Thursday 30/11
On the fourth day of the AWS re:Invent conference I was very early at the location for the keynote, and I wasn't the only one. The keynotes by Dr. Werner Vogels, Amazon.com's VP and CTO, are the most highly appreciated ones.
The most interesting part for me was the first part about architecting with cost in mind and being a frugal architect. I mentioned already before that a simple lift and shift isn’t enough to reap the benefits of the cloud, only after the modernization of the workloads. According to Werner, this isn’t where it stops you need to keep (re)architecting to keep the metrics of the cloud cost in line with the revenue metrics. Otherwise, your cloud cost will outgrow your revenue and thus eating up the margin.
The most impactful part of the keynote, and for me for the whole week, was a customer presentation by Dr. Rebecca Portnoff, Head of Data Science, of Thorn. A non-profit organization to find children that are sexually being abused. They have developed an unbelievable technical solution to search for these children and help them get out of the miserable situation they are in. I urge you to watch the presentation and donate.
After the keynote we had to rush to all the other side of the Las Vegas Strip to be in time for the AWS Resilience Partner Advisory Board. Not only are we selected as a launching partner for the new Resilience Competency, but we are also invited to participate in the Partner Advisory Board with leaders from a few other SI’s and ISV’s. That was a very interesting experience and only the start of frequent meetings to jointly improve products and the cooperation between AWS and the partner. Details can’t be shared… what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!
The conference is closed with an immense party: Re:Play Party. Have 50.000 cloud adepts party to unwind after an intense week was so much fun. Just like the rest of the week, the organization was outstanding. Well done AWS, thanks for having me!
