Warner Bros. Discovery improves mergers and acquisitions using AWS

Overview

Discovery had been working to centralize its account creation to better operate at scale and support its multiple growing business units. As a result, it streamlined the process for any mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In 2022, the company began undergoing its largest merger to date when WarnerMedia and Discovery started to merge into Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD); this process is still ongoing. The main challenge of these kinds of M&As is securely integrating a newly merged or acquired company’s cloud footprint into Discovery’s existing footprint without impacting the day-to-day operations of either business. With a cloud-first approach, keeping the cloud infrastructure accessible, running, secure, and protected is vital.

WBD uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) to centralize account creation as well as automate and secure the M&A process at scale. The company uses AWS Organizations to create new AWS accounts at no additional charge, allocate resources, group accounts, and apply governance policies. Using AWS, WBD decreases time to market, reduces cost, and creates a centralized and automated deployment of new accounts, all while making security a priority.

Key outcomes

The 2022 merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia has been the largest to go through the automated accounts deployment process. The company went from 270 accounts to thousands of accounts. By using AWS Organizations account management APIs, WBD has had the building blocks in place to be flexible during this process. The company is also actively integrating cloud environments from its M&As in a secure way.

“When account creation is centralized, we have the ability to view and control cloud spend in a single pane of glass.We’re plugged in, our support team is plugged in, and we can manage costs.”

Bianca Lankford, Vice President of Cloud Security, Warner Bros. Discovery

Read more and watch a version of this success story.