A new post from Amazon Web Services’ Jeff Barr has detailed how President Barack Obama’s campaign team utilised the AWS cloud to their advantage.

“The words ‘mission critical’ definitely apply here,” wrote Barr, adding: “With the opportunity to lead the United States as the prize, the stakes were high.”

But how did cloud computing influence the outcome of the election?

The use of technology to influence the presidential campaign has been widely reported, especially in regard to analytics tools designed to alert campaign teams of how voter turnout went in various swing states.

Yet the Republicans’ Orca tool – so named because it’s the only predator of a Narwhal whale, the name of the Democrats’ system – “buckled” for 90 minutes in the final, vital moments of the campaign on Election Day as the system couldn’t cope with the amount of incoming traffic.

The Obama campaign call tool, by …