SEATTLE, Sept. 12 — Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today launched the Reserved Instance Marketplace, an online marketplace that provides AWS customers the flexibility to sell their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Reserved Instances to other businesses and organizations. Customers can also browse the Reserved Instance Marketplace to find an even wider selection of Reserved Instance term lengths and pricing options sold by other AWS customers. Reserved Instances for Amazon EC2 allow customers to lower costs by making a low, one-time payment to reserve compute capacity for a specified term, and in turn, receive a significant discount on the hourly charge for that instance. The Reserved Instance Marketplace gives customers the flexibility to sell the remainder of their Reserved Instances as their needs change, such as wanting to move instances to a new AWS Region, changing to a new instance type, or selling capacity for projects that end before the term expires. Amazon EC2 Instances purchased on the Reserved Instance Marketplace offer the same capacity reservations as Reserved Instances purchased directly from AWS. To learn more about the Reserved Instance Marketplace, visit http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/reserved-instance-marketplace.

Businesses can now shop the Reserved Instance Marketplace to purchase Reserved Instances outside the standard one-year and three-year term lengths. For example, a business that anticipates increased website traffic for a short period of time, or an organization wishing to spend its remaining end-of-year budget, will be able to search for Reserved Instances with shorter duration times.

"AWS has long given customers multiple ways to use Amazon EC2 and save money," said Peter De Santis, Vice President, Amazon EC2. "For those wanting to pay for compute by the hour with no required upfront fee or ongoing commitment, Amazon EC2 offers On Demand Instances. For those willing to pay a small upfront fee in exchange for a substantial discount over On Demand Instances (up to 71%), Amazon EC2 offers Reserved Instances. As more and more customers have started buying Reserved Instances, they've asked for ways to sell their Reserved Instances to change instance types or where instances are located, and they've asked for more Reserved Instance term length options. The Reserved Instance Marketplace addresses both of these customer needs."

Ooyala is a leader in online video management, publishing, analytics and monetization. Its integrated suite of technologies and services give content owners the power to expand audiences through deep insights that drive increased viewer engagement and revenue from video. "We use Reserved Instances to run some of our core infrastructure, allowing us to significantly lower the cost to operate our services," said Nimrod Hoofien, senior vice president of engineering for Ooyala. "Predicting demand and anticipating needs for our rapidly expanding technology platform is very difficult. The Reserved Instance Marketplace will help us continually cut costs and mitigate the risks of expansion. It gives us the flexibility to sell any portion of our Reserved Instances, switch between instance types, move to a new AWS Region, and match the Reserved Instance term length to our business's needs."

"As a leading Platform as a Service provider, Engine Yard leverages AWS to empower thousands of our customers, including Bleacher Report, K2 Sports and Get Satisfaction, to reduce costs while helping them build great apps that grow their businesses," said Bill Platt, Vice President, Operations at Engine Yard. "Balancing the use of AWS's elastic on-demand capacity with the discounted Reserved Instance pricing, we are able to achieve maximum cost savings. Now, having the ability to leverage the Reserved Instance Marketplace, we can switch our capacity between instance types and regions, allowing us to further increase the cost advantages for our customers."

To get started with the Reserved Instance Marketplace, AWS customers can follow these simple steps:

1. Log into the AWS Management Console (http://console.aws.amazon.com) through a web browser.

2. Click on the Amazon EC2 tab and select the Reserved Instance option.

3. Select the Reserved Instances you'd like to sell and click "Sell my Reserved Instance" to enter the Sell my Reserved Instance Wizard.

4. After a brief registration process to configure your bank account, set the upfront price and the number of Reserved Instances to sell.

Once listed, other AWS customers can view the available Reserved Instances from the AWS Management Console, and choose the instance that best matches their criteria. AWS will complete the transaction and transfer ownership of the Reserved Instance to the buyer. Sellers will receive a cash disbursement for their Reserved Instance directly into their bank account via wire transfer.

About Amazon Web Services

Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began exposing key infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services – now widely known as cloud computing. The ultimate benefit of cloud computing, and AWS, is the ability to leverage a new business model and turn capital infrastructure expenses into variable costs. Businesses no longer need to plan and procure servers and other IT resources weeks or months in advance. Using AWS, businesses can take advantage of Amazon's expertise and economies of scale to access resources when their business needs them, delivering results faster and at a lower cost. Today, Amazon Web Services provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of enterprise, government and startup customers businesses in 190 countries around the world. AWS offers over 28 different services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). AWS services are available to customers from data center locations in the U.S., Brazil, Europe, Japan and Singapore.

About Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books; Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home & Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel, Shoes & Jewelry; Health & Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial. Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any type of business. Kindle Paperwhite is the most-advanced e-reader ever constructed with 62% more pixels and 25% increased contrast, a patented built-in front light for reading in all lighting conditions, extra-long battery life, and a thin and light design. The new latest generation Kindle, the lightest and smallest Kindle, now features new, improved fonts and faster page turns. Kindle Fire HD features a stunning custom high-definition display, exclusive Dolby audio with dual stereo speakers, high-end, laptop-grade Wi-Fi with dual-band support and dual-antennas/MIMO for 40% faster throughput than other tablets, enough storage for HD content, and the latest generation processor and graphics engine—and it is available in two display sizes – 7" and 8.9". The all-new Kindle Fire features a faster processor for 40% faster performance, twice the memory, and longer battery life.

Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, www.amazon.cn, www.amazon.it, and www.amazon.es. As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

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Source: Amazon Web Services