Small business accounting software-as-a-service company, Xero, has completed what it says has been one of the largest data migrations onto AWS across Australia and New Zealand: more than 59 billion records, 3000 apps and 120 databases representing all data and applications for its 862,000 customers globally.
Xero announced at the AWS summit in Auckland in May 2015 that it was moving from its long time cloud provider, Rackspace, onto AWS. It said today that the migration had taken more than two years to be architected and executed, during which time it had added almost half a million new customers.
The company said the migration would give it the capacity to handled anticipated growth. “Rebuilding the infrastructure behind the platform will enable the company to leverage machine learning technology, deliver fast-paced innovation, improved margins and increased uptime. … As Xero works towards its goal of reaching a million customers, we needed to scale our platform globally to provide customers with a fast, secure and easily accessible cloud platform they can access anytime, from any device connected to the internet. AWS provided us with significant potential to continually improve the underlying technologies that help Xero function.”
It added:“Xero can leverage the considerable investment AWS has made in platform services to build and deploy software with shorter delivery timeframes. By using the on-demand computing power of AWS, Xero can release new software more rapidly, and experiment with these features in ways that were not possible on our older platform.”
Xero said it expected machine learning would redefine accounting. “The smart application of machine learning technology enables Xero to leverage the more than 1.4 petabytes of data, which is the equivalent of about 60,000 Blu-Ray movies, being stored and do something powerful: automate core accounting functionalities and enable business owners to work more efficiently.”
Xero’s chief platform and product officer, Duncan Ritchie, said Xero was using an increasing number of services that work together to create the service it offers customers, and the move to AWS would support this.“A key driver of our decision to move to AWS was to move technology decisions down into the hands of small autonomous groups of developers, and to allow greater experimentation with technology, allowing Xero to solve customer problems faster.”
He added: “We know that the faster we can deliver true innovation to our community of small businesses, accountants and bookkeepers, the more deeply they can feel the impact as it grows and integrates itself into everyday life. This ability has been supercharged with the move to AWS, and we can’t wait for the year ahead.”