The Total Economic Impact™ Of AWS Unified Operations

Profit Protection Through Reduced Downtime

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations protected and enabled revenue for their organizations by helping prevent business-critical incidents, reducing service disruption duration, and minimizing the business impact of outages. For organizations operating customer-facing digital platforms, transaction-processing environments, travel services, subscription platforms, and high-volume events, even brief service disruptions could result in lost transactions, abandoned purchases, delayed operations, or degraded customer experiences. As a result, improvements in application availability and recovery times directly contributed to profit protection.

• Several interviewees stated that downtime carried significant financial consequences. Their organizations quantified the business impact of outages as lost revenue, lost bookings, delayed transactions, or operational disruption. They viewed the ability to prevent incidents and more quickly restore services as an important mechanism for protecting revenue streams. Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations reduced revenue risk by helping prevent incidents before they occurred. Proactive reviews, workload assessments, resiliency recommendations, and specialist guidance enabled their organizations to identify operational weaknesses and scalability issues before they affected production workloads. Several interviewees indicated that AWS experts helped validate architectures, prepare systems for peak demand, and reduce the likelihood of service disruptions during critical business events. The interviewee from a healthcare organization credited AWS specialists with helping their company prepare for a major product launch by identifying scalability limitations and creating additional operational safeguards.

• For businesses where outages directly affect customer transactions, booking activity, or operational throughput, reducing recovery times translated directly into avoided revenue loss. The interviewee from a travel organization indicated that customer bookings represented the primary business metric used to quantify outage impacts. During peak periods, their organization reported processing approximately “2,000 bookings per minute.” As a result, reducing outage duration by minutes substantially reduced lost bookings and associated revenue exposure.

• Interviewees also highlighted that revenue protection extended beyond direct sales. Several noted that faster recovery and fewer incidents reduced customer churn, protected brand reputation, improved customer trust, and maintained operational continuity during critical business periods. For companies operating subscription platforms and transaction-processing environments, avoiding service disruptions helped ensure that customer purchases, subscriptions, and payments continued uninterrupted. AWS Unified Operations protected revenue by decreasing the frequency of business-critical incidents and shortening recovery times when incidents occurred. By improving service availability, accelerating access to AWS expertise, and reducing outage durations, interviewees’ organizations avoided lost transactions, protected customer activity, and maintained continuity of revenue-generating operations.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The total annual revenue is $1 billion, 20% of which is impacted by customer-facing incidents.

• Decreased MTTE and MTTR transfer to less downtime, as do avoided incidents.

• The average profit margin for the composite is 10%.²

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary by organization based on:

• Implementation of proactive recommendations from AWS.

• Frequency of business-critical incidents.

• Financial impact of downtime.

• Major launches and peak demand events.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.6 million.

Faster Application Delivery

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations helped accelerate their organizations’ application deployments, modernization initiatives, and large-scale technology programs by providing access to AWS specialists throughout planning, design, testing, and production deployment activities. Rather than delaying projects while internal teams researched unfamiliar services, validated architecture decisions, or waited for support escalations, their organizations leveraged AWS experts to identify correct technical approaches early in the process, resolve deployment blockers, and reduce the risk of production failures. As a result, interviewees’ organizations brought new capabilities to market faster while reducing the engineering effort required to support launch readiness activities.

• Several interviewees indicated that AWS Unified Operations enabled their internal teams to avoid lengthy periods of research and experimentation when adopting new AWS services or implementing architectural changes. Instead of assigning engineers to spend months developing expertise in specific technologies, their organizations gained direct access to AWS specialists who provided guidance based on their experience supporting similar workloads. This reduced project delays and allowed engineering teams to focus on implementation rather than investigation. The VP of cloud and data engineering at a financial technology organization explained: “For services where we don’t have experience, [AWS specialists] already know everything. We skip the research entirely.”
  Interviewees further reported that AWS specialists accelerated architectural decision-making and helped their teams move projects through design and validation stages more efficiently. They described situations where AWS experts provided recommendations that avoided costly redesign efforts and identified solutions that internal teams would have taken substantially longer to discover independently. The VP of cloud and data engineering at a financial technology organization described a multiregion infrastructure initiative that had previously stalled because of cost concerns and architectural uncertainty. After engaging AWS experts, their organization identified a new approach that was “10 times cheaper” and was able to move forward with implementation.

