[bmatheny]

I think Amazon should be part of your hosting strategy, but not the entirety of it.

We use Amazon (EC2, S3, SQS) but only where appropriate. EC2 for compute intensive but ephemeral data (logging, etc since your storage can disappear). S3 for hosting data files served up to HTTP clients (images, video, music) and SQS for, well, queuing :)

Most importantly though, we host the primary application in a typical data center. It's reliable, supported, we have an SLA and we can expand in any way we need to.

Like I said, use Amazon for part of your hosting strategy but not the entirety of it.