AWS Economics Center
The AWS Economics Center provides access to information, tools, and resources to compare the costs of Amazon Web Services with IT infrastructure alternatives. Our goal is to help developers and business leaders quantify the economic benefits (and costs) of cloud computing.
Overview
Amazon Web Services (AWS) gives your business access to compute, storage, database, and other in-the-cloud IT infrastructure services on demand, charging you only for the resources you actually use. With AWS you can reduce costs, improve cash flow, minimize business risks, and maximize revenue opportunities for your business.
- Reduce costs and improve cash flow.
Avoid the capital expense of owning servers or operating data centers by using AWS’s reliable, scalable, and elastic infrastructure platform. AWS allows you to add or remove resources as needed based on the real-time demands of your applications. You can lower IT operating costs and improve your cash flow by avoiding the upfront costs of building infrastructure and paying only for those resources you actually use.
- Minimize your financial and business risks.
Simplify capacity planning and minimize both the financial risk of owning too many servers and the business risk of not owning enough servers by using AWS’s elastic, on-demand cloud infrastructure. Since AWS is available without contracts or long-term commitments and supports multiple programming languages and operating systems, you retain maximum flexibility. And for many businesses, the security and reliability of the AWS platform often exceeds what they could develop affordably on their own.
- Maximize your revenue opportunities.
Maximize your revenue opportunities with AWS by allocating more of your time and resources to activities that differentiate your business to your customers – instead of focusing on IT infrastructure “heavy lifting.” Use AWS to provision IT resources on-demand within minutes so your business’s applications launch in days instead of months. Use AWS as a low-cost test environment to sample new business models, execute one-time projects, or perform experiments aimed at new revenue opportunities.
Customer Testimonials
We estimate that the overall cost savings including hardware, infrastructure and network bandwidth, and personnel, is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars… It is highly cost-prohibitive to achieve this with fixed capacity and traditional computing models. 
– Leo Chan, Chief Technical Officer, Xignite
We did look at a number of more traditional hosting solutions, but very quickly came to the conclusion that AWS would meet our needs much better and at a lower cost…The on-demand nature of EC2 was very attractive as it allowed us to be comfortable in the knowledge that we could scale the hardware very, very quickly.
– Dave Tharp, Head of Development, Virgin Atlantic Airways
Amazon Web Services has allowed us to inexpensively test a new application without the cost of purchasing new servers…This wasn’t feasible under the model of purchasing new servers for conceptual ideas. – Adrian Payne, Manager of Online Services, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
The granular pricing for storage and compute via Amazon Web Services allow us to build out the service as customer data volumes increase. Currently we track lower TCO, ease of use, and data center reliability as major advantages. – George Nichols, President, Sonian, Inc.
Resources and Tools
The following tools will help you evaluate whether migrating existing applications or launching new applications on the Amazon Web Services cloud makes sense to your business from a cost and ROI perspective.
- Amazon EC2 Cost Comparison Calculator (xls) and User Guide (pdf)
This Microsoft Excel-based cost-comparison calculator tool is designed to help you quantify the direct economic benefits (or costs) of cloud computing. The full spreadsheet is provided as a starting point so that you can use or modify the default assumptions based on the unique aspects of your business to determine the annual cost of Amazon EC2 vs. co-location or on-site computing resources. The accompanying user guide provides a detailed explanation of how to best utilize the tool.
- The AWS Simple Monthly Calculator (html)
The updated AWS Simple Monthly Calculator incorporates all our services across all regions to help you estimate your monthly AWS bill more efficiently. Using this tool, you can add, modify and remove services from your “bill” and it will recalculate your estimated monthly charges automatically. The calculator also shows common customer samples and their usage, such as Disaster Recovery and Backup or Web Application.
- The Economics of the AWS Cloud vs. Owned IT Infrastructure Whitepaper (pdf)
This whitepaper helps you understand and compare the direct and indirect costs of Amazon Web Services vs. traditional IT infrastructure.
- High Performance Computing Cost Comparison (pdf) and Web Hosting with Occasional Usage Spikes Cost Comparison (pdf)
These common use cases allow you to compare the cost of Amazon Web Services with the cost of traditional IT infrastructure alternatives. These examples use the Amazon EC2 Cost Comparison Calculator to illustrate the economic benefits of cloud computing.
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