Category: Public Sector

National defense organizations have some of the most demanding software requirements in the world. Stringent security standards and complex environments make it challenging for developers to work efficiently. Because systems are deployed across large, proprietary government data centers, development teams find it challenging to create production-like environments for coding and testing. This, in turn, reduces the number of testing cycles that can be performed in a given amount of time.

At the University of Oklahoma, we asked ourselves: Can Amazon Alexa help engage college students and enhance their educational experience? How will students utilize voice technology as they graduate and move into their careers? Within the University of Oklahoma IT department, we aim to affect the student experience on campus in more ways than just delivering technology. We have found that the more a student is engaged on campus, the more likely they are to graduate. Technology innovation, like Alexa, will play a major role in that mission.

Spring is around the corner, and that means AWS Summits have arrived! Our global Summits bring the cloud computing community together to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS. Catch these events in major cities around the world, where you can join technologists from government, education, and nonprofits who want to discover how AWS can help them innovate quickly and deliver flexible, reliable solutions at scale.

C5, the investment specialist firm focused on cyber security, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, has announced the winners of its inaugural Shield in the Cloud competition. The challenge, supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS), PeaceTech Lab, and SAP NS2, was created to bring together the best and brightest minds working in anti-corruption technology.

The City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge is now open! The City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge is a global program recognizing how local and regional governments are innovating on behalf of their citizens around the globe. Last year, we opened up the competition to school districts who are using the cloud to enrich learning, help teachers reach more students, and improve school or district operations. This year, we are adding a new category to the Challenge: We Power Tech.

We are committed to enabling Canadian public sector customers to adopt cloud computing with confidence, while maintaining compliance with applicable privacy legislation. Recently, we supported efforts related to a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) by BCNET, a large government cloud broker in the Province of British Columbia that supports over 40 educational institutions, used to assess and enable cloud adoption for sensitive data workloads in Canada.

February was a busy month for the AWS Public Sector blog. In our debut episode of the AWS Public Sector Podcast, catch how AWS Media Services helps troops downrange, FIA saves lives with artificial intelligence – its CEO tells us why, and serverless technology makes spacewalking safer. FIA’s CEO, Jason Bier, joins to talk about his nonprofit’s keys to success, with host Randi Larson.

We are announcing a similar change for Amazon WorkSpaces. Educational institutions can save up to 14% per month on Amazon WorkSpaces by leveraging license discounts from Microsoft for Qualified Education Users. This equates to a $3.52 per user/month savings, and $0.03 per user/hour for WorkSpaces. You can take advantage of this discount if you qualify, based on Microsoft Licensing Terms and Documentation. If you think you may qualify, please contact us so that we can enable the discount for you. There is no upfront investment or financial commitment.

In order to provide our customers with additional flexibility to architect scalable, fault-tolerant, and highly available workloads in AWS GovCloud (US), we have added a third Availability Zone (AZ) to the AWS GovCloud (US) Region, Amazon’s isolated cloud region designed to host sensitive data and regulated workloads that address the most stringent U.S. government security and compliance requirements.

With our attention on gender diversity this International Women’s Day, we want to share what we can all do to address the workforce gender divide. A 2017 report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology reveals that women hold only 20% of computing jobs in the U.S. and that this number is declining, not increasing. In 2015, only 18% of Computer and Information Sciences bachelor’s degree recipients were women. In addition to We Power Tech, AWS is working with several nonprofit organizations who are leading the way by empowering, training, and creating a community for women engineers, developers, designers, entrepreneurs, leaders, and more, around the world