So what makes Aptana Cloud different? From the looks of it they are offering an very specific LAMP based architecture stack that has tight integration with the Aptana IDE. They Offer developers synchronization and deployment management tools as well as an “integrated service management console”. Aptana Cloud offers administrators management tools, dashboards & stats, Google analytics integration, status tools and backup options. They offer development teams the ability to manage access to projects through Roles and Rights.

The interesting difference is that Aptana is partnering with Joyent to implement the Aptana Cloud solution on Joyents virtulatization platform. Aptana expects that in the future developers can select from a list of virtulatization providers including Amazon and Google.

From the sound of it Aptana is really looking to place their IDE at the center of web application development and give developers all they features they need to implement, deploy and manage web applications with one tool. The service is currently in closed beta but you can request early access (I signed up several weeks ago and no word yet).

Resources

Aptana Cloud
http://www.aptana.com/cloud