• Interviewees also reported measurable reductions in project timelines when AWS specialists helped evaluate workloads and identify optimal configurations. The VP of cloud and data engineering at a financial technology organization described an OpenSearch optimization initiative that had remained on the backlog because internal teams lacked the expertise and capacity required to complete it. AWS specialists analyzed the environment, delivered recommendations, and reduced analysis efforts from several months to weeks. They estimated that the overall project timeline was shortened to approximately three months while avoiding the need to divert resources from other priorities.

• Interviewees further indicated that avoiding launch delays generated labor savings and revenue benefits. Engineering teams spent less time researching technologies, troubleshooting deployment issues, and redesigning architectures, reducing the labor required to bring applications into production. At the same time, their organizations captured business value sooner by delivering new products, features, and customer-facing capabilities earlier than they otherwise could have.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Every year, there are approximately 10% more new application launches. Before AWS Unified Operations, 50% of the application launches faced delays. On average, each launch could be delayed for 20 days.

• With AWS Unified Operations, the delays decrease to 5% of total application launches.

• An average of five internal experts work on each new application launch.

• Based on the composite’s annual revenue and the number of business-critical applications, the average revenue generated by each new application is around $9,132 per day.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary by organization based on:

• The complexity of the application being launched.

• Organizational decision-making bottlenecks.

• An organization’s business model.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $767,000.

Operational Efficiency Through Faster Incident Resolution

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations improved incident response performance at their organizations by reducing the time required to engage AWS experts and accelerating cloud-related issue identification and resolution. These improvements reduced the amount of time that engineers, operations teams, and senior leaders spent managing incidents, allowing them to focus on remediation rather than escalation and coordination activities.

• Before adopting AWS Unified Operations, interviewees’ organizations commonly relied on traditional support processes that required multiple escalations before reaching the appropriate AWS specialist. Teams often spent substantial time providing infrastructure context, explaining symptoms, and navigating support channels before productive troubleshooting could begin. This delayed engagement extended outage durations and increased the number of internal personnel required to support incident response efforts. The director of cloud engineering at an airline explained, “We had to go through a standard ticket, and that ticket would sometimes takeup to an hour to get to the right person.” Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations reduced these delays by providing direct access to designated support resources and faster escalation to service specialists. As a result, AWS experts could engage more quickly with the appropriate context and begin contributing to resolution efforts sooner.

• Mean Time To Engage (MTTE) measures the average time between when a critical incident is identified and when the appropriate support resources are actively engaged in the response effort. Organizations reported that AWS Unified Operations reduced delays by providing direct access to designated support resources and faster escalation to service specialists. As a result, AWS personnel could engage more quickly with the appropriate context and begin contributing to resolution efforts sooner. Several interviewees provided quantitative evidence of reductions in MTTE. The director of cloud engineering at an airline measured MTTE between incident initiation and AWS engagement and reported that AWS Unified Operations reduced the average engagement time from between 15 and 30 minutes to 3.8 minutes after onboarding workloads into AWS Unified Operations. The director of engineering at the healthcare also observed improvements in response times for business-critical incidents. They reported that the average response time for critical support engagements decreased from between 10 and 12 minutes to between 2 and 3 minutes after implementing AWS Unified Operations capabilities.

• Interviewees further reported that faster engagement translated into shorter troubleshooting cycles and reduced overall incident management effort. Mean Time To Resolve (MTTR) measures the average time required to fully restore service and resolve a critical incident after it has been identified. In some cases, AWS specialists identified root causes significantly faster than internal teams could have independently. The director of engineering at a healthcare organization described a critical outage in which an AWS Unified Operations specialist isolated the problem within minutes, avoiding prolonged investigation by internal engineers. The director of engineering at a healthcare organization described a critical outage in which an AWS Unified Operations specialist isolated the root cause within minutes. Without that immediate engagement, the internal team estimated they would have spent at least an additional hour diagnosing the issue.

• Interviewees associated these improvements with a reduction in labor investment during incident response. Faster escalation and diagnosis decreased the number of personnel required to participate in troubleshooting activities and reduced the duration of incident calls. The director of cloud engineering at an airline highlighted the resource intensity of major incidents and identified faster engagement as a mechanism for reducing labor costs associated with prolonged troubleshooting efforts: “I’ve already deployed 300 people on an incident call. That’s a very expensive call.” The reductions in MTTE and MTTR directly translated into savings for technical and business resources.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Before adopting AWS Unified Operations, the average MTTE was 15 minutes for incident response. With AWS Unified Operations, the MTTE decreases to 5 minutes on average.

