Trends Report

Amazon Brings Pork Belly Economics To Its Cloud

How To Leverage EC2's Spot Instances, And Why You Should

December 23rd, 2009
James Staten, null
James Staten
With contributors:
Mike Gualtieri , Lauren Nelson , John Rymer

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 market.

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