Although lockdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced economic activity in many sectors — think the dramatic, immediate declines in airline bookings, hotel reservations and movie theater ticket purchases, for instance — they actually increased overall cloud spend.
Industries such as media and publishing, financial services, IT, and logistics all had to respond to rapid rises in consumer and business demand, and they did so by turning to cloud providers. According to an IDC report, cloud costs rose 2.2% annually in the first quarter of 2020, compared to a 16.3% decline in outlays on non-cloud IT infrastructure.
That’s the big picture view, at least. But what have individual UK companies been spending on AWS cloud services during the initial lockdown and beyond? For an answer, we turn to Intricately, the sales prospecting platform that collects cloud spend and usage data on more than 7 million organisations.
Each firm in Intricately’s top 5 is, as of September 2020, spending at least $5 million USD in AWS cloud costs per month. Let’s take a closer look.
Industry: Media and publishing
Spend: $12 million
The Guardian saw a combined monthly digital and print readership of over 35 million in June 2020, making it the UK’s second most-read paper overall. Cloud infrastructure ensures that its COVID-19 coverage, including detailed maps of cases, reliably reach and engage its readers.
Industry: Media and publishing
Spend: $7.1 million
Per analytics firm YouGov, the Daily Mail is the UK’s fourth most popular paper. It has virtually universal brand recognition (98%) and is especially popular among readers ages 50+.
Industry: Financial services
Spend: $6.7 million
The largest listed insurer in the UK, Prudential has for years been on the leading edge of cloud adoption in its space. Prudential's growing cloud costs have been driven by its operational expansion in Asia and its use of AI.
Industry: IT
Spend: $5.6 million
One of two successor firms to the original Hewlett-Packard Company, HP is one of the world’s largest manufacturers or both PCs and printers. With the ongoing shift toward laptop-centric remote work, HP’s core hardware businesses have remained strong.
Industry: Gambling and casinos
Spend: $5.1 million
Wiliam Hill estimates that 80% of its applications run in the cloud. In particular, the firm is a major user of VMware Cloud on AWS, with which it has moved many of its production workloads into the public cloud.
Rounding out the Intricately top ten were telecom Three UK, newspaper The Independent, media group Newsquest, logistic firms Forth Ports and newspaper publisher News UK. As with the top five, these firms are united by the mostly digital nature of their business operations, which have enabled their resilience even during lockdowns and made them natural consumers of AWS' cloud capacity.
AWS provides scale and speed not available via a traditional data centre, enabling the above organisations and countless others to sustain growing operations. However, AWS spend requires thorough and regular cost optimization, lest its recurring charges become uneconomical in the long run.
In the world of AWS Savings Plans, some of the most reliable cost optimization strategies now include: