Know Before You Go: Retail Attendee Guide for AWS Summit London 2022

After two long years, we’re excited to welcome our customers back to AWS Summit London, an in-person event packed with brand new and exclusive content, sessions, demos, and activities. To help you navigate the event, we’ve assembled this guide to share our recommendations. Based on our extensive experience working with retail customers, these will help you get the most out of the experience. You can also find the full summit agenda and session guides here.

WHEN: Wednesday, April 27, 2022

WHERE: ExCeL London

If you’re planning to attend, then follow these steps to get started:

• Register as soon as possible. Attendance is free, though seats may be limited.
• Explore all of the available sessions and experiences that are taking place in this year’s Summit agenda.
• Download the AWS Summit London app on your phone when it becomes available one week before the event. This app lets you view every session taking place, manage your calendar during the event, and more.

Breakout Sessions

The event will start with keynote speeches from Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.com, and Darren Hardman, VP of AWS UKI, which we highly recommend you attend. Then, numerous breakout sessions will range in topics from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to cloud operations, networking, global infrastructure, and security.

The following are just a few recommended sessions featuring either retail customers or solutions that are directly applicable to the retail industry.

Using DevOps Methods to Manage Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon AppStream 2.0

Learn how fashion retailers like Boohoo use Amazon AppStream 2.0 and Amazon WorkSpaces to increase efficiency and reduce customer service-related costs by almost 50%. This is accomplished by enabling their workforces to access applications wherever they are, at any time, and from any device.

Session ID: EU-01 | Time: 11:15 | Room: Capital Suite 10 | Level: 200

Speakers: Andrew Wood, Principal EUC Spec SA, AWS; Nathan Douglas-Jones, DevOps Manager, Boohoo.com

Amazon’s Culture of Innovation

AWS was born from retail, and built for retailers. Learn about AWS’s culture of innovation, how it helps Amazon innovate, and how to apply these processes in your own organization.

Times of crisis create opportunities for collaboration, invention, and adaptation, all to better serve customers and increase our developments for the future. Wherever you are in your journey, AWS can help you accelerate and reach your goals of a better future.

Session ID: ET-03 | Time: 12:15 | Room: Theatre 7 | Level: 100

Speakers: Olga Shoraka, EMEA Startups Sales Strategy and Operations Lead, AWS; Alex Ene, Principal Software Engineer, Amazon Prime Video

How Holland & Barrett and Other Retailers Are Going Beyond Retail Using AWS

Discover how retail customers are building on AWS to innovate for an unpredictable world. And learn how these companies are delivering reliable and scalable omnichannel ecommerce experiences with edge-computing architectures, as well as using data-driven insights to delight their customers.

In this session, you’ll hear how the Holland & Barrett team is building for the future with AWS. They’re developing a future-proof tech stack to support their business ambitions, enabling data-driven decision-making, and driving their omnichannel journey. Furthermore, this session will highlight how Holland & Barrett is moving beyond retail with wellness solutions—from diagnostics to virtual consultations—to be there for customers when they need them the most.

Session ID: IN-04 | Time: 13:25 | Room: Capital Suite 11 | Level: 200

Speakers: Bastien Leblanc, Senior Solutions Architect, AWS; Sathya Nandakumar, CTO, Holland & Barrett

SAP Cloud Migration and Modernization with AWS

Migrating SAP systems to the cloud is crucial to many customers’ strategies for modernizing and future-proofing their core business functions. Furthermore, disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic has only underscored the need to accelerate this journey.

In the session, you will learn how Dunelm, the UK’s leading home furnishing retailer, migrated SAP to AWS in just six months. This let them improve SAP performance by 30%, increase developer productivity, and rapidly adapt their business processes to meet customer demand during the pandemic.

Session ID: MI-02 | Time: 13:25 | Room: Capital Suite 7 | Level: 200

Speakers: Adam Hill, Worldwide Tech Leader – SAP, AWS; Tom Hayman, Director of Platform and Operations, Dunelm

What Are You Waiting For to Add AI Capabilities to Your Applications?

Customer data is essential for retailers. In this session, learn how to add AI capabilities to your applications and take your data to the next level. Although most companies worldwide and across industries want to add AI capabilities to their applications and processes, they may not always have the skills or time to develop their own ML models. AWS offers the broadest and most complete set of AI services that can be integrated into your applications without ML expertise.

This session provides a complete overview of AWS AI services, their underlying pre-trained models, and how they can be used to make your applications more intelligent.

Session ID: ML-04 | Time: 15:35 | Room: Auditorium | Level: 200

Speakers: Dr. Andrew Kane, WW Tech Lead – AI Language Services, AWS; James Wilson, Distinguished Engineer, Synamedia Limited 

Supercharge Your Contact Center with AI-driven Customer Experience

Contact centers are crucial for retailers to stay in touch with customers and deliver bar-raising customer support experiences. This session will share how the food-delivery service Deliveroo implemented Amazon Connect to reinvent their customer interactions.

Session ID: BA-01 | Time: 16:40 | Room: Theatre 1 | Level: 200

Speakers: Nawaz Varda, Sr. UKIR Connect Specialist SA, AWS; James King, Senior Software Engineer, Deliveroo

Meet us at the AWS Village for demos, ask an architect, and much more!

In between breakout sessions, meet us at the AWS Village where our two retail booths will be presenting on industry-specific innovations using AWS services.

The first booth will showcase the “store of the future” using computer vision to enable boundless experiences for customers with no checkout.

The second booth will demonstrate how AWS services can help you deliver omnichannel experiences, from buy online, to pick-up-at-curb, and in-store clienteling applications. Furthermore, you will learn how AWS can help you bring truly personalized experiences to life across the virtual and physical customer journey. We’ll feature Amazon Location Service, which lets retailers harness real-time, reactive, and location-aware data; Amazon Personalize, which can help retailers offer real-time product recommendations based on users’ past behaviors; and Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS), which lets retailers provide next-generation live shopping experiences to their customers.

Joining us at the booths also means you can chat with an AWS solutions expert about your architecture and learn how AWS can help you capture business opportunities to propel your future growth.

We can’t wait to see you at AWS Summit London 2022!