San Francisco, Jan 18 (IANS): Retail giant Amazon's Cloud arm Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched "Backup" -- a new feature which makes it easier for companies to backup their data using its Cloud computing platform.

AWS "Backup" makes protecting storage volumes, databases and file systems easier by giving customers a single service to configure and audit the AWS resources, the company said in a statement late Thursday.

AWS already offers a service named "Snapshots" that lets companies build their own backups but much of this process is manual.

"We are proud to make AWS Backup available with support for block storage volumes, databases, and file systems, and over time, we plan to support additional AWS services," said Bill Vass, Vice President of Storage, Automation, and Management Services, AWS.

Initially, the backup tool is integrated with Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and AWS Storage Gateway, with support for additional services planned for the future.

Users can also back up on-premises application data through the AWS Backup integration with AWS Storage Gateway, thus providing a common way to protect their on-premises data in the AWS cloud.