Simplified RI Payment Options for APN Partners

Yesterday, we announced a change to the Reserved Instance (RI) offerings, intended to simplify the RI model for our APN Partners and AWS Customers.

What’s New for APN Partners? 

We have a new 1-year, No Upfront payment option that does not require an upfront payment and provides a substantial discount (typically about 30 percent) compared to On-Demand. This provides you with a simplified model to utilize as you 1) Purchase RIs on behalf of your customers, 2) Resell to customers, or 3) Make RI purchase recommendations to your customers.

Additionally, we’ve also introduced a new All Upfront payment option where you pay for the entire RI term with one upfront payment and benefit from the best discount (typically about 63 percent for a 3-year term) compared to On-Demand. We continue to provide a payment option that balances the payments of an RI between upfront and hourly, now called the Partial Upfront payment option. This option provides a high discount (typically about 60 percent for a 3-year term) compared to On-Demand. Collectively, these RI payment options provide you with different ways to pay for the hours in the RI term.

Further Details for APN Partners

As you begin to work with the new, simplified RI payment options, please consider the following:

• The new All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront offerings will replace Heavy, Medium, and Light Utilization offerings
• Light and Medium RIs will be available until February 2nd, 2015
• The Partial Upfront RI is a direct replacement for the Heavy Utilization RI; other than the name, the offerings are identical
• In the detailed billing report, like the Heavy Utilization RI, Partial Upfront and No Upfront usage will correspond to the ‘HeavyUsage’ usage type, while usage associated with All Upfront will correspond to the ‘BoxUsage’ usage type

If you programmatically determine RI purchase recommendations for any reason, you’ll want to adjust your calculations to accommodate the new offerings.

Since Medium and Light RIs will be available February 2nd, 2015, APN Partners who rely on the Light and Medium RI will have until February 2nd, 2015 to make this adjustment. Since the Partial Upfront RI is a direct replacement for Heavy Utilization RIs, APN Partners may need to adjust their code to reflect the Partial Upfront replacement of the Heavy Utilization RI.

Should you have any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your APN Partner Development Manager (PDM), or reach out to AWS Support.