Amazon cuts S3 pricing; Dangles carrot in front of enterprises
Amazon said Thursday that it will cut prices on its Simple Storage Service (S3) and offer more volume discounts.
The pricing, which goes into effect on Nov. 1, may reflect that Amazon is looking to grab share as competition from Microsoft and others is about to heat up. Meanwhile, the volume discounts and tiered pricing will appeal to enterprises. Amazon's official line (blog, statement) is that it is merely passing on efficiencies to customers, but the timing (IT budget worries for 2009) seems quite opportunistic.
Amazon's S3 pricing today is roughly 15 cents per gigabyte (GB) a month of storage used. Beginning Nov. 1 Amazon will charge that 15 cent per GB a month for the first 50 terabytes (TB). For the next 50 TB Amazon will charge 14 cents a month per GB. From there the tiers go like this:
- 13 cents per GB for the next 400 TB a month;
- And 12 cents per GB if you use more than 500 TB.
Amazon's Web Services has moved in recent weeks to add support for Oracle as well as Microsoft's platforms. Both of those moves make Amazon's Web Services more of an option for enterprises. However, I have heard rumblings about pricing from enterprise buyers when you ask them about Amazon. It's not like they felt they were being gouged, but a few folks did note that at scale it made sense to do your own storage. This pricing move may alleviate some of those concerns.
Here's the full schedule:
Also see: