Key Takeaways from AWS re:Invent 2018

December 06, 2018 4 min Read

Nearly 50,000 technology professionals descended upon 6 convention centers in Las Vegas for this year’s AWS re:Invent conference to connect with peers and cloud experts for collaboration and learning about Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Several team members from Expedient attended the week-long event to meet with partners and customers. The team participated in a variety of educational events including keynotes, summits, sessions, hands-on labs, and vendor exhibits. The Expedient team regularly attends conferences in order to remain current with the role new technologies play in our pursuit of enabling clients to achieve desired business outcomes.

Each year at re:Invent, AWS announces new services. This year these services were focused on databases, security and compliance, analytics, and machine learning to help builders creating new applications, or re-platforming existing ones, through abstraction of the underlying services. Additionally, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger joined AWS CEO Andy Jassy to explain an evolution of their existing partnership to bring VMware Cloud on AWS on premises using AWS hardware and VMware NSX software-defined networking, an announcement that validates the use cases we’ve solved with our existing On-Site Private Cloud with Disaster Recovery as a Service solution.

Expedient - Your Partner for Hyperscale Success

Expedient offers services that complement clients using hyperscale application clouds including AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud:

  • Expedient Multi-Cloud Connection – dedicated connectivity to enable communication for hybrid workload use cases among Expedient and other clouds
  • Expedient Enterprise Cloud – a scalable, VMware software defined data center (SDDC) with operational consistency to on premises workloads hosted at Expedient
  • VMware Cloud on AWS – a scalable, VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) with operational consistency to on premises workloads hosted on AWS
  • Expedient Cloud Storage solutions for data availability encompassing object, file, and data protection that are accessible across clouds

Expedient also currently offers a variety of managed security and data protection solutions. Technologies such as containers, encryption of data at rest, virtual security appliances, disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), and more, offer clients the business agility to match workloads to the right infrastructure. And, with data centers connected to the AWS east region, Expedient can host physical infrastructure, that cannot yet be virtualized, because it requires low latency connectivity to hyperscale destinations.

AWS: The de facto Platform for Future B2B Communications?

One very interesting takeaway that was evident from the re:Invent 2018 sessions we attended is the growing perception that the business to business (B2B) communications landscape is at a substantial inflection point. With more organizations expected to have an AWS presence in the near future, some cloud thought leaders believe that we are at the beginning of a paradigm shift where virtual private cloud (VPC-to-VPC) connections within the AWS cloud will become a primary means of B2B communications. Just as the postal service, telephone, fax machine, and Internet replaced existing methods of B2B interaction in the past, AWS will play a significant role in how application services and data exchange are to occur moving forward.

As the pace of technology change continues to increase rapidly – and the need to match workloads to the cloud that’s right for them becomes increasingly important – Expedient is collaborating with its partners to develop even more complementary solutions that enable the operation of comprehensive hybrid IT environments. Whether Expedient clients are migrating existing applications to the cloud for the first time with a lift and shift approach, embarking on a cloud re-platforming journey for specific applications in multiple phases, or building new cloud native applications as part of a cloud-first initiative, our team is ready to assist.

As Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Jonathan Rosenson is responsible for overseeing organizational functions that drive growth at Expedient. Jon additionally acts as an external spokesperson conveying the Expedient story. Follow him on Twitter.

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