• The MTTR decreases from 60 minutes before AWS Unified Operations to 42 minutes in Year 1, 39 minutes in Year 2, and 36 minutes in Year 3 with AWS Unified Operations. The annual decreases are driven by the deeper understanding of the composite organization’s IT stack, as well as the cooperation and strategic engagement between AWS and the composite organization.

• The number of internal IT experts involved in the incident response decreases from 10 before AWS Unified Operations to eight in Year 1 and six in Years 2 and 3 with AWS Unified Operations. The decrease is enabled by the better understanding of the environment of AWS team, as well as the deeper relationship between the composite organization and AWS.

• The composite experiences 300 business-critical incidents per year. The average fully burdened hourly rate for an IT expert is $96.³

• In TEI studies, the productivity recapture rate measures the percentage of time savings that is converted into productive work that creates measurable business value. For IT experts, the productivity recapture is assumed to be 80%.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary by organization based on:

• Degree of workload onboarding to AWS Unified Operations.

• Incident volume and operational complexity.

• Existing incident response maturity.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $349,000.

Reduced Expert Cost With Fewer Business-Critical Incidents

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations helped reduce their organizations’ likelihood of business-critical incidents by strengthening operational readiness, increasing visibility into potential issues, and providing proactive access to AWS expertise. Rather than focusing solely on accelerating incident response after an outage, their organizations increasingly used AWS Unified Operations to identify resiliency gaps, validate architectures, stress-test critical workloads, and proactively address operational risks before they resulted in business disruption.

• Several interviewees explained that their previous operating model was largely reactive. Their teams monitored alarms and logs but often waited until a problem emerged before investigating or escalating it. AWS Unified Operations introduced proactive reviews, reverse escalation processes, and specialist guidance tailored to each workload. These measures enabled organizations to identify and address issues before they became customer-impacting incidents. The director of cloud engineering at an airline reported that one of the most valuable aspects of AWS Unified Operations was proactive alerting. AWS monitored customer environments and notified teams when it detected potential issues before they escalated into outages. During the measurement period, AWS generated approximately 13 proactive alerts, four of which prompted the organization to initiate incident reviews and verify service health before a business impact occurred.

• Interviewees also reported that AWS Unified Operations improved workload resiliency by identifying infrastructure weaknesses and architectural gaps before they led to incidents. AWS specialists reviewed critical applications and recommended resiliency improvements, disaster recovery enhancements, monitoring changes, workload placement adjustments, and infrastructure modifications designed to reduce operational risk.

• Interviewees also described how direct access to AWS specialists helped prevent operational issues by providing expert guidance during architecture design, modernization initiatives, and production changes. Rather than discovering problems after deployment, their organizations validated decisions before implementation and avoided introducing risks into production environments.

• Additionally, interviewees reported that incident volumes remained stable or declined despite growing cloud footprints and increasing operational complexity. The director of engineering at a healthcare organization observed that the number of critical incidents remained flat or decreased while engineering activity and production workloads grew. Similarly, interviewees whose organizations adopted AWS Unified Operations during large-scale modernization efforts indicated that specialist reviews and proactive operational support reduced the probability of introducing new operational risks as cloud environments evolved.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Before adopting AWS Unified Operations, the composite experiences an average of one incident every two months for each business-critical application. Every year, there are 450 business-critical incidents reported. With AWS Unified Operations, the composite avoids 150 incidents.

• The composite saves internal IT expert time of 15 minutes on MTTE and 60 minutes on MTTR per avoided incident.

• The productivity recapture rate is assumed to be 80% for internal IT experts.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary by organization based on:

• Adoption of AWS recommendations.

• Maturity of existing operations.

• Completeness of workload onboarding.

• Existing AWS knowledge gaps.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $290,000.

Executive Time Savings On Incident Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations reduced the need for executives and senior technical leaders to participate directly in incident response activities. Faster access to AWS specialists, improved escalation paths, and greater availability of service-specific expertise allowed incident management teams to resolve issues without routinely involving vice presidents, directors, architects, and other senior stakeholders. As a result, executive time was redirected from operational firefighting toward strategic initiatives, modernization efforts, and business priorities.

