Amazon Web Services (AWS) promised to eliminate inbound data fees starting July 1 in a move that matched Microsoft’s recent announcement of the same with respect to its Microsoft Azure platform. Moreover, AWS slashed outbound data prices for up to 10 terabytes of outbound traffic per month from 15 cents to 12 cents per GB. After 10 terabytes of outbound data transfer within a month, the next 40 terabytes per month have been discounted from 11 cents to 9 cents (total: 50 terabytes) per GB. And the next 100 terabytes of outbound data transfer per month (total: 150 terabytes) will be discounted from 9 cents to 7 cents per GB. In a blog post, Amazon Web Services remarked: “There is no charge for inbound data transfer across all services in all regions. That means, you can upload petabytes of data without having to pay for inbound data transfer fees. On outbound transfer, you will save up to 68% depending on volume usage. For example, if you were transferring 10 TB in and 10 TB out a month, you will save 52% with the new pricing. If you were transferring 500 TB in and 500 TB out a month, you will save 68% on transfer with the new pricing.”
Microsoft announced its intention last week to eliminate inbound data transfer fees in the context of the case of Press Association Sport, a partner of the Press Association, the national news agency of the UK. Given that the Press Association Sport planned to upload “large amounts of text, data and multimedia content every month,” into Windows Azure, the CTO of the Press Association remarked on the benefits of free inbound data transfers as follows: “Estimating the amount of data we will upload every month is a challenge for us due to the sheer volume of data we generate, the fluctuations of volume month on month and the fact that it grows over time. Eliminating the cost of inbound data transfer made the project easier to estimate and removes a barrier or uploading as much data as we think we may need.” Amazon followed suit a week after Microsoft’s June 22 announcement. In a June 29 blog post, AWS CTO Werner Vogels indicated future price decreases from AWS were forthcoming as the company scaled and rendered its operations more efficient.
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