Using AWS has enabled Aire to bring its new, disruptive approach to the traditional credit scoring market, with the reliability to ensure that its service runs consistently and with the security necessary to meet the demands of its financial-services clients. Working within a flexible environment has allowed the Aire team to innovate cheaply and quickly, something that wouldn’t have been possible in a traditional IT environment.

Kimball says, “The big win for us with AWS is the ability to innovate at speed, as well as the ability to automate, taking our development-based, agile approach to business and applying it to our infrastructure. We need to meet client requirements in a cost-effective and repeatable way, and AWS lets us do this.”

Bundy talks about the journey so far with AWS and how the startup has satisfied important security requirements along the way: “As we’ve moved from testing and developing our app to commercialization and regulation, each financial-services client has presented us with a set of third-party security requirements that had to be met before we could go any further. We've been able to point to the AWS platform and reassure potential clients that we’re secure in the cloud.”

For Aire, the ease of getting started and simplicity of working with AWS tools has allowed the startup to operate in a lean and agile way, avoiding the need to hire specialist IT staff to run the infrastructure. Bundy says, “AWS has allowed us to focus on the core skills and requirements of our business rather than maintaining a network that consumes resources that we can use more effectively elsewhere. It’s been a huge benefit to our business. As a startup, our resources are limited, so not having to hire a dedicated person to set up and maintain our infrastructure enabled us to get up and running. AWS tools are so easy to use that we can all play our part in managing the infrastructure day to day and don’t need access to dedicated staff or expensive external consultants.”

The availability that AWS provides helps Aire deliver the reliable infrastructure that its customers demand. “We’re really happy with our uptime,” says Bundy. “Our architecture is redundant at all levels. We no longer have to worry about things like backing up databases, which is great from an operational perspective. With AWS, we can focus on developing our product and getting it out there and recognized in the market—ultimately, getting people access to fair credit.”

Looking ahead, other aspects of the AWS offering will become important to Aire. As it on-boards customers, the scalability of AWS tools and the cloud provider’s global reach will be a critical factors in delivering services reliably and securely worldwide. “We’re still at the start of our journey, but as we grow, we’ll need the ability to scale rapidly and spin up server instances on demand," Kimball says. "And looking outside the UK, we will also have to consider regulation requirements in other countries. We hope the global presence of AWS will help us work with regulators in different countries to bring our product to more people. It’s good to know we have the infrastructure in place ready to get going with this when the time is right.”

He concludes, “The biggest advantage that we’re getting with respect to AWS is our ability to build a highly available, secure infrastructure for our clients. Without AWS and the availability and security it affords, the business literally would not be here today. We’re excited about using more of its features—for example, to run big data workloads—to develop our services in the future.”