Amazon markets the story that they operate on thin margins (which no doubt they do in retail) but in AWS the margins are probably fairly attractive. They don't break this out in their SEC filings because (a) they don't have to, and (b) doing so would undermine their marketing message.
Economically cloud can make a lot of sense for several potential customers, including:
* those who have highly variable workloads (so they can spin up lots of servers to meet demand then spin them down afterwards)
* those who favor OpEx over CapEx (Like startups)
* and for those who are bypassing internal IT for TTM reasons (e.g. "shadow IT")
Another point to consider is that while AWS is increasingly dropping prices the same is in effect happening for people procuring their own hardware. The performance over price ratio (on multiple axis) is also improving for on premises deployments (c.f. Moore's Law).
Economically cloud can make a lot of sense for several potential customers, including:
* those who have highly variable workloads (so they can spin up lots of servers to meet demand then spin them down afterwards)
* those who favor OpEx over CapEx (Like startups)
* and for those who are bypassing internal IT for TTM reasons (e.g. "shadow IT")
Another point to consider is that while AWS is increasingly dropping prices the same is in effect happening for people procuring their own hardware. The performance over price ratio (on multiple axis) is also improving for on premises deployments (c.f. Moore's Law).