Amazon Web Services Picks The Top Tech Startups

AWS Global Start-Up Challenge

Amazon Web Services' Global Start-Up Challenge, with more than 2,500 submissions from 85 countries, is one of the hottest contests on the planet for young tech companies seeking recognition.

This week, AWS announced winners of the sixth annual event in the categories of Big Data and High Performance Computing, Business Applications, Consumer Applications and Gaming.

In each category a grand-prize winner was tapped to receive $50,000 in cash and $50,000 in AWS credits, AWS support services and technical mentorship. The four grand-prize winners were selected based on originality, likelihood of success, scalability and implementation of AWS solutions.

Continue on and check out the winners.

Big Data And High Performance Computing: QMedic

QMedic's product is a wearable sensing platform that monitors physical activity, sleep, and falls for older adults, and is configured so that friends and family can check the user's status via mobile device and get alerts for unusual behavior.

Big Data And High Performance Computing: DemystData

DemystData, of Hong Kong, provides financial institutions with realtime analysis of consumer and small-business profiles using online, social and internal data to improve decision-making.

Grand Prize Big Data And High Performance Computing: MortarData

Mortar Data offers an open-source framework for open languages, including Pig, Java and Real Python to enable collaboration on development of cloud-based environments.

Business Applications: PlanGrid

PlanGrid offers a mobile replacement for construction blueprints where users can maintain one master set on the web and keep team members up to date, as new changes get distributed automatically.

Business Applications: Poikos

Netherlands-based Poikos provides a platform for imaging and measurement of the human body in 3-D using consumer-grade hardware, and which can be used in the research, medical practices, gaming and retail sectors.

Grand Prize Business Applications: TraceLink

TraceLink provides applications that let a global pharmaceutical supply chain track and trace products and business processes on a web-based network platform.

Consumer Applications: Hive

Australia-based Hive offers a security camera combined with a social network, powered by proprietary Wi-Fi technology that lasts a year on two AA batteries.

Consumer Applications: Wikidot

Wikidot, of Poland, provides a web-based Wiki platform for community sites, personal blogs, gaming and more.

Grand Prize Consumer Applications: LogMyCalls

LogMyCalls offers a marketing and analytics platform for phone calling that integrates with CRM applications and Google Analytics and gives users more flexibility and control to select numbers, assign users and route calls.

Gaming: Bossa Studios

U.K.-based Bossa Studios sells realtime multiplayer cross-platform games such as Merlin The Game and Toy Run.

Gaming: Playblazer

Mumbai, India-based Playblazer provides cloud-hosted, multitenanted and auto-scaling backends for Social and Multiplayer Games.

Grand Prize Gaming: Grand Cru

Finland-based Grand Cru features the Supernauts game, a light treatment of the Minecraft method of sandboxed building.