rPath™, provider of the first platform for creating and maintaining software appliances, today announced rPath’s rBuilder™ support of the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) from Amazon Web Services. rPath’s integration with Amazon EC2 marks the first time that software appliances have been combined with an on-demand computing infrastructure.

“Independent software vendors (ISVs) should be focused on building great application features, not managing infrastructure,” stated Billy Marshall, CEO and founder of rPath. “The unique combination of rBuilder plus Amazon EC2 provides an alternative approach to Software as a Service (SaaS) for application providers without the significant expense of application re-design or investments in data center resources.”

Software appliances simplify application deployment and management by allowing the ISV to control the complete system environment along with the application. When coupled with an on-demand compute infrastructure such as Amazon EC2, ISVs can provide their customers with a total solution without investing in a datacenter.

It will work like this: software developers use rBuilder to build an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that is stored using the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Then, with a single click, rBuilder and rBuilder Online users can boot their software appliances on Amazon EC2. No more waiting for downloads or fighting with complex installation procedures. Software appliances plus Amazon EC2 deliver software value without the hassles – on-demand. To learn more visit: www.rpath.com/amazon.

Amazon EC2 is a web service that provides re-sizable compute capacity on Amazon’s distributed servers, making web-scale computing easier for developers. It presents a true virtual computing environment, allowing software vendors to use web service interfaces to requisition machines for use, load them with their unique software appliance image, manage their network's access permissions, and run their image using as many or few systems as they desire. Amazon EC2 offers an extremely cost effective option by charging developers only for what they use.

“We built Amazon EC2 to free businesses from the burden of creating and managing a scalable, on-demand computing infrastructure,” said Steve Rabuchin, Director of Developer Relations for Amazon Web Services. “rPath has created a complement to Amazon EC2 with rBuilder to free Internet Application Providers from the burden of managing system software for their application.”