Event Blog - AWS Summit Chicago 2019

 

I attended the AWS Summit Chicago 2019 earlier this week. The AWS Summit Chicago is a free event designed to bring together the cloud computing community to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Summits are held in major cities around the world and attract technologists from multiple industries, segments, and learning levels who want to learn how AWS can help them innovate with speed and deliver services with scale, flexibility, and reliability.

There were 7000+ attendees with 70+ exhibiting partners, and 70+ sessions and workshops. I did not anticipate the scale of the event and It was amazing! It was a great learning experience to hear the keynote address by Matt Garman, who leads the Compute Services business for AWS at Amazon.com.

I sat through some of the sessions where customers shared their experience, best practices, and lesson learned. The session by Derek Higgins, Lead Cloud Engineer, Northwestern Mutual, was particularly interesting and thought-provoking. The usage of AWS platform capability to Bring automation to drive continuous-compliance best practices opens a world of opportunities for the Financial Services enterprises struggling to adhere to ever-growing compliance requirements.

I spent time with a lot of exhibiting partners. Needless to say, AWS has built a very strong partner ecosystem. It is essential for growth! Most of the partners are focused broadly on Security, Compliance, and Governance. The granular level offerings under those are provided by multiple partners(the list below is a subset) –

o  Security e.g., Paloalto Network, Armor, McAfee

o  Monitoring e.g., Datadog, Dynatrace, SignalFx, Splunk, LogicMonitor, LogRocket, logz.io

o  DevOps / ITOps e.g.,  Moogsoft,

o  Backup and Recovery e.g., Veeam

o  Data e.g., MongoDB, Delphix, Attunity

o  Overall Cloud Management e.g., VmWare CloudHealth, DivvyCloud

The above offerings provide a view of the needs of our customers. It is essential to think about Security, Governance, and Compliance while exploring AWS or any other cloud provider. It is essential to build a holistic cloud strategy before going too far. Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG) is helping to power the Intelligent Enterprise. Together, we’re continually innovating—delivering new levels of business value to you through cloud-enabled technologies and architectures. Read more about AABG here.