Amazon S3 moves to volume pricing model

Under 50 terabytes? You’re a light user

Power companies charge by the kilowatt-hour; Amazon S3 charges by the GB-month.  Yet another parallel that points to the ”utility”ization of storage in the cloud. 

The newest news at Amazon S3 is the addition of a modest volume discount for the really big storers. If you have less than 50 terabytes, you’re a light user and pay full price.  Go figure! 

Om Malik sees the pricing change as a boon for start ups.  He’s right, too, about their amazingly diverse customer base.

Another nugget from Amazon’s S3 post: 70,000 customer objects now stored at the site are touched (stored, retrieved or deleted) per second.  That may sound like a lot, but in any one day, 80% of the 29 billion objects lie undisturbed.  And chances are that the same objects get moved around repeatedly, while a core set (50% ?) rest in peace for long periods.

Amazon S3 may highlight their processing capabilities, but it’s the storage function that pays the bills.

Cleversafe’s Storage Internet taking shape

RAIS (redundant array of independent servers) brings new ideas to “can’t lose” data concerns

Cleversafe is applying internet concepts to storage to offer unique value in the SaaS space.  It’s pretty cool – check out Byte and Switch’s take. 

With five partners now and three more in the wings, they seem to be making it work.  But is it really necessary?  Is the internet broken for storage?

We’ll see how they progress as they take on IBM, HP and EMC.  They see Amazon’s S3 as a potential partner rather than a competitor, with additional redundancy that might shore up S3′s infrastructure availability.

Amazon’s a bookstore, Google’s a library

There’s more than one way to seed the storage clouds for profit

Storagezilla doesn’t think Amazon’s got a winner with their cloud storage business. 

Label me a Cloud Believer.  The long-term money-making details may still be unclear for Amazon, but others are raking in the profits on cloud storage.  Take Google, for instance.

Google’s not a thriving cloud storage company?  Au contrair! 

Google has nailed the Cloud concept with a Library model.  I “check out” my data when I need directions to a hip restaurant or insight on the curative properties of a green-lipped mussel.  Meanwhile, Google’s bookshelves keep expanding. Very profitably, I might add.

Maybe that’s what happens when you start out by selling books…everything looks like a book store.

I’m sure Jeff Brazos and team will get there with time.  And they won’t be the only ones!

Who out there is paying someone to keep their information?  What do you like about your service?  What needs to be fixed?