• The Register (UK), Monday, December 14, 2009 2:05 PM

Amazon Web Services, an Amazon.com subsidiary, said it would now offer variable pricing for clients of its cloud computing service. The pricing, dubbed "Spot Instances," allows users to bid for access to unused computer time for as long as their bid exceeds the current spot price for an hour's worth.

The spot price will fluctuate regularly as it will be determined by supply and demand, according to the company's chief technology officer Werner Vogels. "Spot Instances are well-suited for applications that can have flexible start and stop times such as image and video conversion and rendering, data processing, financial modeling and analysis, web crawling and load testing," according to a company statement.

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