Cloud Culture: Deriving real value from the cloud

In his first appearance at Amazon Web Services’ cloud computing-focused re:Invent conference as the AWS CEO, Adam Selipsky made several new product and customer announcements, even as he offered more than just his excitement about the boundless possibilities for developing “ever more amazing skills.” At the event—held in person in Las Vegas and online due to the global pandemic—he opened his presentation by showcasing AWS and its clients as trailblazers who have revolutionised the way corporate technology is purchased and marketed.

“In the 15 years since we launched AWS, the cloud has become not just another tech revolution, but an enabler of a fundamental shift in the way that businesses actually function. There is no industry that hasn’t been touched and no business that can’t be radically disrupted,” said Selipsky. According to him, every one of us is a part of this tech revolution and despite what feels like a massive adoption, we are just getting started. Analysts estimate that 5% to 15% of IT spending has moved to the cloud.

Talking about the endless possibilities of cloud adoption, Selipsky mentioned AWS customers and said, “It has been over 10 years when Netflix went all in on AWS and transformed its business and the entertainment industry by pioneering streaming movies and creating original content on AWS. Then in 2012, we were all able to watch what was happening hundreds of millions of miles away as NASA JPL engineers landed the SUV-size Curiosity rover on Mars, using AWS to stream the landing and support the mission. Each of these customers did something fundamentally different using cloud and looked at new ways to reinvent themselves and their industries.”

As for catering to the needs of their customers, Selipsky gave an overview about some of the major announcements including new services, product enhancements, and new features for several of their existing services. There were a host of intriguing innovations in the AWS ecosystem, from new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance types and hardware processors to serverless data analytics, Internet of Things and Machine Learning features. Cloud computing, data, mainframes, and IoT are among the highlights of these new services and features.

Speaking on these announcements, Selipsky announced the Graviton3, a new arm-based Graviton processor, as well as the new C7g instance type, which were unveiled by AWS.

“Graviton3 chips are another big leap forward, 25% faster on average for general compute workloads than Graviton2 and they provide 2x faster processing for scientific and crypto applications and 3x faster processing for Machine Learning workloads, while using up to 60% less energy,” he added.

In an age where cloud adoption is evolving, AWS continues to seek ways to make the cloud more powerful and cost-effective for every workload. Most companies have been running their applications on mainframes for decades and they still rely on them. To cater to such companies, AWS announced the Mainframe Modernisation, which offers a quicker and seamless move of older mainframes and applications to AWS. The new service will help assess and analyse the existing mainframes and applications.

During the event, AWS also launched AWS Private 5G, a new managed service that helps enterprises set up and scale private 5G mobile networks in their facilities in days instead of months. Customers will be able to focus more on their mobile devices and the data they generate as a managed service, rather than the network gear that AWS will deploy and manage.

On the launch of AWS Private 5G, Selipsky said, “The promise of 5G is exciting as it can easily connect tens of thousands of devices making the handoffs between access points seamless and maintaining coverage over large areas with high bandwidth and low latency”. He then added, “Now creating this new connected world, where the boundaries of the cloud are going to entirely new places like the 5G networks, there’s a lot of path finding to be done and the one company leading the way, an inspiring pathfinder, is Dish.”