In total, we conservatively estimate that AWS is generating £8.7 billion in economic value for businesses across the UK – the equivalent of 0.4% of GDP. That is more value than some entire industries in the UK – for example, the Premier League, the music industry, or half of the pharmaceutical sector.

This impact is distributed across businesses large and small, and from every sector. It is not, however, equally distributed among all regions in the UK, with some falling behind others. As we will explore, helping these regions catch up is one way we could level up UK growth. While our polling and modelling were undertaken before the recent COVID-19 crisis, it seems likely that, if anything, the importance of cloud has significantly increased for the UK economy. Over the last few months, many companies have discovered the power of cloud tools for the first time. At the height of the crisis, over a third of British workers were working from home,¹ with millions regularly using video conferencing, group chat and other online tools as part of their job for the first time.