Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) is now offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscriptions to simplify the access and billing processes for the bevy of SaaS wares on the AWS Marketplace.
Independent software vendors (ISVs), which offer more than 800 SaaS products, had to previously set up billing and metering systems or rely on third parties to do so. Now they can combine usage charges within existing AWS accounts through an API.
The first SaaS subscriptions will be available in areas such as application development and monitoring, security and log management, databases, BI and big data; media; storage, and many more.
Yesterday’s blog post by Jeff Barr, AWS spokesperson, stated that the new SaaS solutions are built on AWS infrastructure. You will only pay for what you use. There are no monthly fees or subscription charges. You can purchase security services on a a per host basis, log processing on a a GB-ingested base, geocoding on a a request basis, caching on a GB-cached basis, and log processing on a GB-request basis. Your AWS bill will show the usage charge for services you use.
The company stated that the SaaS subscription service is particularly useful for cloud computing customers who use multiple SaaS products. The new system is as easy to find, consume, and pay for SaaS offerings today as it was for traditional AWS Marketplace software, stated Dave McCann, an executive, in a statement yesterday.
McCann stated that “No other cloud infrastructure marketplace offers such a broad selection of SaaS options and a production SDK that enables software sellers to deliver unified billing and metering for their SaaS products with so many metering options.” We’ve made it as easy and flexible for ISVs as possible, which will give our customers deep and broad choices. Customers can now get all the applications they need in one place with AWS Marketplace SaaS Subscriptions.
The subscriptions for all 800-plus solutions are not yet available at this stage. Subscription services are available now from Alert Logic (Aspera, Bitium and Cloudinary), Cloudyn, Cloudyn Datadog, Datapath and Dome9 Security.
The AWS Marketplace SaaS Subscription site features offerings from vendors that offer services such as data transfer, compliance/sales tax, image and video management and backup/disaster restoration.
Dynatrace, for instance, immediately issued a press release announcing that it was offering a SaaS subscription to cloud application monitoring. The company stated that Amazon Web Services (AWS), customers can purchase and deploy Dynatrace’s cloud application performance management service through AWS Marketplace. This eliminates many of those tedious steps that are involved in cloud-based software procurement, deployment, and billing.