• Before AWS Unified Operations, interviewees’ organizations often escalated significant incidents to the most experienced leaders because operational teams lacked direct access to AWS expertise. These incidents frequently required senior personnel to join troubleshooting calls, provide institutional knowledge, coordinate technical investigations, and engage with AWS support on behalf of engineering teams. The VP of cloud and data engineering at a financial technology organization described the pre-AWS Unified Operations environment: “Incidents would turn into all-hands calls. We’d pull in every expert, every VP ... all just to figure out what the problem was.” After adopting AWS Unified Operations, operational teams engaged AWS specialists directly when infrastructure-related issues arose. Rather than escalating incidents internally to senior leaders, operations personnel could collaborate directly with AWS engineers who possessed the required service expertise and context. This reduced the need for executive involvement in day-to-day incident management.

• Interviewees emphasized that improving access to AWS expertise enabled senior personnel to spend less time supporting incident investigations and more time advancing strategic initiatives. Several organizations were simultaneously pursuing cloud modernization, AI initiatives, platform transformation efforts, resiliency programs, and FinOps activities, making executive and technical leadership capacity particularly valuable. The VP of cloud and data engineering at a financial technology organization specifically noted that AWS Unified Operations removed the need to divert senior resources away from other priorities. They said, “I don’t have to put aside other projects to make them a priority.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Before AWS Unified Operations, 50% of incidents need senior leadership or executive involvement. With AWS Unified Operations, this percentage decreases to 15% in Year 1 and 10% in Years 2 and 3.

• On average, each incident requires 1 hour of executive time.

• The average fully burdened hourly rate for an executive is $176. The productivity recapture rate is assumed to be 50%.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary by organization based on:

• Existing incident governance model.

• Complexity of the environment.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $37,000.

Expanded Capacity For Cloud Optimization

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations replaced the single Technical Account Manager model with a persistent, multidisciplinary team — including support engineers, cloud architects, FinOps experts, and service-specific specialists — who operated as an extension of the interviewees’ engineering organization. These experts developed working knowledge of each organization’s workloads, architecture, and operational patterns, expanding technical capacity without additional hiring and enabling teams to make decisions, resolve issues, and execute initiatives more effectively.

• Several interviewees noted that modern AWS environments had grown too complex for their organizations to maintain deep expertise across every AWS service internally. As cloud estates expanded, interviewees’ organizations increasingly relied on AWS specialists to supplement internal capabilities and provide knowledge that would otherwise be difficult or costly to develop internally. The senior director of cloud engineering at an IT organization stated: “AWS has a thousand-plus services, and we use close to 900 services. I cannot have a subject matter expert for each service sitting here.”

• Interviewees further reported that AWS Unified Operations provided access to expertise that extended beyond incident management. They leveraged AWS specialists for architecture reviews, cloud optimization projects, infrastructure design decisions, migration planning, AI initiatives, FinOps activities, resiliency improvements, and launch readiness reviews. Rather than conducting independent research or building expertise through trial and error, their teams were able to consult specialists who possessed direct operational experience with the relevant AWS services.  The VP of cloud and data engineering at a financial technology organization reported that AWS specialists identified cost, performance, and architectural improvements at a granular level,  down to S3 buckets; these were insights that internal teams had not previously recognized.

• Several interviewees emphasized that AWS Unified Operations enabled their organizations to access multiple experts at the same time, allowing teams to address complex problems that crossed service boundaries. Rather than depending on a single internal specialist, they could engage experts across multiple AWS domains as needed. Interviewees also reported receiving specialized expertise that would have been difficult to justify as full-time hires. For example, the VP of cloud and data engineering at a financial technology organization described how AWS provided access to FinOps specialists and OpenSearch experts who supplemented a relatively small internal operations team. They estimated that replicating some of this capability internally would have required hiring additional staff and spending months building expertise. Similarly, the director of engineering at a healthcare organization described the value of maintaining access to a broad AWS expert network: “You’re going to have to pay somebody $200K a year to be that expert in-house. And then you need a separate person for each service.”

• Interviewees also highlighted the strategic value of consulting AWS specialists during modernization initiatives and emerging technology programs. These specialists helped evaluate service options, validate designs, recommend operational improvements, and accelerate technical decision-making across projects. This involvement reduced the burden on internal teams and increased confidence that architectures would scale and operate effectively in production environments.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• AWS Unified Operations provides the equivalent of additional cloud architects, cloud operations engineers, incident managers, developers, and FinOps specialists to the composite organization to support its cloud environment optimization. The total expert equivalent equals 1.75 FTEs.

• The average fully burdened annual salary for these experts is $200,000.

