This is mainly in reference to the fact that Reserved Instances don't have any bearing on the instances themselves (ie. no code change, performance chance, server downtime, etc.).
The 57% savings is the difference between the 3-year, no-upfront, standard Reserved Instance rate and the On-demand rate (for RDS it is 30% vs on-demand)
As far as compute savings plans:
1-yr SP is anywhere from 26-29% savings vs on-demand
3-year Sp is anywhere from 49-52% savings vs on-demand
... but note that these commitments are non-transferrable. Customers find our tailorable commitments to be a healthy blend of savings + safety against over-committing to volume they may not need
If you take 20% of the savings, my max savings are ~45%. Even that assumes my AWS bill is entirely instances.
I think you have a product that some companies will really want. It’s a good product; don’t let your marketing promises exceed the true savings by so much that it makes people leery of what else you might be hiding or stating in a less than straightforward manner.
I'm a huge user of RIs, I like the idea of tools to balance them more easily, etc. Totally on board with that but the way the number is presented seems to me like you're setting yourself up to over-promise and under-deliver, not to mention turning off people who are familiar enough with this to already be using RIs / CSPs somewhat. Simply qualifying it to “Cut AWS EC2 spend by up to 57%” would avoid some of that, and you could probably address the latter users with some hard data about flexibility or total net savings by other customers so people could get an idea of what it looks like for normal users who aren't just buying acres of EC2 instances and nothing else.
I like to say we're a marketmaker for cloud contracts. Our recommendations take our current inventory into account and it's been very effective considering the amount of 'trades' we successfully make each day. That aside, We also have a considerable amount of cash set aside for an event like this.
In a way. Resellers typically incorporate a company's AWS organization into theirs, and via resource sharing of savings instruments, are able to pass on savings to their customers within their portfolio. Since they have an AWS organization that is comprised of many companies and their AWS accounts, they are able to negotiate special pricing arrangements with AWS (typically in the form of an EDP) based on the total spend of that consolidated organization.
We use similar instruments but allow you to maintain the independence of your AWS organization for what is usually higher savings.
Why would they be in a good negotiating position with AWS, given that they have to be on AWS to even exist in the first place? I don't get why amazon would ever negotiate down with these guys, they're the ones who absolutely need the product.
Like any reseller, they are aggregating demand, and then negotiating volume discount with the provider. Resellers will work with multiple cloud providers.
In principle at least, customers can become loyal to the reseller and their value-added services, and the reseller can influence their clients to move to other providers. Obviously hosting is one of the stickiest SaaS services around since switching costs can be monumental, but the theory still applies.
The 57% savings is the difference between the 3-year, no-upfront, standard Reserved Instance rate and the On-demand rate (for RDS it is 30% vs on-demand)
As far as compute savings plans:
1-yr SP is anywhere from 26-29% savings vs on-demand
3-year Sp is anywhere from 49-52% savings vs on-demand
... but note that these commitments are non-transferrable. Customers find our tailorable commitments to be a healthy blend of savings + safety against over-committing to volume they may not need