The third annual Amazon Web Services Start-Up Challenge, announced this week, will award the winning entrepreneur or startup with $50,000 in cash, $50,000 in Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits, mentoring sessions from an AWS technical expert, and premium gold support for one year.

Contestants will be judged on the originality and premise of their startup idea, as well as their utilization of Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing platform.

Hopeful entrepreneurs should submit online videos discussing their ventures, with a deadline of August 26. Winners will be announced in October, and will then by flown to Silicon Valley to present their ideas to a panel of investors.

"In the three and a half years we've been operating these services, we've been blown away by the innovation we've seen from hundreds of thousands of customers in a wide range of industries," said Adam Selipsky, vice president of product management and developer relations for Amazon. "One of the things we look forward to all year is the creativity that comes from the contestants in this challenge."

An increasing number of small businesses and entrepreneurs are using cloud computing, according to a recent study from IBM - 69 percent of SMBs are pursuing or have already implemented cloud computing technology.