Ep. 78 What’s Hot and What’s Not at the AWS Summit, Washington, DC

When 10,000 people show up to talk about cloud computing, what topics do they cover? Today, we sit down with Jeffery Kratz, Vice President, of Worldwide Public Sector Channels & Alliances to find out.

With a conference this large, there are hundreds of stories to tell.  To focus on the needs of the federal government, we will look at how improvement with Amazon partners can help federal agencies reach their goals.

First, Amazon is targeting partners with Transformation Modules.  This means that a partner can do the face-to-face work of understanding the needs of a specific federal program.  From there, they can take advantage of one of these modules to deepen their understanding of how innovations from Amazon can help federal agencies reduce costs and improve security for that specific initiative.

Second, sometimes, great ideas come out of startups. Approaching solving federal concerns from a different perspective, Amazon is launching an AWS GovTech Accelerator for Startups.  They take the modules to the next level.

The program includes a one-month virtual and combines it with in-person opportunities for technical and business mentorship for GovTech startups.  It is one thing to have a great solution, quite another to be able to package it in a format that will adhere to stringent federal requirements.

It looks like this program will bring innovation faster to the federal government.

Third, we learn something new.  According to the well-respected consulting firm Euroconsult, we will see 17,000 new satellites by 2030. Today’s ground station technology is based on outdated proprietary hardware and software.

Amazon is leading the charge when it comes to making today’s ground stations simple and scalable. Jeffery Kratz mentions the success of a company out of Japan called Infostellar with a new array of 26 ground stations serving the satellite and space community.

This is especially important for the newly created Space Force as well as existing programs at the Department of Defense.

Listen to the interview to catch up with how Amazon is responding to the dynamic needs of federal agencies.

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