Pictured: Dr Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO

Amazon held a masterclass on its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud portfolio in central London yesterday (26 September). Delivered to an audience of start-up companies, the speakers included innovative application developers, Boris Johnson’s digital director and Amazon’s chief technology officer.

The American firm used the event, attended by The Cloud Circle along with a host of budding entrepreneurs, to unveil two new initiatives aimed at helping start-ups with their cloud proposition. The first is the introduction of a weekly drop-in support session, based at The Hoxton Mix in Tech City, East London, where new businesses can get one-to-one support by placing their operation on AWS platforms. The second is an offer which will see 120 businesses receive intensive training in the AWS functions for free.

Yesterday afternoon’s event took place at the offices of London Partners – the organisation set up by Mayor Boris Johnson in April this year to promote the capital – with an inspiring backdrop of Tower Bridge and the City of London’s sky line.

The famed Amazon chief technology officer, Dr Werner Vogels, opened up proceedings with an impassioned run down of AWS’ growth, current services, and benefits to start-up businesses over traditional computing methods.

The main theme of his presentation was the flexibility that AWS offers. This equates to complete utility-style scalability – allowing businesses to use as much storage and computer power as they need at any one time and not have to pay for it when it is not needed. In addition, all major coding languages can be combined, as can other providers' offerings.

He said the philosophy behind AWS is the same as Toyota’s lean principles, which are now a staple of business efficiency models. Principally, “you shouldn’t do anything that doesn’t add value to your business,” said Dr Vogels. “AWS is the tool which will allow you do that, meaning you can spend the majority of your time on innovation, rather than heavy lifting.”

To illustrate the surge in uptake that AWS is enjoying, he pointed out that the service now adds the same amount of computer power every day as was needed to power Amazon.com, the retail arm of the business, when it was a $2.76bn turnover company in the year 2000.

Dr Vogels' address was followed by two case studies of successful start-ups, presented by their respective founders. Both say their endeavours would not have been possible without the use of AWS.

The first was Jon Goldhill, creator of Zanran - an application which scans web images in bulk to isolate those with statistical information which can then be utilised for business intelligence, accessible by its own search engine.

Goldhill nearly gave up on the project at one stage, having spent five months unsuccessfully attempting to source funding to pay for the infrastructure he needed. Then a friend told him about the cloud.

With AWS, Zanran was able to cost effectively store the 100 million images in its database and scale up comfortably, at any time, from 3 to 303 servers, as per need.

“What’s more, it’s cheap to experiment with and you can avoid making purchasing errors by not buying physical infrastructure outright,” said Goldhill. “That was a big concern for us.”

The second case study was presented by Matt Millar of Live Talkback – a four man team which has most recently created the X Factor app for ITV.

The app allows users to interact with the television programme by ‘clapping’ or ‘booing’ through tapping the appropriate button while acts are performing. A visual indicator of the overall trend at any given time is then displayed alongside it.

Live Talkback expects to have a million people using the app simultaneously by the end of the live shows. If the shows were running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, this would give it 260 billion requests per month and would make it the second busiest web application in the world – behind only Facebook.

As a start-up company, Millar says the only way that the company is able to handle the usage is through the cloud; buying its own data centres would cost an astronomical amount and, due to the violent peaks in demand, the infrastructure would sit collecting dust for the rest of the week. AWS could help you win business, he added, as often the companies you are pitching to will also be using it and therefore know it can be depended on.

Millar also had some advice for anyone wishing to be an X Factor contestant, based on the usage of the app.

“Firstly, be a man,” he said. “Around 70 per cent of our users are female and they prefer the male acts. Secondly, if you are a woman, don’t wear skimpy outfits. This definitely does not sit well with our users.”

After a coffee and networking break, the event resumed with an address by Mayor of London Boris Johnson’s digital advisor Kulveer Ranger.

Ranger said that both Johnson and the Prime Minister David Cameron are very keen to support digital industries and make London a hub for cloud-based activity.  He said plans are underway to improve the support for this, including both the technical infrastructure and the introduction of associated tax breaks. He said the government is focussing its efforts on convincing the private sector to invest in the infrastructure, in keeping with the ‘big society’ philosophy, and he pointed to BT’s installation of 500,000 public wi-fi spots across the capital as evidence of its success in this regard.

He said government’s decision to make the bulk of its information and statistics available to the public is also paying dividends, with over 70 apps already having been created by private businesses which utilise the data.
In addition, Ranger stated, within 18 months, government aims to have supported the creation of 36,000 digital apprentices.

The final session of the day was a panel debate featuring Goldhill, Millar and Ranger, with the questions posed by event facilitator Tim Bradshaw, digital media correspondent at the Financial Times.

The highlight here was a debate over how to finance a good idea. Pointing towards the office buildings in the City of London inhabited by the banks, Ranger stated that “there are some big buildings over there full of money and they are waiting to invest in new businesses.” He also reiterated his point that government is looking to provide further support in the form of tax breaks.

But Goldhill and Millar said that getting anyone in the UK to invest remains a difficult proposition for start-ups.
“Venture capitalists won’t generally look at anything under £50m,” said Goldhill. “They want the big money.”

Millar said that investors in the UK work differently to the way they do on the other side of the Atlantic, where big investments in a hot new brand which isn’t already monetised are common. Here, he said, investors are much more interested in taking something that already has profitability and scaling it up.

Moreover, “the best way to make money is through your audience,” he said. “They are prepared to put money into a good idea, which investors aren’t really interested in, and they won’t take a share of your business in return either.”

After the panel debate, the event was concluded with more networking and a glass of wine.

For more information on the training initiative that Amazon announced, see https://aws.amazon.com/uk-startup-training/. The offer is open to the first 120 respondents.