Category: Best Practices

The cloud can help researchers process complex workloads, store and analyze enormous amounts of data, collaborate globally, and accelerate research and innovation. For research IT, Amazon Web Services (AWS) can help build scalable, cost-effective, and flexible environments while still maintaining the governance and guardrails for security and compliance. Following best practices, AWS allows for centralized management of resources, improved security and compliance of research workloads, and can save costs and accelerate innovation. What are some common questions from research IT customers?

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.

In a world where data is produced and handled at unprecedented speeds and quantities, the need for effective methods to securely store, analyze, and interpret this data is more important now than ever. As agencies within the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community turn to cloud adoption, they are able to bring new capabilities closer to the tactical edge and accelerate their digital transformation. Agencies can effectively leverage these new technologies such as AI, ML, and data analytics to free up time and resources for warfighters and analysts to focus on mission critical tasks.

As education has shifted to remote delivery, traditional mechanisms for engaging students and creating practical learning opportunities have had to adapt too. One mechanism—the hackathon—is increasingly taking place virtually. Typically, hackathons are in-person technology events where teams or individuals create solutions to a specific problem or challenge in a short timeframe, often 24 hours or a weekend. Hackathons are also social learning events where peers can connect, learn from each other, seek support from technical experts, and produce a cool (even if imperfect) solution. Cloud technology tools and resources can help virtual hackathons be as successful as traditional hackathons.

Public sector organizations—from state and local governments, to nonprofits, federal, and defense agencies—often ask us, “How does Amazon innovate?” Our approach centers on four pillars that help us innovate on behalf of our customers: culture, mechanisms, architecture, and organization.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released an interim rule, the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement: Assessing Contractor Implementation of Cybersecurity Requirements (DFARS Case 2019–D041), which includes NIST SP 800-171 and Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) assessment methodology and requirements. Organizations have been planning for CMMC, and with the release of this interim rule, are now beginning to prepare and build strategy for CMMC compliance. Learn how you can build your CMMC strategy using cloud technologies.

Driven by the need for greater productivity, lower costs, and more recently being able to scale a remote workforce, organizations around the world are moving their IT workloads to the cloud. Planning a move to the cloud requires upfront pre-migration planning; this is as important as the implementation itself. But it can be daunting to know where to start or what needs to be in place for a successful migration. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud Adoption Readiness Tool (CART) can help provide insight into your level of readiness and what you can do to improve it.

Organizations face a host of threats to business continuity, from extreme weather events to cyber-attacks to human error. Many turn to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to house their workloads in an environment that can withstand disruptions of any type or scale. IT resilience hinges on developing strong architectural, technological, and operational management. Cloud environments require assembly, execution, and maintenance. Here are five best practices for organizations to build IT resilience.

As schools return for their academic years amid a global pandemic, many questions persist around how best to enable both teachers and students to learn remotely, including accessing materials and applications in a secure and suitable form. Similarly, staff and administrators must have a reliable system for handling confidential information. For some, the answer is found in VPN connectivity and VDI. Streaming applications over the internet instead of having them physically installed on devices and desktops can save costs and address security concerns. InterVision, AWS Partner Network (APN) Partner, helped one of their higher education customers quickly and securely scale remote application delivery to students and faculty using Amazon AppStream 2.0, a solution that provides highly available remote user access while reducing the management time and costs compared to traditional solutions.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, only 60 percent of college students receive a degree within six years. Universities—like Portland State University (PSU) and Oklahoma State University (OSU-OKC)—are using data lakes for analytics and machine learning to improve academic achievement by helping students reach their educational goals faster. Read on for how institutions use Amazon S3 for data lakes.