Travis Perkins and Trainline welcome arrival of AWS UK data centres

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is now available to customers from data centres in the UK, with retail customers such as Travis Perkins, Just Eat and Missguided set to take advantage of the local storage and infrastructure support this option offers.

A statement from the tech giant said the new AWS Europe (London) Region will enable its customers – which also include Aviva, ITV, National Trust, Trainline and Transport for London – to run applications and store data in the UK at low latency.

London represents AWS's third European region, adding to its facilities in Ireland and Germany. Starting today (14 December 2016), developers can sign-up to the London-based hosting which comprises two Availability Zones that each have independent power, cooling, physical security, and are connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networks.

AWS customers focused on high availability can set up to run in multiple Availability Zones. The Amazon service has been available for over ten years now, allowing customers to pay on demand for the IT resources they use rather than incurring large capital expenses.

Wickes owner Travis Perkins, the largest supplier of building materials in the UK, is currently implementing a significant systems and business change which includes the migration of its data centres to AWS.

Neil Pearce, group CIO at Travis Perkins, commented: "We are committed to the cloud and are investing in going all-in on AWS.

"The opening of the new AWS Region in the UK, and the scalability and security that it provides, will make it even easier for us to free ourselves of our legacy systems and business processes. With AWS, we will be able to more quickly innovate and transform our business to provide unique experiences and services for our customers."

Mark Holt, chief technology officer at Trainline, said his company has recently completed the migration of 100% of its eCommerce infrastructure to AWS, arguing that it has brought better security, less downtime and saved the organisation money.

"From extensive testing, we know that 0.3s of latency is worth more than £8 million and so, while AWS connectivity is already blazingly fast, we expect that serving our UK customers from UK data centres should lead to significant top-line benefits."

UK-based AWS Partner Network independent software vendor partners include Alces Flight, Matillion, MicroStrategy, Sage, Software AG, Splunk, Tibco and Zerolight, while systems integrator partners include Attenda, Accenture, Capgemini, Claranet, CloudReach, Deloitte, Kainos, KCOM, KPMG and Rackspace.