Case Study: Amazon.com scales its transactional subledger, cutting latency 40% and costs 70% with Amazon Web Services (Amazon DynamoDB)

Scaling Amazon.com’s Transactional Subledger using Amazon DynamoDB

Amazon.com’s Financial Ledger and Accounting Systems Hub (FLASH) processes more than 20 billion financial transactions a month, but had grown to more than 90 Oracle databases totaling over 120 TB, with complex hardware provisioning, high administrative overhead and double‑digit transaction growth plus big seasonal spikes. The team needed a more scalable, easier‑to‑manage, and audit‑friendly platform that preserved 20+ years of SOX‑sensitive financial data.

The FLASH team migrated its Oracle estate to AWS using Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, AWS Database Migration Service, CloudFormation, and Amazon S3, applying validated templates, row‑level data checks, and access/encryption controls for compliance. The result: more than 120 TB migrated, 40% lower latency, 70% reduction in administrative overhead, roughly 70% cost savings, elastic auto‑scaling for traffic spikes, and faster, more autonomous engineering teams.

Amazon.com

Phani Bhamidipati

Senior Manager, Software Development