Latest EC2 price cut for reserved instances and savings plans – what you need to know and how Spot’s products support it

Standard RIs and EC2 savings plans are now 2%-18% cheaper

On Friday, AWS announced discounted prices for Standard RIs and EC2 Instance Savings Plans for both 1 year and 3-year terms. The discount covers the most used the latest generation instance families, C5, R5, M5, T3, Z1, and A1. The discounts range from 2% up to 18% in additional savings across multiple regions and are available immediately for purchase.

Standard reserved instances are more relevant than ever before

Lowest price and highest liquidity

Even before the new discounted pricing, Standard Reserved Instances have been the type of Reserved Instances that offer some of the greatest savings for reserved capacity. Another great advantage of Standard Reserved Instances is that they can be sold through the AWS Reserved Instances Marketplace–customers can list their unused RIs and get their money back if they find a buyer. 

Eco, Spot’s product for managing reserved instance allocation and lifecycles, helps customers maximize Standard RI usage while maintaining flexibility. Eco not only integrates with AWS Marketplace, it also incorporates its own internal RI marketplace to quickly change RI coverage to match usage changes. These new discounts from AWS are a big win for Eco customers, further increasing the savings provided by using Standard RIs.

Taking advantage of the new discounted pricing

This announcement will create opportunities for companies to make cost-saving changes in not only their future commitment plans but also in their current commitment portfolios.  Cloud financial specialists will look to re-evaluate their long term cost benefit analyses when comparing standard and convertible commitment types.  At the same time, savvy companies will look to migrate to the latest generation families and in turn list older generation RIs on the AWS Marketplace.  The result is multiple opportunities to structure an RI portfolio that is saving significantly more money today than yesterday. For those looking to buy shorter-term RIs, these listings of older generation RIs will be ideal for great savings with minimal commitment. Eco customers on both sides of the deal, will have this handled automatically with Eco strategies seamlessly aligning with these changes.

Eco: Automation of Reserved Instances portfolio 

With Eco by Spot, customers benefit immediately from these pricing changes. Eco’s purchasing strategies take full advantage of Standard RIs, automatically keeping a well-balanced RI portfolio, and as a result Eco helps customers immediately realize additional savings from these price changes. This includes selling or exchanging certain instance types to allow for purchasing RIs at these newly discounted rates. Eco will also identify any new opportunities in the AWS Reserved Instances Marketplace for other generations of instance types and will purchase them to further maximize savings on the customer’s behalf.

Learn more about optimizing your reserved instance and savings plans portfolio

Eco is a managed solution for optimizing cloud commitments, for both Reserved Instances and Savings Plans. Eco ensures commitments are utilized and identifies unique opportunities in the AWS Marketplace, referred to as ‘Marketplace Gold’ to improve savings beyond what is possible with the default 1-3 year terms.

Learn more about Eco and get started at https://spot.io/product/eco/.