Amazon Cuts Cloud Costs Up To 25%, Adds Fuel To The Cloud Race

Microsoft and Amazon are in a battle for cloud supremacy and while both platforms offer compelling services, the real winner the past couple of years has been the user. Today, Amazon is announcing a further reduction in pricing and if history is any judge of what will happen next, expect Microsoft to follow close behind with price cuts.

The cuts announced today, which Amazon says is their 53^rd price reduction, drops pricing up to 25% but the reductions are dependent on your location. The new pricing, for the C4, M4 and T2 tiers is below.

• C4 – Reductions of up to 5% in US East (Northern Virginia) and EU (Ireland) and 20% in Asia Pacific (Mumbai) and Asia Pacific (Sydney).
• M4 – Reductions of up to 10% in US East (Northern Virginia), EU (Ireland), and EU (Frankfurt) and 25% in Asia Pacific (Singapore).
• T2 – Reductions of up to 10% in US East (Northern Virginia) and 25% in Asia Pacific (Singapore).

With more companies moving to the cloud each quarter as it’s easier, and often less expensive, to utilize cloud infrastructure than build out your own data center, these price reductions will only fuel the growth in this sector.

Each quarter, Microsoft and Amazon continue to show positive trends in the cloud segments and its one of the contributing factors to why both of their stock prices continue to climb. The opportunity in the cloud segment, with primarily Amazon and Microsoft competing (although Google is finally starting to make a move in this segment too) means that each stand to grab a significant portion of the global IT spend each year.

Even if Google does eventually build out a cloud service that competes seriously with Amazon and Microsoft across all metrics, the market options will still be small for the dollars at stake.