The SSV is a central tool in helping the Trust get a better understanding of what its supporters are doing. “We’re always looking to grow as an organization and expand our activities, but as with most of our initiatives, we have to keep a close eye on costs,” says Yarwood. “When we sat down with Sirocco Systems at the start of the project, we calculated that running our SSV data warehouse on AWS would be about a third of the TCO of hosting and licensing the data warehouse on traditional technologies. Essentially, it was the affordability of the solution, especially Amazon Redshift, which has enabled our SSV vision.”

Brambley continues, “With a traditional setup, the Trust would have been looking at huge capex just to get the project going. But with AWS, not only was overall total cost of ownership (TCO) reduced, but there was also no huge upfront investment.”

And, with the system’s big capacity to scale, the Trust knows its current 3TB of data can easily be doubled or tripled without a corresponding increase in costs. “The benefit of building this system on AWS is that if the Trust decides it wants to bring in twice the amount of data, there will only be a 20 percent increase in price. However, if we built it using traditional technologies, we’d be looking at a whole hardware refresh, potentially doubling the price, if not more,” says Brambley.

"We’re only at the start of the larger SSV journey, but with AWS we’re getting real insight into our supporters and for the first time can see which of our members also book holidays with us or use our online shop. This is transformational for us. As we start to truly understand our supporters better, we can more effectively anticipate their needs,” says Yarwood. “With the functionality that Redshift has given us, we can break down our analysis to individual properties, so they can drive local marketing campaigns with a view to increasing visitor numbers. AWS technology isn’t just changing what we do at a group level—it has been a real revelation for us across the board.”

One of the next projects that the National Trust is looking at is linking the SSV to core marketing tools. Yarwood says, “With complete consistency and visibility of data, we’ll be able to drive highly tailored marketing and give supporters even richer experiences, inspiring loyalty and extending the work of the Trust.”