With more businesses migrating to the cloud owing to a whole host of benefits (including remote work due to isolation induced by COVID-19), cloud support services have become indispensable as of late. Although these shifts seem drastic during the past few months, the advent of the cloud has created incredible transformations during this past decade, thereby making possible much more than expected.
SaaS solutions for example, are at the forefront of business consideration, especially since they are easily scalable and come at a reasonable cost. As advantages pertaining to the cloud were realized, everything began moving slowly but steadily over, but still remaining more accessible and versatile than on-premise and proprietary counterparts.
As an AWS partner, we know how much leverage businesses are now receiving through hosted solutions that are now managed with less downtime, while providing the autonomy to focus on the things that truly matter. With solutions available for every enterprise requirement, AWS can be solely relied on for all your business application needs, without having to worry about a single piece of infrastructure at the same time.
In turn, this gives developers the convenience to pay attention to the end result of your application, without having to worry about storage (think S3 Buckets) or Lambda (think containers to run your custom code). But we’re barely scratching the surface by providing only these 2 examples in order to explain what AWS is capable of. Consisting of hundreds of services under one roof, AWS can make business easier, faster, productive and scalable even under times of excessive pressure or malfunction.
So how does AWS do it? Specializing in software outsourcing in Sri Lanka, we’ve learned a thing or two about AWS’s ways and mannerisms, and how they strive to stay on top of the game (as well as their competitors). By rolling out regular updates, the cloud service provider is conscientious about ensuring optimum user value, making it a service that is truly business-centric and lucrative.
Speaking of lucrative, cloud services are renowned to be cost-efficient and affordable with their minimal commitment options, as well as a pay-as-you-scale approach. With so much money saved this way in contrast to its on-premise counterpart, can it get any better than this? On top of that, the hassle that is also saved by not having to maintain any infrastructure also adds to the efficiency quotient of the cloud, making it a no-brainer.
However, AWS has a new solution towards saving even more than you normally do, especially if you’re committed in the long-term. Introducing AWS Savings Plans, this all-new system acts as a sustainable discount option if you’re looking to use the provider’s many resources, and have the liberty to migrate your resources from one region to another in as little time as possible.
As dependency on the cloud increases, so does competition in the business world. Likewise, your business needs a cloud service provider that understands what modern-day business requirements are, and subsequently facilitate the same. That’s what AWS, and AWS Savings Plans by extension, aim to do.
AWS Savings Plans is a discounted billing option that charges a flat rate on an hourly basis, depending on a pre-determined commitment made for a period of 1 to 3 years. Compared to on-demand billing, this hourly flat-rate system can help companies save a lot of money in the long-term, since pricing will always stay uniform no matter how much of the services you use.
AWS Savings Plans is available for EC2, Fargate and Lambda services, thereby making usage flexible in the event it needs to be scaled up or down depending on times of high demand. Also, making a complete or partial upfront payment can also invite bigger discounts, but the option to proceed without any upfront payment is also available, at the minimum discount amount.
Offering up to 66% discount, the Compute Savings Plan is also the more flexible option as it allows a flat rate despite changes in instances (in AWS terminology, this is a virtual machine, which is what EC2 specializes in, by the way), regions, operating systems and tenancy.
Offering up to 72% discount, the EC2 Instance Savings Plan is comparatively less flexible, but its heightened discount is subject to movements happening within the same instance family. Other variables such as operating system and tenancy can remain fluid.
The AWS Cost Explorer is the first starting point (and an incredibly useful tool) to determine which exact Savings Plan is right for you based on your usage history. The Cost Explorer will also indicate how much money you stand to save by switching to a Savings Plan, as well as the hourly rate that’s applicable based on your usage history. Upon purchasing the recommended option, you can also choose to make a partial or full upfront payment to obtain extra discounts on your hourly rate.
If you have multiple accounts associated with your AWS Organizations account, the Savings Plans you purchase will be applicable to all these accounts, but you can choose to restrict it to the account under which it was purchased. Simultaneously, you can also purchase multiple Savings Plans, and the system will bill you depending on which active plans you have available.
While the AWS Savings Plan has been devised to reduce costs for enterprises who are looking to keep using services for an extended period of time, this system brings in a host of other benefits too. On top of that, understanding when AWS Savings Plans will be most relevant for your business needs is also insightful (apart from the Cost Explorer suggesting whether it is a viable solution in the first place or not).
