Kempinski Hotels has been able to delegate much of the operational overhead associated with managing an infrastructure to the AWS Cloud. “We are a hospitality management organization, not an IT services company,” says Ward. “We’re experiencing better uptime on AWS compared to our traditional on-premises infrastructure and we don’t have to deal with air conditioning, power supply, or hardware failures. The route we took to the AWS Cloud means that we don't have to think twice about hardware.”

The company works with Cloudreach to install a range of services and applications. “Backups, patching and monitoring have taken a back seat and my team is now fully occupied in creating genuine business,” Ward comments. “These tasks bring value to our corporate departments and business units, and as a result, to our customers.”

Several departments, including Operations, Finance and Accounting and Training Services, have moved to AWS and Kempinski Hotels plans to move its entire infrastructure to AWS and close the Geneva datacenter. The company anticipates that migrating completely to AWS will lower the total cost of ownership. Ward estimates, “We’re avoiding the cost of hardware and software refreshes and on-premises facilities. When we consider these savings as well as lower operational costs and improved staff productivity, Kempinski Hotels is reducing costs by roughly 40 percent over a five year period.”

Ward concludes, “The ability to provision resources rapidly, scale dynamically to meet demand, and decommission instances when we don’t need them saves costs and provides unmatched business agility.”