This article discredits itself: Newvem does not provide any information on how it defines the ‘light user’ category, but [...] The company is also somewhat vague about the area under consideration -- do the figures refer to computing power (EC2), storage (S3), or the whole AWS package combined? There is really nothing of substance to see here. On the other hand, the main point being made is probably not wrong. It mak…
Don't know if it's the same definition, but their GigaOM post defines light as: “light” AWS users — those with fewer than 8 instances http://gigaom.com/cloud/newvem-pulls-back-the-curtain-on-ama... Obviously it wouldn't make sense for people who only use micro instances, but then again people who only use one micro instance don't use a third party cost management tool.
The reason we chose to segment by number of instances is that we consider this as a good metric for the complexity of one's cloud footprint, and the corresponding effort required to manage this footprint.