I always encourage my entrepreneurship classes to learn more about IT and recently to learn more about data management and analysis tools. Some recent thoughts on the future of data and its uses are here and here.
AWS recently announced that they are making their full range of services available for free to professors, researchers and students. All you have to do is apply for a grant from AWS, which looks really simple, and you have access to the cloud computing infrastructure of AWS. Sort of like borrowing a nuclear submarine from the U.S. Navy for the weekend.
This is a great opportunity for anybody to play and learn about state-of-the-art IT infrastructure and for student entrepreneurs to have free access to significant computing resources for their businesses. Apple and Microsoft pioneered computing in the U.S. education system. AWS is now pioneering cloud computing. To me this is much more exciting than Google's initiatives with Google Apps in universities. Look for Google to respond to this AWS initiative.
I found this story through a post on RWW.
