Me, re:Invent & Andy Jassy

Looking back over the past year managing the AWS Partnership, given the new partner tier requirements, Persistent has made significant strides. The journey has proven results as Persistent stands strong as an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner possessing the coveted IoT Competency and Data & Analytics Competencies, AWS Solution Provider Partner and Public Sector badge. Persistent many more goals in Q1 2020. I am thrilled to lead these to fruition, be a part of the strategic growth by building upon our expertise.

I attended two keynotes, delivered by Andy Jassy and Doug Yeum, Head of Worldwide Channels & Alliances, which included exciting announcements for customers and partners. Along with this re:Invent journey, I had a delightful surprise meeting with Andy Jassy, read on.

Andy Jassy’s Keynote was about business transformation, steps organizations should take, AWS services and use cases to help customers get there.

Transformation- Move to the Cloud

Four differentiators:

1. Senior Team aligned to make a change. Inertia is easy to block.
2. Aggressive top-down goals (force the company to move) (dipping toe doesn’t work)
3. Train your builders
4. Don’t let paralysis stop you before you start. Create a multi-year plan to migrate, start with easy workloads to move.

Next, the discussion pivoted to the depth and breadth of features and capabilities AWS now offers – a whopping 175 services. AWS named Worldwide IaaS leader by Gartner Magic Quadrant for the 9th consecutive year and holds steady at 47.8%. Global IT Market spend continues to be pretty much on-prem at 97% versus Cloud at 3%. Clearly room for business transformation with Cloud.

• AWS has 4X more Compute Instances, more powerful capabilities, graphics, memory, processor choices based on chip innovations with AWS Nitro System for better security posture, performance, and 40% better price performance.
• Containers – More capabilities, (3) Elastic Container Services (ECS).
  • 81% of containers run on AWS
• 84% of Kubernetes on AWS. AWS announces Amazon Fargate for Amazon EKS & ECS for Kubernetes customers.
• The Modernization Area and Windows. Did you know that 57% of Windows run on AWS?
• New Query Data Lake Export – just released for aggregating data sets.
• Aqua for Redshift – Available mid-2020; better query performance up to 10x faster than other cloud data warehouses, compute on raw data in raw storage, with no movement.
• AWS Outpost: Run AWS services on prem, store and process data on prem.
• AWS Wavelength Verizon 5G compute bringing AWS services; connect, compute and storage to edge of the 5G network

Doug Yeum’s Partner Keynote:

• Data Exchange – easily integrate 3rd party data for additional insights
• AWS Geographic expansion to 22 regions
• Announced specific Marketplaces for Health Care, Financial Services, Telecom, Public Sector
• New Retail Competency
• New Public Safety & Disaster Response Competency

Ending with my top highlight: Meeting Andy Jassy, shook his hand, and literally delivered an elevator pitch in an elevator. Just before reaching my stop, it was great to be asked ‘what company are you with again?’ Thankfully sporting my Persistent branded t-shirt, I smiled, and said ‘Persistent.’