justatech

Yes, I think once Google+ releases their APIs (what is taking them so long) one can see hundreds of new apps popping up - not just for the web but also for the mobile version. Also the group video chat they have (hangouts) is actually Google+'s killer app - can already imagine many cool apps using it (customer support, training etc).

Yes, we do know generally when the traffic will peak and can plan for it.

While we are worried that performance may be lower and costs higher - we are not sure if this would be the case. If we can get the same performance for a comparable cost (say within 10 to 15%) of what we are currently paying, we would prefer EC2 for two reasons 1) Redundancy - in case we have a problem it would be easy to restore instances and be back up online quickly 2) Flexibility - as we occasionally (2 or 3 times a year) do have peak traffic loads when we could use more servers.