Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing solutions provider, today announced the launch of its Reserved Instance Marketplace.
Amazon’s Reserved Instances allow businesses to pay a one-time fee to reserve computing capacity for a specified term and receive a discount on the hourly rate for the instance. Now, customers will no longer have to worry as much about biting off more than they can chew.
The Reserved Instance Marketplace will become a secondhand market for reserved instances. Customers will be able to sell their reserved instances to other businesses or buy reserved instances from other AWS customers. Amazon claims the new marketplace will enable customers to find a wider selection of reserved instance term lengths and prices than AWS sells.
“AWS has long given customers multiple ways to use Amazon EC2 and save money,” said Peter De Santis, vice president of Amazon EC2. “For those wanting to pay for compute by the hour with no required upfront fee or ongoing commitment, Amazon EC2 offers On Demand Instances. For those willing to pay a small upfront fee in exchange for a substantial discount over On Demand Instances (up to 71%), Amazon EC2 offers Reserved Instances. As more and more customers have started buying Reserved Instances, they’ve asked for ways to sell their Reserved Instances to change instance types or where instances are located, and they’ve asked for more Reserved Instance term length options. The Reserved Instance Marketplace addresses both of these customer needs.”
AWS earlier this year launched the AWS Marketplace, a storefront that allows customers to shop and price cloud computing solutions in much the same way customers would shop for books on Amazon. The AWS Reserved Instance Marketplace, when it finally becomes available, will be located here.