InfoQ

InfoQ

News

My Bookmarks

Login or Register to enable bookmarks for unlimited time.

The content has been bookmarked!

There was an error bookmarking this content! Please retry.

Requester Pays: A New Amazon Business Model

Posted by Abel Avram on Jan 07, 2009

Sections
Architecture & Design,
Enterprise Architecture
Topics
Business ,
Architecture
Tags
S3 ,
Amazon

Amazon has introduced a new business model for its S3 web services called Requester Pays. Businesses using S3 can mark up data buckets so their transfer will be paid by data requesters instead of being paid by their owners as it is now. Used in conjunction with DevPay, the new model opens new business opportunities for companies willing to share their data with others.

Usually, an S3 bucket owner pays for its storage and transfer costs. That inhibits the businesses from opening up their data to others because they will have to pay every time the data is accessed and downloaded. The new business model, Requester Pays, will change the game. The bucket owner can decide if a bucket uses the new model, in which case the consumer accessing and transferring the data will have to pay for that service.

The bucket owner has to authenticate all requests coming for a Requester Pays bucket for Amazon to be able to charge the requesters. Furthermore, the requesters must add “x-amz-request-payer” in their GET/POST request to indicate they are aware of the paying procedure. The following bucket requests are not allowed, according to Amazon:

  • Anonymous requests

  • BitTorrent

  • SOAP requests

  • You cannot use a Requester Pays bucket as the target bucket for end user logging, or vice versa. However, you can turn on end user logging on a Requester Pays bucket where the target bucket is a non Requester Pays bucket.

The new business model will create new business opportunities for companies owning large amounts of data. Using Requester Pays does not create a profit by itself because the owner still pays for the storage and only avoids paying for the transfer, but it can be used in conjunction with Amazon’s DevPay. Instead of allowing access to data only to registered S3 users, DevPay allows the data owner to grant access to everyone using different paying models: monthly fee, paying for GET requests, paying for transfers (GB). By making the data public and using one of those paying models, the data owners can make a profit opening the gate to new business revenues and opportunities. 

No comments

Watch Thread Reply

Educational Content

Attila Szegedi on JVM and GC Performance Tuning at Twitter

Attila Szegedi talks about performance tuning Java and Scala programs at Twitter: how to approach GC problems, the importance of asynchronous I/O, when to use MySQL/Cassandra/Redis, and much more.

10 tips on how to prevent business value risk

One category of risk that project teams need to ensure they address is business value failure – delivering a product that fails to provide value for the business investor.

Interview: Software Systems Architecture: Working With Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives

InfoQ spoke to the authors of Software Systems Architecture on a couple of new topics, the System Context viewpoint and Agile, which have been added to the second edition.

Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Alex Papadimoulis discusses ugly code, where it comes from, how to avoid it, and how to get rid of it.

Architecting Visa for Massive Scale and Continuous Innovation

John Davies examines Visa’s architecture and shows how enterprises have architected complex integrations incorporating Hadoop, memcached, Ruby on Rails, and others to deliver innovative solutions.

Max Protect: Scalability and Caching at ESPN.com

Sean Comerford unveils ESPN.com’s architecture, what components are used and why, and the current changes the website goes through.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Enterprise Agile Adoption

Are there repeated patterns of failure on Enterprise Agile Enablement efforts? Sanjiv and Arlen discuss Seven Deadly Sins to avoid when adopting Agile in an enterprise.

Questions for an Enterprise Architect

Erik Dörnenburg answers: What is Enterprise and Evolutionary Architecture?, discussing 4 issues: Turning strategy into execution, Ensuring conformance, Where do the architects sit? Buying or building?