Aussie startups invited to Amazon-cloud comp

Amazon is hosting its fourth Start-up Challenge, to be battled out this November. 

Cloud start-ups from Australia and New Zealand are eligible to compete with rivals from 22 countries across the US, Europe and Asia for Amazon's US$50,000 (AU$55,000) cash prize.

To be eligible, companies must use or be in the process of using one of Amazon Web Services' (AWS) products, including Elastic Compute Cloud and Amazon Flexible Payments Service amongst others. 

Competitors can not have generated more than $10 million, and will have to submit an application which describes their business plan and how they use AWS. 

Entrants will be judged on the service's implementation and integration, originality, likelihood of success, and on whether it addresses a market need, according to Amazon.

It's the fourth such competition Amazon has hosted. 

Last year GoodData, offers a free entry-level business intelligence service, scooped the cash, US$50,000 in AWS credits, and an investment offer from Amazon.