This is an obvious one, of course. While on-demand pricing is convenient because it only bills you for what you use, pricing units can shift based on which services you are using. With a Savings Plan, simply pay the flat hourly rate for all usage done under the specified limit; on-demand pricing will only apply if this limit is crossed.
Do you have an application that has predictable compute usage? Especially if this has been monitored for an extended period of time, it is safe to ascertain that only a certain amount of usage is required to keep things running. This is an ideal opportunity to initiate the AWS Savings Plan, and together with precise recommendations from Cost Explorer, it is a safe and risk-free step to further do so.
Even if swift and drastic shifts are required, this can be done on the flat rate, provided it is carried out below the pre-determined commitment – thereby helping you save big in the long run.
As the name suggests, Reserved Instances are reservations of AWS resources for future use, for a period of 1 to 3 years. If RIs were already in vogue, why was Savings Plans introduced? While the booking of resources can ensure productivity stays intact in the likelihood that extra is required on short notice, it also invites the risk of not being used completely.
This is why AWS allows under-used RIs to be sold in secondary marketplaces, as well as convertible RIs which permit instances, networks and a plethora of other variables to be changed. Nonetheless, the aspect of RIs is still a very complex one, and leaves the possibility of being under-utilized.
Unlike RIs, Savings Plans offer discounted prices as well as the flexibility to use whatever you need, and as often as you need it, by simply adhering to the flat hourly rate.
Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a serverless compute service that provides instances (virtual machines) for applications. This way, you need not worry about managing infrastructure such as servers. A prime example of IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), EC2 offers instances complete with variable memory, CPU and all the other configurations required by modern-day machines.
Amazon Fargate is a serverless PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) which enables the creation of containers for application deployment. With no administration required to operate servers, Fargate facilitates optimum productivity, offering convenience and the option for developers to only focus on the application at hand.
Amazon Lambda is classified as FaaS (Function-as-a-Service), which offers the ability to run code minus the hassle of infrastructure management. With Lambda, the code runs only when it is required, and so you are also billed only when this happens. Without having to worry about managing infrastructure yet again, paying complete focus to your application at hand is conveniently possible.
The cloud has long since taken the digital world by storm, but its recent peaks in demand have given many services a limelight. With COVID-19 pushing businesses to work remotely and migrate to the cloud, even the otherwise traditional, brick-and-mortar business of today have switched to cloud-based services in the attempt to stay afloat and keep contributing its fair share to the economy. However, cloud computing has been popular for much longer than the few months prior, owing to a whole host of reasons. From scalable cloud services that are managed by a third-party provider, businesses are now given the freedom to focus only on what matters, without having to worry about operating and financing bulky infrastructure such as servers.
AWS has also been in the cloud space for a long time, and for good reason. Well established and relied on by developers and businesses alike, AWS has always been dedicated to offering services that are cost-effective, high-performance and most importantly – customer-centric. With financial commitment that is affordable as it is scalable, is there a better (and cheaper) way to pay for AWS’s many services? As it turns out, the answer to that question is yes, especially after the release of its discounted billing service – AWS Savings Plans. Consisting of a flat hourly rate that requires commitment for 1 to 3 years, AWS Savings Plans ensures your application can utilize the cloud provider’s EC2, Fargate and Lambda resources without fluctuating on-demand rates.
AWS Savings Plans include 2 different options – compute savings and EC2 instance savings. While the former offers up to a 66% discount, it provides added flexibility by enabling shifts to be made between different instances, operating systems and tenancies. The latter, while offering a higher discount of 72%, provides comparatively lesser flexibility by enabling shifts only between instances of the same family. By consulting the AWS Cost Explorer, the best option will be recommended based on usage history. As long as resources are utilized under the commitment level, on-demand rates won’t be charged. Unlike Reserved Instances (RIs) which allow resources to be booked in advance but cannot guarantee whether they will be utilized completely, Savings Plans allow for greater flexibility with its flat hourly rate – and resource usage as much as is required, within the confines of the savings option chosen.
With cloud computing being renowned for its concept of paying only based on what is used (and how much), the AWS Savings Plan ensures no wastage at all – and therefore, no unwanted expenditure on your part, as a business. With many other plans devised in the past to further reduce costs (such as RIs), the increased complexity and likelihood of still incurring wastages has been significant – something that Savings Plans completely eliminate. If your application presents predictable usage and traffic, opting for an AWS Savings Plan is ideal, as it has the ability to further reduce costs for an already affordable and scalable cloud.