Amazon is reportedly getting a little more tight-fisted when it comes to giving out Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits to charities.
Sources speaking to The Register claim Amazon has halved the amount of credits charities get for free, taking the amount of AWS Promotional Credits from $2,000 to $1,000. The credits cover AWS cloud services such as WorkDocs, WorkMail, and WorkSpaces.
Some UK charities, who have come to rely on the credits to conduct operations, were surprised by the decision, which has left them having to pay the difference out of their own pockets.
Amazon cloud credits
While Amazon is of course within its rights to reduce credits, some charities felt that they were given little notice of the change, making the decision both surprising and hurtful, given that charities have become used to the extra credits for their operations.
In a statement, Amazon said: "Globally, the amount of AWS credits we provided to non-profit organisations increased last year. We offer a variety of programs to help non-profit customers access and experiment with the latest cloud technology. This includes grants and funding to drive modernisation and innovation, as well as free training to help upskill employees. We continuously review and evolve these programs to ensure the right mix of offerings are in place to support our customers."
Strength to strength
At a time when Amazon is under immense scrutiny for its retail activities, AWS is the unit that can seemingly do no wrong.
Created by Jeff Bezos and currently run by Adam Selipsky, the division has become the powerhouse that offers free cash flow for Amazon's other businesses, many of which operate with a large loss.
This huge growth and large customer base can lead to issues though, particularly when AWS suffers downtime or an outage, as has unfortunately occured several times in recent months.
Developers have been the biggest winners, being able to access pay-as-you-go cloud services that would take significant upfront investment to create individually.
Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud are closest to AWS but the gap is still pretty large. Estimates suggest that Amazon controls around 33% of the cloud computing market, compared to 21% for Azure and 10% for Google Cloud.
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