Cloud services set off price war users into real beneficiaries

Cloud computing customers are benefiting from Amazon, Microsoft and Google, which have slashed the price of cloud products to compete for future business computing.

Altos, a real-estate innovation firm, is currently using Amazon's cloud computing services. Three weeks ago, Amazon lowered the company's bill by nearly one-second. The money saved will allow Altos Research chief executive Michael Simmenson (Michael Simonsen) to recruit two more programmers to help the company develop new services. "No one has ever lost 40% of your bills overnight," Simmenson said. "The direct benefit we get is the opportunity to launch more new products faster." ”

Amazon's cloud services, called the Amazon Web Services (AWS), have been launched for 8 years. As a pioneer in the concept of leasing computing power, it helps enterprises to save money needed to build their own computing backbone. For now, AWS is mainly attracted to small micro-enterprises such as altos.

Microsoft and Google have also lowered their cloud services prices recently, sparking a three-party price war in the cloud services market. Last month, the three companies slashed the price of cloud services by 85%. For corporate users who spend 140 billion of billions of dollars a year buying computers, Internet connections, software and other enterprise Network Center equipment, the sharp downward price of cloud services is attractive to them.

The rise of cloud computing services threatens traditional computing equipment manufacturers such as IBM, HP and EMC. IBM's spokesman said the firm offers both outsourced computing services and higher-margin software. Bill Hilf, Hewlett-Packard executive Bill Silver, says the company is committed to helping companies modernize their own, leased or mixed computing backbone. EMC Gao Yujie Rimi Burton (Jeremy Burton) says the company's sales to cloud service providers have grown rapidly.

The price war between Amazon, Microsoft and Google has delayed plans for companies that would have wanted to own a computing center. Since Krux, a marketing technology firm, started 4 years ago, the company has been using Amazon's cloud computing services to provide personalized information and advertising on its clients ' websites. Tom Chavez, chief executive of Krux, said the company currently has 160,000 screens per second of data sheets. Chavez initially believed that once the monthly site visitors reached 750 million, the company will need to build their own computing center. But today, Krux has reached 1.5 billion per month, and the company has no plans to build its own computing center.

"The recent price war between the Giants will further delay Krux's plans to build its own computing center, which is very beneficial to the company's business," Chavez said. "Chavez is also concerned about Microsoft's cloud computing services Azure. Chavez predicts that if you run your computing center, KRUX spending will expand to five times or even six times times the current.

Gartner, a market research firm, predicts that companies will buy 13.3 billion of billions of dollars worth of computing power from Amazon and other companies this year, up 45% from a year earlier, but this is still less than 10% per cent, compared with spending on computing centers.

Amazon is currently the world's largest cloud computing service provider, with revenues of more than $3 billion trillion from the business last year, up 85% from the previous year, according to Bernstein study. Bernstein is predicting that the cloud services of Microsoft and Google are all hundreds of millions of dollars. So far, all three companies have disclosed real data on cloud computing services.

Behind the growth is huge savings. Sada Bae, a technology consultancy, predicts that a website with approximately 50 million page traffic per month may need to point out 1200 dollars a month to buy two servers and hardware and load data into Web pages and other devices. But by paying 270 dollars to 530 dollars to Amazon, Microsoft and Google, they will have the same computing power.

Consulting firms believe that by saving huge sums of money, they attract larger companies to lease rather than build their own computing power. Some 87% of corporate technology executives have said they have used the services of outsourced computing providers at least one task, according to a recent survey by Rightscale, a consultancy. But companies as large as Netflix, which use cloud computing services, are still the exception.

"A large consumer product company has been using Amazon's cloud services for smaller requirements, such as marketing sites," said Matt Gerber, executive vice president of 2nd Watch, a cloud consultancy, which is currently preparing to use Amazon's services for its core computing capabilities. Gober did not disclose the name of the company.

Sebastian Stadil, SCALR founder of Cloud Management, said, "because the price of cloud services Sebastian Stadil, the customer's original cost model has lost their role." Stadil said an internet company working with his company is currently considering shifting some workloads to Google's compute Engine, as Google recently lowered its cloud-computing prices and unveiled new policies. According to Google's new policy, customers who enjoy discounted prices do not need to sign a service contract with the company.

Obstacles to leasing patterns may also limit growth. Cloud computing services are often cheap and trustworthy for large companies that can predict computing needs and have or can control their own computing backbone. But to run old software programs on other companies ' computers, businesses often need to redo a lot of work.

In highly regulated industries such as health care, businesses often want to keep sensitive data on their own computers. The US government listens to recent revelations about the project, allowing customers to start asking questions about whether cloud service providers can guarantee their data security.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)