Amazon doesn’t provide details but confirmed that it had acquired ClusterK Inc. The company specializes in helping enterprises save money through bidding on unutilized compute instances, known as Spot Instances.
The Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS site states that Spot Instances allow users to set their own prices for Amazon EC2 computing power. You simply bid on spare Amazon EC2 instances, and they will be run whenever your bid exceeds current Spot Price. This fluctuates in real-time based upon supply and demand. The Spot Instance pricing model is a complement to the Reserved Instance and On-Demand pricing models. It often provides the most cost-effective computing power, depending on the application.
ClusterK is a bidding platform that helps companies save money and find the best deals.
ClusterK is software that allows high availability in AWS Spot Market to accelerate and save upto 90 percent on mission-critical applications. ClusterK optimizes your infrastructure to achieve maximum performance, availability, and lowest cost by seamlessly integrating price prediction, multiple market and offensively rebalancing.
[Click on the image to see a larger version.] Interactive Chart showing Current Spot Prices (source : ClusterK). Venture Beat reported the acquisition on Wednesday. However, there are few details. Venture Beat’s initial report stated that Amazon would pay between $20 million to $50 million for the startup, which was founded in Palo Alto, Calif. in 2013.
ClusterK’s services are available to enterprises who wish to explore them. An interactive chart shows current spot prices around the world.
The site states that “any single spot market can be volatile and, in its own right, not appropriate to mission-critical applications.” ClusterK automates the use multiple instance types across multiple availability zones to create a platform that is highly available for mission-critical applications.