Amazon waiving data egress charges is a major step forward for use in European research and education.
Cloud computing – on-demand delivery of IT resources on a pay-as-you-go basis – offers huge opportunity for millions of users. Its benefits include reduced capital investment, economies of scale, faster setup and improved agility, and the ability to reach global audiences quickly and easily. Still, the research and education community has been slow on the uptake.
Data egress a major concern
One of the major concerns of the community has been that the payment structures offered by cloud providers are too unpredictable, leading to fear of large bills particularly from ‘data egress’ – the cost of data coming off cloud provider services onto the internet. Given the vast – and growing – amount of data being moved around by research and education users, this large variable cost is a genuine concern – particularly when financial models are often dictated by funding rounds.
Therefore the decision of Amazon Web Services, following extensive consultation with GÉANT and the British NREN Jisc, to waive data egress charges represents what could be an important step towards widespread adoption by the R&E community of cloud services in Europe.
Support to Cloud Services in the GÉANT Project
NRENs in Europe are collaborating through the GÉANT project to meet the needs of the HE community within cloud services.
More information:
News item on www.geant.org
