Analysis of cloud storage prices

TL;DR

This paper surveys and compares cloud storage pricing plans from major providers, revealing that most offer more expensive options and identifying dominant providers through various comparison methods.

Contribution

It introduces a comparative analysis of cloud storage prices using unit price, two-part tariff approximation, and Pareto dominance, highlighting pricing structures and provider competitiveness.

Findings

Most providers use bundling pricing schemes.

Amazon employs a block-declining pricing policy.

Limited providers are cost-effective and dominant.

Abstract

Cloud storage is fast securing its role as a major repository for both consumers and business customers. Many companies now offer storage solutions, sometimes for free for limited amounts of capacity. We have surveyed the pricing plans of a selection of major cloud providers and compared them using the unit price as the means of comparison. All the providers, excepting Amazon, adopt a bundling pricing scheme; Amazon follows instead a block-declining pricing policy. We compare the pricing plans through a double approach: a pointwise comparison for each value of capacity, and an overall comparison using a two-part tariff approximation and a Pareto-dominance criterion. Under both approaches, most providers appear to offer pricing plans that are more expensive and can be excluded from a procurement selection in favour of a limited number of dominant providers.