Author: Sandy Carter

During the 10th anniversary of re:Invent, I was thrilled to share announcements and achievements from AWS Partners and programs for the public sector around the world. Since its launch, AWS’s Public Sector Partner Program participation has increased by an average of 54% year over year, with partners providing solutions in mission areas across healthcare, space, energy, transportation, government, education, and nonprofit. In both the Global Partners Summit keynote at re:Invent 2021, as well as in my public sector leadership session, I highlighted the new and upcoming AWS Partner solutions and accomplishments.

In my keynote at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Partners Forum, I spoke about, “celebrating, listening, and acting on your input”—highlighting our customer obsessed approach to AWS Partners and customers. I shared many exciting stories from our AWS Public Sector Partners as well as some of the great programs we’ve rolled out to help accelerate missions, migrations, and modernization. Check out the stories and announcements you might have missed.

We are excited to announce the selection of the 10 finalists and participants for the first ever AWS Healthcare Accelerator. These ten companies were selected from 427 applications from 31 countries around the world by a panel from AWS and KidsX. The first ever AWS Healthcare Accelerator cohort represents a diverse group of healthcare solutions backed by diverse leadership, with 90 percent of the cohort having diversity of leadership and 70 percent being female founded. These 10 finalists are working to solve many of the strategic imperatives of AWS healthcare customers.

We are happy to announce the selection of the 10 finalists and participants in the inaugural AWS Clean Energy Accelerator program. These ten companies were selected by a panel from AWS and Freshwater Advisors, from 218 applications received from 38 countries around the world. The applicants ranged from pre-revenue to $50M in annual revenue and from 1 to more than 500 employees.

To support both high-potential healthcare startups and the healthcare industry need for innovative solutions, we are excited to announce the launch of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Healthcare Accelerator program, a four-week technical, business, and mentorship accelerator opportunity open to U.S.-based healthcare startups or international healthcare startups that have existing U.S. operations.

Thank you to all our AWS Public Sector Partners who are essential in driving innovation, accelerating digital transformation, and delivering results for our AWS customers. Please join us for the virtual launch of the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partners Awards live on June 30, 2021 at 12:00 PM ET, or on demand following the live airing. This special event is hosted by SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE and features interviews from our award winners and their customers. Or check out all the winners in this post.

Addressing climate change requires innovation across the world, across industries, and across startups and multi-national corporations. From distributed energy to storage solutions to efficiency and optimization software—clean technology investment and innovation is surging. With this surge in demand comes a rapid proliferation of startups working to solve today’s biggest energy challenges. To help foster this innovation, AWS is launching the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator.

Data has become a strategic asset. With the right tools, data becomes predictive and makes us agile. Using data-led migrations and advanced data analytics solutions, AWS Partners create repeatable and scalable solutions that provide increased operational efficiencies and profitability for companies, agencies, and governments. The three steps to gaining the full value of data are: migrate data to the cloud data lake, set up an analytics engine, and leverage artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including ML and deep learning.

At AWS, we place a high priority on innovation. And innovation is best served by a diverse team, which is why we support organizations like Girls in Tech, a global nonprofit of more than 70,000 members, that advocates for diversity, equality, and inclusion in the technology industry. A report from NCWIT found that women earned 57% of all bachelor’s degrees in 2019, yet only 21% of computer and information sciences bachelor’s degrees. And while women hold 57% of all professional occupations in the US workforce, they hold only 26% of all computing occupations. And, the numbers of women in STEM drop down to the low single digits when you look at BIPOC women. It is clear—the time for change is now.

As the global aerospace and satellite industry enters a new age, leveraging the power of startups will drive innovation and improve accessibility to space data. AWS understands the importance of creating and nurturing startup communities, and today, we are proud to announce the launch of the AWS Space Accelerator. The AWS Space Accelerator is a four-week business support program that is open to space startups seeking to use AWS to help solve the biggest challenges in the space industry. Applications are open today and proposals are due by April 21, 2021.