195. Orchestrate Cloud Symphony - AWS re:Invent 2024 recap Day 3

Dr. Ruba Borno, vice president, Global Specialists and Partners, AWS, announced innovations in cloud security and partner collaborations during her keynote at re:Invent this week.

Leading AWS's Global Specialists and Partner organization, she draws from a rich background of leadership and technical expertise to champion the AWS Partner Network (APN)—an expansive ecosystem of over 130,000 partners across 200+ countries.

She announced the launch of four new security specializations, including the Security AI Category, so customers can identify partners with deep expertise in protecting AI applications and in defending against cyberattacks, to accelerate growth in the market of security products worth 200 billion by 2028.

"Buy with AWS" allows partners to integrate AWS Marketplace directly into their websites, enabling customers to discover solutions, request pricing, and make purchases using their AWS accounts.

Removal of the financial cap

Amazon Web Services is eliminating the financial cap on how much money partners can make inside the company's popular Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) in a move to make partners richer and drive better customer outcomes. The standard MAP construct is available to services partners with the Migration Competency or relevant workload specialization. She announced the preview of Partner Connections, a unified co-sell experience that simplifies deal structures across multiple partners on a single customer project.

Modernization alongside migration

Borno emphasized that migration alone doesn’t unlock the full power of the cloud. While moving workloads to AWS is a crucial first step, modernizing those applications is key to staying ahead of the innovation curve. Migration gets workloads onto AWS, but modernization optimizes them, enabling businesses to fully leverage cloud capabilities and drive innovation.

Partner + Customer Stories - Life360

Life360 offers a free version with basic location-sharing and check-in features. Premium plans (ranging from a few dollars a month) unlock additional safety features like driving insights, emergency response services, and extended history of location tracking.

AWS highlighted their use of advanced cloud technologies to ensure robust scalability and reliability for its services. Life360’s work was featured during a session with AWS partner Caylent, which detailed how they support Life360’s mission to keep users connected and safe through innovative cloud solutions, AWS introduced new security specializations, aiding partners like Life360 in building secure, AI-driven applications. The Migration Acceleration Program enhancements also improve scalability for businesses relying on AWS infrastructure.

Partner + Customer Stories - Itaú Brazil

Itaú Unibanco is utilizing AWS to migrate core banking platforms, mobile applications, and customer service solutions to the cloud, enabling greater agility, cost efficiency, and security.

Notably, the bank has adopted a data mesh architecture with AWS support, which decentralizes data while maintaining governance and privacy. This approach has reduced customer analysis processing times by 95% and empowered hundreds of users to create and manage data-driven solutions within six months. Key AWS tools such as Amazon Redshift, SageMaker, and AWS Glue are instrumental in managing and analyzing large datasets efficiently.

Additionally, Itaú is focusing on training thousands of employees in advanced cloud skills to foster innovation across its business lines, including credit cards, insurance, and digital payments like Pix. This comprehensive strategy is helping Itaú Unibanco remain competitive and improve service delivery for its 70 million customers globally, moving towards 100% in the cloud by 2028.

Lessons learnt from deploying GenAI Solution

Guest speaker Francessca Vasquez, VP of Professional Services and the Generative AI Innovation Center at AWS, highlighted the center's mission to help customers design and scale generative AI solutions.

Through its work, AWS has gained valuable insights into successfully transitioning generative AI from pilot projects to full production, to expand the reach of the Generative AI Innovation Center.

Lesson 1: foster a culture of experimentation to explore and ideate the potential of GenAI

Lesson 2: develop a solid business case with robust security measures and operational excellence for scaling

Lesson 3: scale effectively with specialized models, AI-ready infrastrucuture, and evolving architectures

Lesson 4: optimize performance and address complex use cases across industries through those strategies

The keynote underscored AWS’s commitment to building a collaborative and innovative ecosystem that drives long-term success for partners and customers alike. Dr. Borno’s leadership is pivotal in ensuring AWS remains a trusted partner in empowering organizations to adapt and thrive in an ever-evolving digital world.

This keynote set the tone for 2024, reaffirming AWS’s dedication to innovation, collaboration, and customer success through its unparalleled partner ecosystem.