Melbourne vCloud Express vs Amazon AWS

I've been looking into enterprise virtualisation solutions or 'cloud computing' as you might call it. I've taken a particular liking to Amazon's AWS which seems to be by far the industry leader in terms of the key criteria:

1. Price
2. Computing Power
3. Bandwidth
4. Storage

The only real catch for us here in Australia is the lag time between request and response. Keen to put this too the test i've spoken to a few people who use AWS. Firstly Glenn Richmond at CRM Online, they're using a single 'large' instance on AWS to host reportedly hundreds of users. Then there's SAASU who are literally hosting thousands of users, i believe they also only have one single 'large' instance. Both have a large percentage of their customers based in Australia. It seems as if while there is a small lag, the processing power that's delivered by AWS simply cancels this out compared to local physical hosts or VMS offered in Australia.

My interest in using a cloud solution was to allow for a more flexible rollout of Amicus, our Point of Sale system for Supermarkets, Wholesale, Retail, Cafes, Restaurants, Bars, Fuel Outlets etc. My idea is that if we could deliver the network throughput (preying for NBN [National Broadband Network] on that) and the processing power, we could host the solutions for end business directly and thereby improve delivery for our customers and reduce their costs.

The issues however is that so far as POS is concerned, sub-second lag still isn't quick enough. Not when you're operating a checkout or serving at a bar.

Seeking to overcome this albeit small but none the less serious issue of lag, i twittered @melbourneIT to see if they were moving on the concept. Turns out that they are indeed releasing their own cloud computing solution, they call it vCloud Express . Currently in beta, the solution looks as if it's gearing up to be an AWS competitor for Australia.

However, upon evaluation of their prices, they seemed quite steep - even when taking into account the currency change and GST. So i whipped out my trusty excel sheet and did the numbers:

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	MelbourneIT	AWS Small Instance
Available OS	Assumed Linux or BYO	Windows/Linux
CPUs	1	1
RAM	2GB	1.7GB
HDD Space Bundled	All paid per GB	160GB bundled
Storage Fees	$627.84	US$0.00
Rate per Instance per hour	$0.17	US$0.03
Annual Instance Fees	$1,463.92	US$262.98
Annual Fee (3y term)	$0.00	US$111.67
Annual Data Cost @ 10GB p/m	$125.64	US$18.00
Total Annual Cost	$2,217.40	US$392.65
Exchange	1	0.89
Localised lang=EN-US> Rate	$2,217.40	US$441.18
Ex Tax Total Per Year	$2,015.82	US$441.18

So, good idea Melbourne IT, certainly suitable to those who need their data to remain in country for legal or other reasons, also great for reducing the lag - you're definately on the right track. The problem is you've mucked up the key ingredient solely responsible for roaring success of AWS - the power delivered per dollar.vCloud Express is nearly 5 times more expensive than AWS!.

My humble opinion is that realistically for most applications you're going to be better buying more power from AWS (say a 'large' instance) and putting up with the lag then you are getting local hosting at 5 times the rate. Pity really.