AWS Public Sector Blog

In February 2020, the AWS Public Sector Blog covered stories on the value of Earth observation data, the Smithsonian Open Access Initiative, and more. Watch The Brief, hosted by Sarah Worley from We Power Tech, to learn more, and scroll down for links to these stories.

For the first-ever Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Summit in Mexico City, more than 1,400 people from government, education, and nonprofits registered for the event to discuss digital transformation in Latin America through investment in innovation, infrastructure, and talent. With content in both Spanish and English, AWS leaders and customers shared their news and success stories with the group. What’d you miss?

Migrating enterprise workloads to Linux removes operating system license cost and frees your organization from disruptions caused by unexpected—and sometimes punitive—license policy changes. The effort required to re-platform from Windows to Linux varies depending on how the application was implemented. The key is to identify and target workloads with the right characteristics, balancing strategic importance and implementation effort.

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.

Universities around the world are using voice technology to bridge the gap between students and institutions and addressing key challenges for universities today including student retention and satisfaction. At the BETT Show 2020 in London in January—focused on future tech trends, innovation, and wellbeing—Alex Denley, Director of Innovation and Transformation at London South Bank University (LSBU), discussed how voice technology can help, including the Alexa skill Ellie.

To nurture future diverse leaders in technology during Black History Month, AWS worked across the United States to educate the next generation of students on cloud computing, cloud career opportunities, and how to excel in the technology industry. AWS Educate and the Americas-based AWS solutions architecture team worked together at Bowie State University during a two-day, student-centered event near Amazon HQ2. Almost 150 students from the technology and security, computer science, and management of information systems departments came to learn about the AWS builder culture, AWS Educate resources, and early-career technical roles through Tech U.

For climate change adaptation and resilience, it is important to assess the risks associated with the impacts of climate change and then understand and take action to mitigate those risks. Since 1980, the U.S. has experienced 258 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. As floods become more frequent and costly and natural hazards and climate change impact physical building assets, business continuity, and asset values, big data and analytical technology can be used to create high-tech risk assessments and economic loss estimations.

This month, the Fix This podcast focused on how technology is used to preserve ancient artifacts, develop the pipeline of scientists that fuel our trips to space, and end homelessness. Listen to episodes seven and eight, featuring interviews with Digital Divide Data (DDD), NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA JPL), Community Solutions, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) expert on homelessness, Jessie Metcalf.

Mahmoud Khaled, a PhD student at TUM and a research assistant at LMU, researches how to improve safety-critical systems that require large amounts of compute power. Using AWS, Khaled’s research project, pFaces, accelerates parallelized algorithms and controls computational complexity to speed the time to science. His project findings introduce a new way to design and deploy verified control software for safety-critical systems, such as autonomous vehicles.

The Smithsonian Institution announced the availability of more than 2.8 million two- and three-dimensional images and files through the Smithsonian Open Access Initiative. With this initiative, anyone with an internet connection has access to high-resolution media files, the accompanying metadata, and research from the Smithsonian Institution’s 19 museums, nine research centers, and zoo. This Smithsonian dataset is the largest museum collection released to date.