If the cloud is all about convenience, cloud pricing is anything but. The pay-as-you-go model has been complicated by AWS Reserved Instances and other ways to lock in lower prices at the expense of business agility. Indeed, this critical need to shepherd costs efficiently has some AWS users longing for simpler and more flexible pricing models – but not enough to switch to competing clouds that offer them.
Case in point: Google’s Sustained Use Discounts, which automatically kick in as your level of usage rises above 25, 50, and 75 percent of a given month. The greater the portion of the month you run your instance, the greater your effective discount.
