Category: Management Tools

“Action cannot be completed because the system is out of date.” Every technology user understands the frustration of getting this message. When Bucknell University turned to the cloud to modernize their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, they found unexpected gifts along the way: more cost savings, better solutions, and best of all, new “found” time to devote to high impact projects.

Higher education leaders agree the coronavirus pandemic forced many institutions to adapt and innovate. Which strategies worked? Which tactics didn’t? What role did cloud technology play? The AWS education team recently convened a small group of university leaders for a roundtable discussion to learn about how higher education institutions innovated to support learning, teaching, health and administrative processes, campus culture, and physical infrastructure.

Now more than ever, nonprofits have to optimize their costs and stretch their funds to maximize dollars invested in their mission. Often, nonprofits evaluate efficiency based on their operating expenses. For many, this means turning to the cloud to eliminate the upfront costs of buying servers and building data centers. With the cloud, nonprofits can better understand their bills, uncover foundational strategies for optimizing costs, set up budget alerts, and track costs and usage so they only spend on resources that they need.

Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced Service Workbench on AWS, a web portal for researchers to deploy domain-specific data and tools on secure IT environments in minutes not months. Customers can accelerate research while promoting repeatability, multi-site collaboration, and cost transparency in the research process. Tailored for researchers, Service Workbench helps quickly and securely stand up research environments for their work, allowing them to focus on the research not the technology.

Chatbots and modern call centers provide governments with an efficient way to connect with citizens during critical times. Governments, health systems, and educational institutions are responsible for communicating and maintaining information portals regarding public safety, health and human services, emergency services, social services, and more. Now more than ever, communities are turning to their public sector organizations for up-to-date information. Read on to learn from organizations across industries and how they have scaled their services to meet increased demand.

Data related to healthcare, in both volume and variety, is undergoing a tremendous expansion. One of the best ways to tackle complicated data integration is through a data lake: a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis. A data lake enables you to break down data silos and combine different types of analytics, such as data warehousing, big data processing, or operational analytics, to gain insights and guide better business decisions.

Data is an organization’s critical asset, which is why safeguarding it against ransomware attacks, natural disasters, emergencies, or technical failures is a top priority. Legacy data storage, such as tape, makes sharing and protecting data costly and time consuming. AWS released a series of educational webinars and whiteboarding videos that discuss how to raise the bar on data protection in the AWS Cloud.

Did you know AWS can help deliver an automated solution for creating the FedRAMP Integrated Inventory Workbook? This workbook needs to be updated and submitted to the FedRAMP Project Management Office (PMO) monthly for continuous monitoring. Automating this workbook saves manual work hours. Any customer going through the FedRAMP authorization process can leverage this workbook. Understand how to gather an inventory of AWS resources from AWS Config data to create the FedRAMP Integrated Inventory Workbook.

While moving to the cloud saves cost when compared to on-premises IT models, it is important to inspect possible mistakes that could lead to unplanned cloud costs. Based on customer cost optimization consultations with AWS, some organizations have seen up to 33% reduction in cloud spending waste. Here we provide some tips and resources to recognize cloud cost optimization. What are some other common oversights customers make that can drive up their cloud spend? Avoid the following missteps.

According to a survey of attendees at the AWS DC Public Sector Summit in 2019, 74% of government IT professionals believe their agencies hold onto data centers longer than they should. Monolithic methods of deployment impact speed, performance, and cost. With microservices, customers can break their monoliths into smaller business units, making it easier to migrate and manage systems in the cloud. This post outlines how customers can migrate from on-premises data centers to the cloud and break away from monolithic methods of deployment using microservices and containers.