News
Another Round of Price Cuts for Amazon Web Services
This time, it's for Microsoft SQL Server instances on EC2.
It's starting to feel like a game of Limbo: "How low can you go?"
In the struggle for public cloud customers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has dropped the bar another notch.
Last week, AWS implemented yet another round of price cuts -- its 62nd to date -- affecting Microsoft SQL Server instances running on the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
AWS supports running various versions of Microsoft's relational database platform on EC2, spanning the Express, Web, Standard and Enterprise editions.
These most recent price cuts, announced on Wednesday by AWS evangelist Jeff Barr, apply to the SQL Server Standard edition running on the X1, I3, M4 and R4 instances, both on-demand and reserved.
EC2 supports the following SQL Server Standard versions: 2008 (and R2), 2012, 2014 and 2016.
The price reductions are substantial: up to 52 percent, depending on the region and instance type. Barr provided the following sampling of the price cuts in his blog:
Impact of AWS' SQL Server Standard price cuts by region and instance. (Source: AWS/Jeff Barr)
"You can build and run enterprise-scale applications, massively scalable websites. and mobile applications even more cost-effectively than before," Barr said.
Until this week's price cuts, AWS most recently reduced the cost of multiple EC2 instances by as much as 21 percent.