Notes from the AWS Summit Keynote, 30/8/2017
** Note: These are notes taken from various sessions and the keynote of the 2017 AWS Public Sector Summit held in Canberra, Australia. The information might be slightly unstructured, and the photos might be a bit raw.
Sessions: https://aws.amazon.com/summits/canberra-public-sector/sessions/
Detailed: https://pages.awscloud.com/rs/112-TZM-766/images/Canberra_Global_Summit_V4.pdf
Keynote Presenters:
· Andrew Phillips, ANZ Public Sector Country Manager, Amazon Web Services
· Teresa Carlson, Vice President, World Wide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services
· Andrew Walduck, Executive General Manager of Trusted eCommerce Services and Group Chief Digital Officer, Australia Post
· Antony Stinziani, Chief Information Officer, Geoscience Australia
Keynote – AWS
Introduction: I was running a little late, so I missed the intro by Andrew Phillips. When I arrived, Teresa Carlson was talking about security, resource zones and a new announcement (a dark fibre ICON connected link to the AWS data centres). Unstructured notes follow.
Focused on Federal Government
Resiliency – Resource Zones (now 3 per region)
Security:
New: Dark fibre DirectConnect ICON connected C1 NextDC
Global Security –
FedRamp, ITAR, NIST (definition of cloud)
AWS Shield – DDoS – No charge scaling model (in the case of a DDoS)
** Transforming Australia Post – Andrew Walduck **
“Digital Transformation” buzzword heavy. Creating a contemporary company. Random stats that support the notion of the digital workforce.
Rate of change can create huge companies in a few years. Who buys from AusPost online?
Connecting people, companies.. letters and store visits declining by a large factor. Pivot to digital economy. Online shopping, tech, culture.
2m parcels delivered (max), 11.4m households. Social media enables fast sharing of negative stories.
‘Big companies can’t change quickly’ – demystifying the statement:
RLS: BUT THEY ARE ALL TECH COMPANIES!!
Not a single one listed is traditional bricks and mortar..
“How we work is as important as what we work on”
Partnering.
Dynamic platform, culture shift.
DigitalID (mobile app) platform, secure identity management. I hope this is secure!! Single source of verified identity. Use to replace 100-pt ID checks
Back to the main presenter
Partner Community
Citizen digital demands same functionality provided by private sector (RLS: ha- public sector is bound to a higher level of regulation and policy).
SaaS providers: Splunk, AusPost,
SaaS inherit security controls and scale when deploying on AWS.
Local – Global – Regional scale
Create Partner programs tailored to Private Sector. 450 partners recognized (to date).
New: Education (partner) competency
New: VMWare Cloud on AWS
Silicon Valley in Bega Valley?
Pivot to school kids – future programmers in the crowd.
Automated
Everything should scale and respond automatically. “Serverless”:
Machine learning, Etc
RLS: Competition to Azure Power Functions. I wonder how far behind they are?
Azure is quite advanced with AI bots etc.
Some examples of use : C-Span (identify pollies)
Research – Making Connections
Better use of $ to tune infra spend.
Public data sets, open data sets
Credits for research and consulting
Cloud innovation centres
GeoScience Australia – Antony Stinziani
Scientific data & computing. Emergency management. Mining/prospecting/directing efficient exploration
Lean budget. Move away from commodity spend. Demand from business is for engineers and development. Multi-discipline teams. Continuous Delivery and Integration; focus on products and maintain
Business is responsible for directing investment. IT integrated into science teams. Run Agile.
“Ecosystem Architecture” sounds familiar. Similar to Environments as a Service!
* Culture – Org level. ICT challenged by transformation mostly. Critical
* Process – Don’t retrofit. Automate. Program increment days – once per qtr, full review of each area. Manage budget and estimates
* Technology – Mobile, High Perf environments, automation, speed, security by design
Examples:
Search for MH370
Use of data
Link between data and tools. Use data standards.
Partnerships:
Embrace shadow IT? RLS: but how do you do that effectively?
“Next Generation of Superheroes”
Ugh. Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon, but c’mon. Superheroes? That’s so mid-00s.
Talking about education partners. Universities, K-12, AWS sponsored programmes (no doubt on AWS tech).
DevOps curriculum. Cloud career pathways.
But do they teach ICT fundamentals? I’d hope they don’t just focus on “server-less”, APIs
Diversity plug.
The audience are the superheroes, we’re told. Throwing that superlative around.
We’re wrapping the keynote.
