The AWS Sydney Summit 2018 rolled into town last week. Outside of re:Invent, AWS’s flagship global summit, Sydney hosts the largest AWS summit in the world. Bigger than San Francisco. Bigger than New York. Bigger than London. Over 20 000 attendees registered for the event. This year, it expanded to 3 days and moved to the ICC at Darling Harbour.

For the first time, RedBear IT were exhibitors at the event. We were also invited to speak at the event, sharing our thoughts on migrating workloads for Financial Services. There were definitely some common themes and messages at this year’s summit. The following are RedBear IT’s key takeaways from the 3 days.

It’s Day 1 at AWS

Backed up by our conversations as exhibitors at the AWS Sydney Summit, it’s still very much day 1 for the Enterprise adoption of the AWS Cloud. Although Enterprise have been using the AWS Cloud for over 5 years, it’s still very early days. We were pleasantly surprised about the amount of interest that we received in relation to migrating to the AWS Cloud. It seems that many organisations are committed to making the move. However, they are either yet to get started or have only just started with some low risk workloads.

Smaller, more nimble organisations are moving faster. We see an opportunity for both ends of the spectrum to learn from each other. Startups can learn how to do things the right way from Day 1. Enterprises can learn how to move faster, to learn and evolve.

Security, security, security

You remember that AWS said that Security is a Day 1 requirement? It still is.

AWS is more committed than ever to offering secure services. It continues to innovate in this area. AWS Guard Duty was announced at re:Invent 2017. It’s rapidly becoming one of our favourite services, offering managed threat intelligence in the Cloud. At RedBear IT, we understand the critical importance of our clients workloads and data. We continue to be excited by the ever expanding AWS offerings in this space. The rich AWS ecosystem allows us to transform the Security Operations of our customers. We can now delivery security as code and deliver automated responses to security incidents.

Human computer interactions have changed forever

Since the invention of the PC, we’ve all used keyboards, mice and more recently touch screens to interact with computers. We really believe that 2018 represents a crossroads in the way we interact with computers. Voice and vision services mean that natural language processing is now within our grasp. We expect to see rapid changes to the office or factory environment, driven by voice control delivered through services such as Alexa for Business. The complex work environment lends itself to this innovation and there were a number of demonstrations of its power at the AWS Summit Sydney.

After all, when’s the last time you had a rich and meaningful email exchange versus a face to face conversation?

Machine Learning is mainstream

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is mainstream. At the AWS Sydney Summit, the aim was to make it accessible to all.

Machine Learning is using modelling to predict an outcome based on previous data. It has many use cases from recommendations for an e-commerce website to predicting failure in manufacturing. Until recently, deep pockets and deep skills have been required to even get started with Machine Learning. In 2018, that is no longer the case. AWS want to allow people to concentrate on the model, the data and the outcome and not the heavy lifting. It’s an area of serious investment and focus and it promises to deliver some significant opportunities.

AWS offer services both below the line – for the data scientists – and above the line – for the rest of us – in the shape of Rekognition, Lex and Polly, to name but a few. It’s brought the power of data and the power of natural language close together. Again, it’s Day 1 for most of us.

The age of collaboration

No-one can be an expert at everything. It’s time to offer differentiated services to you customers. Enterprise customers in particular are looking for the more nimble boutique partners to solve their challenges. It’s not uncommon to see 10 or more partners working together with a customer. Each partner is bringing a specialist skill to the table and collaborating to achieve the outcome.

Gone are the days of “one partner to rule them all”.

At RedBear IT, we like to describe our team as “T-shaped”. They are broad across a wide spectrum of services. However, they are super deep in specific areas. In our case, that’s around migrations, cyber security and Financial Services.

If you couldn’t make it to the AWS Sydney Summit

If you missed out on the AWS Sydney Summit this year, feel free to contact us for some more detailed insights on the event and how you can write your own story with the AWS Cloud.

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