Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2012/03/06/amazon_drops_cloud_prices/

In your face, rivals: Amazon cuts cloudy prices

Where have we seen this aggressive pricing tactic before?

By Brid-Aine Parnell

Posted in SaaS, 6th March 2012 15:43 GMT

Amazon has once more cut the cost of its cloudy offerings to smack down its competition and continue on its path to fluffy domination.

A post from Amazon Web Services (AWS) "evangelist" Jeff Barr on the AWS blog claimed that Amazon had managed to lower its costs and would be passing on those savings to its customers.

Exactly how much all the lucky clients will save will require some calculations on their part, as it is dependent on what kind of cloud usage they have and what region they're in, but the headline figures from Barr have Reserved Instance prices dropping up to 37 per cent and On-Demand Instances falling up to 10 per cent.

Amazon was keen to emphasise that AWS clouds are not just for small companies; it'll now be enticing the big boys with offers on scale.

Purchasing over $250,000 worth of Reserved Instances – the service for when you know how much cloud you'll be slurping in the next while – will bag the higher-usage firms a 10 per cent discount on any additional instances it wants to snap up. Go up to $2m and the discount rises to 20 per cent, while firms that go over $5m worth should "give Amazon a call".

Giving the typical tech company we're-just-in-business-to-help-people line, Barr said that Amazon would keep working to lower costs so it could give customers lower prices.

"Some companies work hard to lower their costs so they can pocket more margin. That’s a strategy that a lot of the traditional technology companies have employed for years, and it’s a reasonable business model. It’s just not ours," he gushed.

"We want customers of all sizes, from start-ups to enterprises to government agencies, to be able to use AWS to lower their technology infrastructure costs and focus their scarce engineering resources on work that actually differentiates their businesses and moves their missions forward."

Of course, this newest price drop might be nice for customers, but it's definitely not too nice for Amazon's competitors. The web giant seems to be following the same route with its cloud offerings as it first did with books – in an attempt to aggressively price out its rivals. ®