https://stratechery.com/2021/cloudflares-disruption/
I found this to be a very good discussion on Cloudflare’s new offering of cloud object storage called R2.
Cloudflare is ready to launch a new cloud object storage service that promises to be cheaper than the established alternatives, a step the company believes will catapult it into direct competition with AWS and other cloud providers. The service will be called R2 — “one less than S3,” quipped Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in an interview with Protocol ahead of Cloudflare’s announcement Tuesday morning. Cloudflare will not charge data-egress fees for customers using R2, taking direct aim at the fees AWS charges developers to move data out of its widely popular S3 storage service.
R2 will run across Cloudflare’s global network, which is most known for providing anti-DDoS services to its customers by absorbing and dispersing the massive amounts of traffic that accompany denial-of-service attacks on websites. It will be compatible with S3’s API, which makes it much easier to move applications already written with S3 in mind, and Cloudflare said that beyond the elimination of egress fees, the new service will be 10% cheaper to operate than S3.
Cloudflare has always framed itself as a disruptor; R2 lives up to its reputation.