Friday March 20, 2009

Back in September, I expressed skepticism that a purely on-demand model for cloud computing would be sufficient for businesses to seriously commit to the cloud model as a way to run their businesses. Apparently, Amazon is an avid reader of the Navel (joke!), because they recently announced a new resource model -- Reserved Instances -- that in large part addresses the issue I raised. Specifically, it is now possible to pay up-front to reserve an instance for use over some period of time. In addition, when the instance is actually used, the rate is lower than for purely on-demand instances.

This hybrid model will appeal to those customers who worry about resource availability as demand for cloud computing resources continues to grow and certainly to those who have developed a business- or mission-critical reliance on access to these remote resources.