Cloudflare Partners With Microsoft, Google and Others To Reduce Bandwidth Costs (techcrunch.com)

A group called the Bandwidth Alliance, being led by Cloudflare, promises to reduce the price of bandwidth for many cloud customers. "The overall idea here is that customers who use both Cloudflare, which is turning eight years old this week, and a cloud provider that's part of this alliance will get a significant discount on their egress traffic or won't have to pay for it at all," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The alliance is open, and others may join still, but right now it includes virtually every major and minor cloud provider you've ever heard of -- with one exception. Current members include Automattic, Backblaze, Digital Ocean, DreamHost, IBM Cloud, Linode, Google, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Packet, Scaleway and Vapor. Some of these will now offer free egress traffic to mutual customers with Cloudflare, while others will offer at least a 75 percent discount.

Why would these businesses choose to do away with what's a minor but high-margin business, though? "The argument that we made to them was a pretty simple argument: it makes sense for you to charge for transit when you are actually paying for it," [Cloudflare CEO and co-founder Matthew Prince] said. Most of the time, though, those costs are very minor and Cloudflare, thanks to his massive number of global peering locations, can ingest the traffic directly from the cloud provider with no middlemen involved.

Comments

Just in case you missed it

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Amazon's AWS isn't participating in this. Because you should use whatever AWS service there is that competes with Cloudflare.

Re:Just in case you missed it

[Pseudonym]

CloudFront, which is 30% different from Cloudflare judging by the letters in its name.

Other side of the coin

[Sarten-X]

Or in other words, if you're using Cloudflare, but want to host on Sarten-X's Super-Awesome Web Service (or any of the tons of cheap host providers out there) instead of Azure, you'll have to pay more for bandwidth, and if you're trying to pitch a startup service like an API to clients, they'll want to have that free-bandwidth perk that your competitors offer.

I guess now to be competitive as a cloud provider, I have to go join this "Alliance", which I'm sure will involve a contract of some kind, and some terms... if they'll even talk to a bit player like me.

Thanks, FCC, for killing Net Neutrality! This is exactly the kind of shit that was predicted, and you said it wouldn't happen.

Re:Other side of the coin

[rtb61]

It will get worse and worse, crippling US internet competitiveness and do real damage to the entire US economy but a couple of companies will make out like bandits for a couple of years and it all blows up forcing new legislation but by then the damage is done and those companies don't give a fuck, even when their profits start dying becuase of a crippled economy because the dick executives at the top have wandered off with their bonuses all they care about. Government decision making driven by which ever corporation pays the most when ever they pay the most regardless of consequence.

You have yet to even taste the real chaos that is going to be created. Straight up Mafia like protection rackets, pay up or you traffic might suffer and all made legal by an extremely corrupt government. You will of course have to pay traffic protection to them all because, often your traffic will shift from one network to the other and just one leg of the journey can cripple regardlles of how much you spend in protection elsewhere.

Yet they don't give one fuck. Damage the economy, so what, they make more now. Legislation will be forced, so what, they made more as long as they could pay off politicians to block legislation for as long as possible. Long term damage will be done to the entire US economy, so what, more bonus now. They will dutifully stand up and shamelessly lie about anything and everything now, don't give one fuck, never prosecuted as long as they are tied to the correct crime clan at the time.

In fact you don't want to own the entire network, just critical juncture points, maximise the profitability.

Alliance my butt

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

More like a cartel to me.

Thanks FCC...

Re:Correction:

[sg_oneill]

Google is NOT part of the alliance.

Completely wrong. Google is absolutely part of the alliance, and one of the key backers.

Amazon , however, appears not to be. Which is curious, as Amazon is the dominant player in the space. Leading me to suspect this is bit of an anti-amazon club.

Re:Correction:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the author of article's fault, not Bandwidth Alliance. That said, Cloudflare has a separate agreement with Google that is along the same lines as those in Alliance.