by James Statenwith analyst at Forrester Research
with John R. Rymer, Mike Gualtieri, Lauren E. Nelson
December 23, 2009
Price: US $499
www.forrester.com/rb/Research/amazon_brings_pork_belly_economics_to_cloud/q/id/55994/t/2?src=pruTHIS IS AN EXCERPT
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced an intriguing new innovation to the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud computing market this month — Spot Instances — virtual machines available through a closed spot market. Spot Instances are variably priced based on supply and demand. For I&O professionals, Spot Instances may dramatically improve the cost-effectiveness of hosting in Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Apps that require significant compute time and either don’t have to execute immediately — such as batch processing, simulations, and portfolio risk assessments — or must execute at a low cost will see significant benefit from this new offering. Spot Instances are a vehicle for Amazon to maximize the profitability of its EC2, but they also expand its innovation leadership and differentiation in the cloud computing ma