kavehkhorram

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

We actually have a strong positive relationship with AWS! They're helping us by introducing us to their customers, and we can also be purchased on the AWS marketplace: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-3sq4hhmmwb5fg...

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.

For now we're all-in on AWS, but have plans on going to Google Cloud later this year!

Good to hear. :-)

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.

You can start with as little as one 4GB instance!

Appreciate your support!

We've heard similar horror stories -- we're hoping to make the cloud a little more manageable!

Thank you!

Hi everyone, Kaveh here, founder of Usage AI. Would love to get the community's thoughts here and answer any questions y'all might have!

When I first met him he told me he was living in a tiny appt in Hell's Kitchen (NYC neighborhood) but was looking for a new job. He’d just moved to the city from Colorado and was trying to reset. I knew he had a great work ethic and that he was a self starter so decided to take a risk. 100% worth it. He’s closed well over a million in deals and now runs our sales team.

Nope! If the savings are zero, we aren't paid so they do not remain a client. :-)

Usage AI (https://www.usage.ai/) | Sales Development Representative | ONSITE | Full-time | EST | NYC Our team is in need of Sales Reps to manage and build our sales pipeline.

We just closed a couple of million in funding and are growing pretty nicely. We need to add even more smart people to our team! :)

We test for basic knowledge of AWS and AWS cost optimization -- the rest can be taught on the job!

If you have any questions or want to apply send an email to kaveh@usage.ai.

Great to see https://www.usage.ai/ mentioned here. I'm the founder & CEO, happy to answer any questions here.

Here's a direct link to the free EC2 Pricing Page: https://ec2pricing.usage.ai/

Let me know your thoughts! :-)

Thanks for sharing your project! Cloud costs have gotten ridiculously out of control (an Andreessen Horowitz report estimates that the excess cost of public cloud is $500 billion per year [1]) and it's great to see more projects tackling this problem.

I'm curious to see if you plan on implementing automation, or if the tool is focused on recommendations? We've built a tool at Usage.AI that automatically buys and sells Reserved Instances on AWS to cut costs [2].

Anyway, good luck with your project!

[1] https://a16z.com/2021/05/27/cost-of-cloud-paradox-market-cap...

[2] http://usage.ai

+1 on WalterGR's question. Google Cloud recently hiked prices (again), doubling prices for some of its services [1], though Amazon has a better track record of keeping prices steady (or even reducing them) [2].

There are also newer innovations that aren't discussed in that comparison, like Google's Commited Use Discounts and Azure Reserved VM Instances (their answers to Amazon's Reserved Instances). If you're using AWS, my company, Usage.AI, has built a tool to automatically buy and sell Reserved Instances [3] to cut EC2 costs while providing flexibility.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/14/inflation-is-real-google-c...

[2] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws-cost-management/amazon-ec2-...

[3] http://usage.ai

I agree with the other commenters that overprovisioning (or underprovisioning) is a concern with the cloud, but the public cloud has long been more secure than on-prem data centers [1], [2], [3].

As for the cost, Reserved Instances can dramatically reduce your spend, with the caveat that you can get locked in 1 or 3 years. My company, Usage.AI, built a platform to solve this problem by automatically buying and selling Reserved Instances to get the price and flexibility benefits in one [4].

[1] https://www.infoworld.com/article/3010006/sorry-it-the-publi... [2] https://blogs.oracle.com/cloudsecurity/post/7-reasons-why-th... [3] https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/identity-security/ent... [4] http://usage.ai

Not at the moment. Any suggestions? :-)

No. We aren't in violation of any of AWS's terms.

The transfer of RIs are done through AWS APIs.

Not totally sure what you mean by we are only used by companies who plan on using our service for less than 29 months. Can you elaborate?

We sell the RIs to our other users (now in the hundreds) so we don't take a loss. We only take a loss when we aren't able to sell your RIs (which is what we use some of our Venture Capital money for).

If we can't find a buyer then yes, we buy them back until we find a buyer.

To limit this risk, we only offer buy-back on particular instance families and regions that are most popular (and easy for us to sell to other users).

With 100s of users -- we have network effects that make it easy for us to sell.

Actually we aren't loaning any money since we use no-upfront RIs only.

We have some customers that spend $10M+ on AWS, so we can work with any size of company.

We have something launching soon for RDS!

For a customer with an SP, we typically get them boosted to 100% coverage with our Flex RIs.

Once the SP expires, we automatically switch the customer over to 100% Flex RI to maximize savings.

Flex RI = 3-year no-upfront Standard Reserved Instances with Guaranteed Buyback

No conditions. We are fully automated, we have customers saving as little as $10k and some as many as $1M+ per year.

Usage does take on all the risk. The good thing about cloud compute is that it's recession-proof -- compute volume isn't something companies can cut.

The cloud reseller motion is something we briefly explored but not currently on the roadmap.

Our roadmap for the next 2 Quarters is Full Multi Cloud (Azure, GCP, and AWS) support.

We have a very strong positive relationship with AWS and meet with them often, both with senior leadership and account managers.

If you don't see anything it likely means there are no recommendations at the moment. We will make it more clear on the app when that happens.