- Amazon Web Services LLC, a subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc., today announced that Ooyala is the winner of the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge. Ooyala is a video company delivering a high-quality interactive video experience with monetization and analytics tools for video publishers and advertisers. As the grand prize winner, Ooyala will receive $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in Amazon Web Service credits and an investment offer from Amazon.com.  Today’s announcement at a celebration in Seattle capped off an exciting final round of the contest in which seven finalists presented their businesses to judges from Amazon.com and venture capital firms.

Ooyala has built a platform to deliver video content for publishers and targeted advertising via an interactive video experience. Ooyala is built on Amazon Web Services, including Amazon EC2, used for video and analytics processing, and Amazon S3 for content storage and delivery. Ooyala leverages Amazon FPS to process both content and ad serving payments. Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon SQS also are utilized by Ooyala.

“When we started Ooyala, we were warned that we would spend most of our time in datacenters at 2 a.m. making sure everything worked,” said Sean Knapp, founder and president of technology for Ooyala. “Very few companies in the world can provide the infrastructure services Amazon can provide. Why would you do it yourself? AWS has enabled Ooyala to build, deploy and scale our product in record time, raising the bar for rapid innovation.”

“We were amazed both by the number of entries we received and the creativity of the developers and start-ups who entered. Our finalists ranged from healthcare technology to insurance applications to web and video analytics. It was difficult to narrow such a qualified field and select a single winner,” said Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon Web Services. “Ooyala is a wonderful example of the innovation and potential we see in so many of the companies adopting AWS.”

The Start-Up Challenge began on Sept. 12 with a call for entries. Over 900 applications were reviewed and seven finalists were chosen. Videos of each finalist were then produced and posted to the AWS website where developers casted their votes for the best idea. For the final round, AWS flew finalists to Amazon headquarters in Seattle to present their ideas to a judging panel of representatives from Amazon.com. To complete the competition, finalists participated in “Fast Pitch” sessions where they each had 15 minutes to present their ideas to representatives from venture capital firms. At the end of the day, the judges selected the winner who was announced at an awards dinner. 

Details on the six remaining finalists for the Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge follow:

• Brainscape, a product of the Neuroinformatics Research Group, is an engine for measuring the networks in the brain.  Researchers are using Brainscape to discover new brain networks and measure the effects of new drugs in clinical trials. Soon, doctors will be using Brainscape to diagnose disease and aid in treatment. The team at the Neuroinformatics Research Group is building their tools on AWS to meet their computing and storage needs.  Brainscape is currently using Amazon EC2 to build dynamic computing clusters and Amazon SQS to distribute jobs on those clusters.

• Commerce360 uses advanced mathematics and statistical analysis in their ClickEquations product to optimize paid search campaigns and deliver improved campaign efficiency and performance for advertisers. ClickEquations utilizes Amazon S3, Amazon EC2 and Amazon SQS to store, process and queue data analysis and campaign management.

• Justin.tv operates a massively scalable live video platform serving about 500,000 video streams per day. Its custom server software, Python Media Server, has been written from scratch to perform optimally on lightweight Amazon EC2 instances. The end result is that live video publishers have a free, easy to use, and completely scalable platform for hosting any type of live video broadcast.

• MileMeter is an innovative insurance start-up that will offer "auto insurance buy the mile." With MileMeter, drivers will be able to pre-pay auto insurance based on the number of odometer miles. Their utility pricing model will reward low-mileage drivers with fair and affordable insurance. Using AWS, MileMeter will have a scalable infrastructure to expand as their business grows.

• UserTesting.com provides quick and cheap website usability testing. For as little as $19, Web site owners can access a network of pre-screened testers who are articulate and observant and who meet specified demographics. Testers perform common tasks on a Web site while they have their screen activity and verbal comments recorded for the Web site owner to review. UserTesting.com will use Amazon Mechanical Turk to find testers and use Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 to process and store the resulting flash videos.

• WeoGeo creates a one-stop marketplace for mapping using Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3. WeoGeo supplies surveyors, engineers, cartographers and scientists with the ability to conveniently store, discover, and exchange high-resolution CAD and GIS mapping products. Map providers easily list their products for sale and buyers quickly find the maps they need.

About Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides technology services that give businesses access to Amazon's own back-end technology infrastructure that they can use to enable virtually any type of business. These in-the-cloud Web services make it possible for any business to reach the scale of major internet players such as Amazon.com, but without the expensive price tag these companies must pay to build and maintain such reliable, secure and scalable infrastructure. Businesses can use AWS to achieve this level of Web scale with zero up-front investment and low, pay-as-you-go pricing.  More than 290,000 developers have signed up to use AWS since its inception. Amazon Web Services LLC is an Amazon.com Inc. company. More information is available at http://aws.amazon.com.