Amazon Prime Day took place this week, with the retailer claiming that the first 10 hours grew even faster than the first 10 hours on the same day in 2017, exceeding the £766m ($1bn) in sales globally. According to reports, spending jumped 89 percent in the first 12 hours of the event compared to the same period last year.
Zscaler released its own data, which reveals the number of Amazon transactions taking place in the Zscaler cloud from Monday 16th July at 1am BST to end of the day Tuesday 17th July. The data revealed there were 60 percent more cloud transactions to Amazon.com on Prime Day than seen in the Zscaler cloud on a typical day. You can see the network traffic spikes in the graph attached.
Matt Piercy, vice president and general manager EMEA at Zscaler, commented on the results, noting that as businesses increasingly move their infrastructure to the cloud, these daytime spikes have a reduced impact on business applications:
“Our data indicates that, during Amazon Prime Day, Amazon traffic in the Zscaler cloud rose considerably during the working day, with tens of millions more people visiting Amazon.com than usual over the two days. The growing popularity of retail events like Amazon Prime Day means people are likely going to find ways of shopping while at work, which can have a significant impact on network bandwidth – something that has traditionally posed a problem for the IT team. Indeed, as more businesses adopt BYOD policies, we’re finding a growing number of personal as well as corporate devices connected to the WLAN. Online shopping to this extent can hamper the performance of business critical applications, such as file sharing, backup, and Office 365.
“The truth is, however, that the modern enterprise will incur network spikes, planned or not, that will put a strain on network resources. Whether it’s Amazon Prime Day or another popular sale such as Black Friday/Cyber Monday, unexpected demand for a product, or even an oversubscribed employee webcast, network spikes are no longer an anomaly – they’ll happen. The good news is that we are on the cusp of a new era for business. More and more enterprises are moving their infrastructure to the cloud, which offers a level of elasticity that businesses have not previously experienced. By embracing digital transformation, enterprises no longer need to buy new appliances, install virtual machines or block major retail events like Amazon Prime to accommodate spiked traffic.”
