2

The title sums it up. Essentially, I'd like to offer my own closed-source proprietary ML algorithms to Amazon AWS customers on a pay-to-use basis API - e.g., sales volumes prediction algorithm service licensed monthly or annually or per call. Most information found talks about how to build and give it away, or use it internally within one's company, but I'm looking to offer it to the public as a commercial offering on AWS.

Thank you in advance for your help - links to articles, help pages, or direct steps on how to do this.

Reza Mousavi
  • 4,420
  • 5
  • 31
  • 48
ds-ml-ai
  • 31
  • 6

3 Answers3

1

This is actually very easy to do with AWS.

Create an AWS Marketplace account.

Create an AMI bundled with your software with per hour pricing.

This link will get you started:

Sell on AWS Marketplace

John Hanley
  • 74,467
  • 6
  • 95
  • 159
  • That's suitable for software solutions like ERP, Accounting, etc. And indeed, that page reads "Sell Your software" E.g. an accounting software vendor sets up a server image with their software fully installed and configured for customers to license as turn-key, ready to be cloned and used. Mine is not software selling but SaaS - think of it as weather forecasting api you subscribe to, integrate your systems with it and get weather forecast information. One does not need to buy a server AMI to get weather forecast through a web api (like APIXU). – ds-ml-ai Sep 17 '18 at 01:24
  • In other words, mine has no machine image to sell for it is SaaS. So, does Amazon AWS natively support my setting up and offering my own (3rd party) ML-algos as SaaS to customers as non-AMI solution, but rather pay-to-use WS-solution? – ds-ml-ai Sep 17 '18 at 01:25
  • I am only aware of solutions that involve AMIs. – John Hanley Sep 17 '18 at 01:31
  • Thanks for your time John, but the answer/solution you suggested is N/A to my question, for it is not about selling/licensing software solutions like Accounting or ERP packages. Title clearly reads pay-to-use API. – ds-ml-ai Sep 17 '18 at 02:55
  • No problem but you stated in your question: licensed monthly or annually or per call. – John Hanley Sep 17 '18 at 03:15
1

Allow me please to answer my own question. Although not a 100% what I was hoping for, there's certainly support for this in the platform which is great to see: Software-as-a-Service-Based Products

ds-ml-ai
  • 31
  • 6
0

It looks like you need to set up your own EC2 server and then create an API gateway call to invoke your service, and you can create API keys to control access/pricing for your end users.

API Key usage: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/latest/developerguide/api-gateway-setup-api-key-with-restapi.html

You can also look into AWS Sagemaker to set up your ML pipeline and provide a managed inference endpoint if you don't want to host your own EC2 server, from there can leverage API gateway the same way.

Banjo Obayomi
  • 1,636
  • 15
  • 17
  • Thanks Banjo. You suggested two approaches. 1) My own EC2 + API Keys: Wouldn't that be just like any other regular hosting elsewhere? Meaning, I'd have to advertize my API elsewhere for AWS Marketplace only advertizes AMIs, plus I'd have to handling all the payments and licensing management myself for AWS seems to natively handle only AMIs licensing. – ds-ml-ai Sep 17 '18 at 23:47
  • 2) Sagemaker: I looked into it before posting my question. That one seems primarily DS/ML dev environment and tool, a great one at that mind you, but deploying of the solution would "suffer" from the same symptoms as my own EC2 option, i.e. no possibility of advertizing on AWS Marketplace and having to handle payment processing and API keys expiry management myself. – ds-ml-ai Sep 17 '18 at 23:47
  • As you may see, the main benefits of the AWS, the ones I'm after, would not be in hosting or scalability, for I can get that at many different places, but an option of advertising on AWS Marketplace and be seen by thousands of companies - yet that part seems to be unavailable unless one is selling/licensing AMIs. – ds-ml-ai Sep 17 '18 at 23:47
  • As I mentioned in my reply to John, AMIs are great for e.g. accounting software vendor that can set up a server image with their software package fully installed and configured for customers to license as turn-key, ready to be cloned and used. Mine is not software package selling but SaaS. The other benefit I'm after is automatic payment processing with automatic license management tied to it, of my SaaS WS API, which again seems to be available only to AMIs licensing. – ds-ml-ai Sep 17 '18 at 23:48
  • Hopefully, one of these giants (MS, Amazon) will recognize an opportunity to create Data-Science-as-a-Service hosting environment and marketplace. A place where DS/ML experts would be able to post their proprietary algorithms (their own closed-source algos and IP) for time-based/core-based licensing for companies to subscribe to and leverage ready to be used algorithms. Is there anything like I just described at Amazon or anywhere else? MS Azure is also into licensing VM images only. – ds-ml-ai Sep 17 '18 at 23:48
  • Looks like others have wondered the same thing https://www.kaggle.com/general/5410 – Banjo Obayomi Sep 18 '18 at 02:26