Cost & Scalability for Compute-Intensive Apps

Applications that rely on heavy compute power — from scientific models to advanced analytics — can quickly become costly and difficult to scale. Mobilise Cloud helps organisations architect AWS environments that flex to demand, combining high performance with intelligent cost savings.

Compute-intensive workloads are central to many modern organisations, particularly in science, research, finance, and technology. These workloads process vast amounts of data and require bursts of high-performance compute resources — but without the right architecture, costs can spiral out of control.

Traditionally, organisations either over-provisioned servers to guarantee performance (leaving expensive resources idle), or under-provisioned and suffered bottlenecks during peak demand. Both approaches were inefficient, limiting the ability to innovate or scale.

AWS makes it possible to break free from these constraints, but doing so requires a platform designed for elasticity, automation, and resilience. By combining containerisation, Infrastructure-as-Code, and intelligent use of pricing models, organisations can achieve both performance and cost efficiency.

Mobilise Cloud specialises in this balance — enabling clients to run complex, compute-heavy workloads at scale without draining budgets.

Challenge Summary:

JNCC’s AERIUS tool needed on-demand compute to process environmental data at scale cost-effectively.

Mobilise’s Solution:

Designed scalable EKS/ECS platforms using Terraform IaC.
Mixed EC2 On-Demand and Spot Instances (15%/85%) for resilient and efficient compute.
Built automated CI/CD pipelines & utilised AWS Container Insights for performance monitoring. Resulted in 70% cost savings.

Case Study:

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) needed to run AERIUS, an environmental modelling tool used to process and analyse large volumes of environmental data. The workload was highly compute-intensive, requiring significant processing power during modelling runs — but JNCC needed this to be delivered on-demand, cost-effectively, and at scale.

Our approach
Mobilise Cloud designed a scalable containerised environment optimised for heavy compute workloads:

Container Platforms – Deployed AERIUS on scalable EKS and ECS clusters, fully provisioned via Terraform Infrastructure-as-Code for repeatability and governance.
Cost-Optimised Compute – Implemented a mixed instance strategy with 15% On-Demand EC2 instances (for resilience) and 85% Spot Instances (for cost efficiency), balancing reliability with dramatic savings.
Automation – Built automated CI/CD pipelines to accelerate deployment and ensure consistent updates.
Performance Monitoring – Integrated AWS Container Insights for detailed visibility into performance, resource utilisation, and costs.

The outcome

70% reduction in compute costs compared to a static On-Demand model.
Highly resilient environment, ensuring workloads complete reliably even with Spot capacity interruptions.
Scalable platform capable of processing environmental datasets on demand without manual intervention.
Improved operational efficiency, freeing JNCC teams to focus on analysis rather than infrastructure management.

By modernising the AERIUS tool on AWS, JNCC gained a high-performance, cost-optimised platform capable of meeting today’s environmental data challenges while remaining flexible for future demand.

We know the challenge of balancing compute-hungry applications with budget realities. Mobilise Cloud builds platforms that deliver performance at scale, without the runaway costs.

With Mobilise Cloud, compute-intensive workloads become a strategic advantage — scalable, efficient, and ready for tomorrow’s challenges.

Cost & Scalability for Compute-Intensive Apps

Challenge Summary:

Case Study:

Solutions For:

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