Category: Thought Leadership

The second part of the Mission Critical Cloud Fix This podcast mini-series by Teresa Carlson, vice president of the worldwide public sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), is now live. We explored remote education with the Los Angeles County Unified School District (LAUSD), Athabasca University, and Pearson.

The concept of a COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium emerged from a roundtable discussion at the White House in March and included input from industry, government, and academic leaders. Following the announcement of the consortium, AWS has been collaborating with teams on a growing number of projects to provide cloud computing resources from AWS. I want to share three early learnings and insights into some of the innovative projects on which we are collaborating with the world’s leading researchers.

The COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition is a private-sector led response to COVID-19 that brings together healthcare organizations, technology firms, nonprofits, academia, and startups to preserve the healthcare delivery system and help protect U.S. populations. AWS is a member of the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition, working side by side with leading healthcare providers and researchers such as the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and ZocDoc. Together, we’re coordinating our collective expertise, capabilities, and data to provide insights to improve clinical outcomes.

Across recent customer engagements, our teams have seen an increase in requests for support in four key use cases: remote workforce and productivity, citizen engagement, data management and analytics, and operational resilience and business continuity. Today I want to share a few stories of success where customers have implemented AWS services to address these use cases. They address four of the most urgent IT issues facing public sector customers in the crisis.

Getting started with the cloud can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. The first step is understanding the basics. Learn what the cloud is, how it works, and its benefits. Next, learn the different types of cloud computing and the foundational cloud services to help get you started making sense of large amounts of data, innovating quicker, handling sudden changes in demand, and more.

On Military Spouse Appreciation Day, we want to acknowledge the significant contributions, support, and sacrifices of military spouses worldwide. For military spouses, finding employment can be a challenge. To help prepare military spouses for roles in technology, Amazon offers no cost training for US military spouses, transitioning military, and veterans through its AWS Educate initiative.

I am happy to share that the first AWS Public Sector Summit Online will happen virtually on Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Registration is now open, and we are building an experience that you will be able to access right from your own home. Leading up to the Summit, I am also excited to announce the release of a new, five-part series of the Fix This podcast. I will be one of the guest hosts, and I look forward to speaking with government, education, and healthcare customers about how they are solving some of the world’s most pressing challenges with technology.

Schools are looking for ways to help their students remain productive and connected while learning remotely. End user computing (EUC) helps schools enable remote learning by providing every student access to the applications they need for class on any computer. This means bring the on-premises computer lab experience to the students, virtually. Amazon AppStream 2.0 can help educational institutions create virtual computer lab spaces at scale. AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed application streaming service that offers on-demand access to desktops and applications. Check out five things you should consider when rapidly deploying a virtual computer lab space using Amazon AppStream 2.0.

Last December, AWS announced the expansion of its collaboration with the U.S. NOAA to make environmental data easier to access and use through the Big Data Program. Users can now access new, authoritative NOAA data on AWS without needing to download and store their own copies. Researchers and entrepreneurs can deploy compute resources on-demand in the cloud, perform analysis quickly and efficiently, and save costs by letting researchers ask more questions and experiment more easily. One of the foundational datasets now available on AWS through this collaboration is Himawari-8, the Japan Meteorological Agency’s satellite dataset.

Far above the clouds, one of the fastest growing missions for the public sector is taking place. Technological advances and open data initiatives provide new paths to explore space, impacting our lives here on Earth. From satellites to rovers, cloud computing and cloud-enabled technologies help us find answers to our biggest questions.