UKFast undercuts AWS on price

CEO Lawrence Jones says launch of new open source service means customers need never leave its environment

UKFast claims the launch of its open source cloud platform has left Amazon Web Services playing catch-up on price, thereby negating its giant rival's only advantage.

ECloud Flex, a self-service hosting platform aimed at developers, works out 10 per cent cheaper than AWS's equivalent service, according to the UK hosting provider.

"There are all sorts of good reasons to want to buy from UKFast. We are British and pay our taxes, and we contribute to the British economy - and then you've got the whole data sovereignty aspect," UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones told CRN.

"But money does talk. People building websites and applications also need a very, very competitive environment and it's important we support that."

The new service, which is built on Openstack, offers a basic virtual server with two CPUs and 2GB of RAM for £12.88 per month. UKFast said the price AWS Ireland offers for an equivalent product is £14.30.

Jones (pictured) admitted UKFast had lost customers to AWS in the past and described eCloud Flex as the "missing link" that would quell any urges to shop elsewhere.

"[eCloud] Flex is more for the various types of customers we've already got, to make it easy for them to develop products, so they don't ever have to leave the UKFast environment and don't ever have to go offshore," he said. "That is a massive issue now, and comes up in two out of every three enquiries. All legal firms and public sector clients are asking 'where will my data be hosted and have you got any US connections'?"

UKFast claims to have a current revenue run rate of £37.2m, compared with AWS's $7.88bn revenue haul last year. Meanwhile, AWS recently announced plans to launch its first UK datacentres in a move partners said would help assuage data sovereignty concerns.

But Jones claimed some customers that had switched to AWS have migrated back to UKFast.

"We lost a couple of big e-commerce customers but they have since realised that what's really important is speed and resilience; where they are able to pick up the phone if they have a problem," he said. "And what we found is, for people consuming massive amounts of bandwidth, Amazon isn't a cheap service. It's great as a quick spin-up-and-get-going but as the customer gets bigger, Amazon becomes very expensive."