SEATTLE, December 9, 2010 -- Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced M-Dot Network as the winner of the fourth annual AWS Start-Up Challenge. The global competition received more than 1,500 applications from 22 countries across North America, Asia Pacific and Europe. M-Dot Network was awarded $50,000 in cash and $50,000 in AWS service credits at the finale event in Palo Alto, California. During the final round of judging, seven finalists presented their businesses to representatives from AWS and leading venture capital firms. M-Dot Network was selected based on its implementation of AWS solutions, originality and creativity, likelihood of long-term success, and how well the business addresses a need in the marketplace. Amazon Web Services provides highly scalable technology infrastructure that enables organizations around the world to instantly acquire compute power, storage, and other on-demand services in the cloud. To learn more about AWS, visit: http://aws.amazon.com.

M-Dot Network’s high-speed transaction network provides real-time connectivity between Internet and mobile based technologies to in-store retail point of sale systems for the purpose of enabling immediate redemption of digital coupons and incentives. "We are honored and excited to win the AWS Start-Up Challenge," said Mike Kavis, CTO, M-Dot Network. "Two years ago, we set out on a bootstrap budget to enable consumers to store digital coupons and incentives online and then conveniently redeem them at physical retail locations through seamless connection with point of sale systems. We always like to tell the story about how we created a full service demo on AWS for only $86. By building our business on AWS, we can process one million concurrent transactions in a tenth of a second without ever having to buy or lease a physical datacenter, purchase hardware or hire dedicated datacenter staff.”

“This year’s Start-Up Challenge included finalists from North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, and the record number of applications we received illustrated the global innovation of start-ups running on AWS,” said Adam Selipsky, Vice President, Amazon Web Services. “AWS gives businesses access to highly scalable, on-demand technology infrastructure with no upfront investment. The seven finalists are great examples of how businesses today are using AWS to get to market quickly with innovative and disruptive ideas, without having to expend significant upfront capital.”

For the first time, Amazon Web Services awarded 15 semi-finalists from countries including Australia, England, Finland, France, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United States with $2,500 in AWS service credits. Seven of the semi-finalists were then selected to move into the final round and were flown to Palo Alto, California to attend the AWS Start-Up Challenge finale event. At the event, each finalist presented their ideas to a panel of judges with representatives from AWS. The finalists also had the opportunity to present their business to venture capitalists during “lightning round” sessions. At the end of the day, the judges selected the winner and announced the results at the evening awards ceremony. After accepting their award, the M-Dot Network team was presented with the coveted “Golden Hammer,” and then partook in the annual AWS Start-Up Challenge ritual of demolishing a real server, symbolizing how companies no longer need to own servers when they operate in the cloud. The remaining six finalists were each awarded $10,000 in AWS service credits.

AWS congratulates all seven finalists in the 2010 AWS Start-Up Challenge:

Compass Labs – United States (San Jose, California)

The team at Compass Labs offers their strong expertise in Web and social media technologies, natural language processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, data mining, and complex algorithms to help merchants reach specific users who want to buy a particular product at the moment they are contemplating a purchase.

Loggly – United States (San Francisco, California)

Loggly is a cloud-based server logging service. Loggly provides a way to collect logs from servers in one centralized location and then quickly search them with an intuitive user interface.

Mediology – India (New Delhi)

Mediology DigitalEdition is a SaaS platform that enables print publishers to digitize their content, add interactivity to it and then distribute the content via web, mobile and e-reading platforms. The system achieves its massive scale for content digitization and delivery using event centric cloud computing services.

M-Dot Network – United States (Erie, Pennsylvania)

M-Dot's high-speed transaction network provides real-time connectivity between Internet and mobile based technologies to in-store retail point of sale systems for the purpose of enabling immediate redemption of digital coupons and incentives.

TellApart – United States (Burlingame, California)

TellApart helps ecommerce companies drive incremental sales and revenue through applications built on its customer data platform. Predictive modeling enables the ability to "tell apart" the highest value customers and prospects, and TellApart Transactional Retargeting serves personalized display ads to these best users, thereby lifting conversion rates. TellApart's customers include some of the world's largest online retailers, including: Diapers.com, CafePress, eBags and Hayneedle.

Yottaa – United States (Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Based on its cloud service platform, Yottaa enables web site owners to assess, monitor and optimize web performance to make their web sites faster.

Zoombu – Europe (London, England)

Zoombu is a travel search engine that helps find the best door-to-door route from home to destination by searching thousands of routes across multiple modes of transport (flights, trains, ferries, coaches, car hire, private taxis and more).

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth’s Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon’s developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon’s own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle, Kindle 3G and Kindle DX are the revolutionary portable readers that wirelessly download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs and personal documents to a crisp, high-resolution electronic ink display that looks and reads like real paper. Kindle 3G and Kindle DX utilize the same 3G wireless technology as advanced cell phones, so users never need to hunt for a Wi-Fi hotspot. Kindle is the #1 bestselling product across the millions of items sold on Amazon.

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Source: Amazon.com