Risks. The scale of this benefit may vary by organization based on:

• Utilization of AWS experts.

• Internal AWS knowledge gaps.

• Breadth and complexity of AWS usage.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 20%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $696,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:

• Improved operational maturity and a shift toward proactive operations. Interviewees frequently described a transition from reactive cloud operations toward a more proactive operating model. Before AWS Unified Operations, their organizations often focused on responding to incidents after they occurred. AWS Unified Operations enabled them to identify risks earlier, monitor leading indicators of potential issues, and adopt operational practices that emphasized prevention rather than reaction.
  For the composite organization, AWS Unified Operations provides a framework for developing a more proactive operational culture. Teams gain earlier visibility into infrastructure risks, resiliency gaps, and workload weaknesses, which helps reduce firefighting and strengthens overall cloud governance. Over time, organizations may experience fewer operational surprises, improved service management practices, and greater confidence in day-to-day operations.

• Greater confidence to pursue innovation and modernization initiatives. Several interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations gave engineering teams greater confidence in pursuing modernization, transformation, AI, and cloud-native initiatives because AWS expertise was readily available when unfamiliar technologies or architectural questions emerged. Rather than delaying projects because of uncertainty, teams were more willing to move forward knowing that expert guidance was available.
  For the composite organization, the availability of AWS specialists reduces uncertainty when evaluating new technologies and accelerates adoption of strategic cloud initiatives. This can help organizations modernize more aggressively, introduce new capabilities with greater confidence, and pursue innovation opportunities that might otherwise be delayed.

• Improved organizational learning and internal capability development. Interviewees consistently reported that AWS Unified Operations did more than solve problems; it helped internal teams develop expertise. Working directly with AWS specialists transferred knowledge to internal engineers, strengthened cloud skills, and improved organizations’ overall technical capabilities. The senior director of cloud engineering at an IT organization shared: “Our documentation has improved. Knowledge across the team has improved.”
  For the composite organization, repeated interactions with AWS specialists raise the knowledge level of the engineering organization over time. Teams become more proficient with AWS services, adopt best practices more rapidly, and build stronger cloud engineering capabilities.

• Increased confidence in business-critical cloud operations. Many interviewees emphasized the peace of mind and operational confidence created by having experienced AWS resources readily available. This confidence was particularly valuable for organizations operating mission-critical workloads, supporting major launches, or serving revenue-generating, customer-facing platforms. Rather than facing challenges alone, their organizations felt they had a trusted partner available to support planning, problem resolution, and operational decision-making.
  For the composite organization, AWS Unified Operations provides confidence that expertise is available when needed. This can strengthen stakeholder trust, improve leadership confidence in cloud operations, and reduce organizational anxiety for major releases, migrations, and operational events.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement AWS Unified Operations and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Accelerate adoption of AI and advanced AWS services. By establishing direct access to AWS specialists and service experts, the composite organization creates a foundation for adopting emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning, analytics, and agentic applications. Rather than building expertise independently, teams can leverage AWS experts to evaluate architectures, select services, and guide implementation efforts. This reduces technical uncertainty and lowers barriers to pursuing future innovation initiatives. Several interviewees described using AWS experts to support AI and machine learning initiatives that were still in development. The VP of cloud and data engineering at a financial technology organization noted that their organization relied on AWS specialists when evaluating AI projects and moving prototypes toward production-ready solutions. They shared: “We’re pursuing new projects where we’re not the experts. Instead of spending time doing the research ourselves, the team goes straight to the AWS Unified Operations team for consultation.” The composite organization may use AWS Unified Operations as a launchpad for AI-driven operations, automation, predictive analytics, and next-generation cloud-native services, enabling faster innovation and greater business differentiation.

• Strengthen enterprise cloud governance and resiliency programs. Interviewees reported that AWS Unified Operations created opportunities to systematically improve architecture standards, disaster recovery preparedness, workload resiliency, and cloud governance practices. Their organizations received workload reviews, resiliency recommendations, and architectural guidance that established a foundation for larger enterprisewide operational improvement initiatives. As organizations mature their use of AWS Unified Operations, they may choose to expand these reviews beyond incident management and use them to drive broader governance, resiliency, and cloud strategy programs.
  The composite organization can build on AWS Unified Operations to support future investments in enterprise resilience, disaster recovery modernization, multiregion deployment strategies, and cloud governance programs, further reducing operational risk and strengthening business continuity.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).