Recap: The AWS NoSQL and IoT Partner Workshops

In February and March we hosted two workshops for APN Partners focused on helping partners build skills in NoSQL and IoT on AWS.

These workshops were hosted in Seattle and Boston, respectively, and are intended to provide our top APN Consulting Partners with the opportunity to dive deep with a number of AWS services. “These workshops are designed to bring our top APN Consulting Partners, namely Advanced, Premier, MSP and Competency, closer to strategic services and use cases. Our partners have been asking for deeper visibility into strategic services that their customers are asking for, including AWS IoT, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Kinesis,” says Chuck Edwards, Partner Service Delivery Manager for AWS. “Our solution architects, service teams, and business development teams build great content all the time, so we sourced the best content and creators/presenters to speak directly with our top partners about key use cases for these services and provide some hands-on experience. Ideally we want attending partners to (a) become more aware of these services and appropriate use cases when talking to their customers, and (b) have a clear grasp of how to best implement these services and who they can talk to for help.”

We’ll be hosting these workshops again in New York next week from April 26th – 27th, and wanted to provide a recap of our latest event in Boston, along with some of the feedback we’ve received.

Workshop Agendas

NoSQL

The full-day NoSQL workshop covered the following topics:

• Big Data Architectural Patterns and Best Practices on AWS
• Why is NoSQL a strategic partner opportunity?
• Migrating from RDBMS to NoSQL
• Running MongoDB on EC2
• DDB Design Patterns and Best Practices + Hands-on Lab
• Event-driven Programming with Amazon DynamoDB Streams and AWS Lambda + Hands-on Lab

IoT

The full-day IoT workshop covered an overview of Amazon Kinesis and Amazon DynamoDB in IoT use cases, as well as a deep dive and walkthrough of AWS IoT integration with other AWS services. The focus of the day was on 4+ hours of hands-on lab work. Attendees connected Intel Edison breakout kits to their laptops, and then worked through a series of labs that included AWS IoT, Lambda, Kinesis, and DynamoDB. Attendees also had the opportunity to meet ‘Ratchet’, an IoT robot accepting voice commands via Amazon Alexa. Attendees used skills acquired through the workshop to instruct Ratchet to do certain things such as ‘Move’, ‘Attack’, and ‘Speak’. Ratchet is British…just in case you were wondering.

APN Partner Participant Feedback

We’ve received a lot of valuable feedback from the APN Partners who have participated, including participants from two AWS Premier Consulting Partners, Slalom and AppsAssociates:

“We really enjoyed attending the DynamoDB/IoT workshop in February. The speakers were great and the content was very informative. I definitely feel that I can have more informed discussions with our clients on how to best solve their data needs in AWS.”

 

-Dave Masino

 

Solution Principal, Information Management & Analytics at Slalom

 

“The NoSQL Databases and AWS IoT workshops were very valuable. In my opinion, the content was so well organized that the amount of learning you get in two days is simply not possible on your own time. The training not only covered current state and future direction of applicable services, but also provided information on real world case studies along with a deep-dive into business value proposition.

 

Taking two days out of the work schedule may seem like a tough task, but after taking this class I feel much more confident and prepared to talk about these services and solution areas with customers and prospects.”

 

-Kshitij Kumar

 

Global VP and CTO, AppsAssociates

Upcoming Workshops

The team will be hosting workshops around the globe, with upcoming workshops for qualified APN Partners in New York on April 26 – 27, and San Francisco on May 24 – 25. Reach out to your Partner Manager for more information about attending.