Two Days with AWS Federal

June 18, 2009 / G C Network /

Great Leaders Are Ambidextrous, Are You?

By G C Network | November 17, 2014

By: Melvin Greer Managing Director, Greer Institute  There are many important characteristics of great leaders. Team players, good listeners and visionary are clear hallmarks. But being ambidextrous is required now…

Cloud Computing Advantages and Disadvantages

By G C Network | November 13, 2014

What is Cloud Computing & what are its advantages & disadvantages. Join us for this installment of our Technical Insight series as expert Learning Tree instructor Kevin Jackson examines the…

Ingram Micro Honors Veterans with a $10,000 Gift to Veterans 360

By G C Network | November 13, 2014

On Veteran’s Day, hundreds of military veterans, active-duty service members and retirees were recognized and celebrated along with family members at the third annual Ingram Micro Veterans Day ceremonies held…

What Are You Waiting For? The Cloud Era is HERE!

By G C Network | November 11, 2014

by Kevin L. Jackson (This post first appeared at https://blog.learningtree.com) The revolutionary business aspects of cloud excite me every day, but the business diversity is even more exciting. This fact…

Schizophrenic About Cloud?

By G C Network | November 5, 2014

By Kevin L. Jackson This week Dell released its first Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI). This survey of more than 2,000 global organizations took a close look at how organizations…

Why You Need to Pay Attention to Cloud Computing

By G C Network | October 23, 2014

(This post was originally published by Learning Tree International  https://blog.learningtree.com/why-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-cloud-computing/ ) The adoption of cloud computing is revolutionizing today’s business. This trend has also elevated the importance of IT and…

Thriving in a Cloud, Big Data, Mobility and Security World

By G C Network | October 21, 2014

“The next generation of technology solutions will transform lives, businesses and economies.” This is the theme at this year’s Dell World opening keynote and this view is supported by Gartner’s…

Vets360 Founder Rick Collins Being Honored at the ‘Champions’ Leadership Conference

By G C Network | October 20, 2014

Veteran’s 360 and Rick Collins, Founder & Executive Director of Vets 360, Inc., are being honored at this year’sChampions Leadership, and Research Conference™ . This event, November 6th-7th, 2014 at…

“Cloud Musings” Joins Dell Content Provider Network

By G C Network | October 16, 2014

Cloud Musings, a GovCloud Network Property, is proud and honored to announce that we will now be serving over 3 Million Dell Community online daily viewers. Our content will focus…

Grounding the Cloud: Basics and Brokerage

By G C Network | September 29, 2014

“Picture Ben Franklin attempting to harness energy from a lightning-filled sky. The key tied to his kite was the middleman between electricity and the ground. This book details how using…

Today, I start two days of training with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Federal. If that’s the first time you’ve ever heard about an AWS Federal division, your not alone. Held in downtown Washington, DC the course was invite-only and attendance was IT services firms that had demonstrated a clear track record of success in the Federal market. The companies invited to this inaugural session were:
o Abacus Technology Corp (https://www.abacustech.com)
o Acumen Solutions, Inc. (https://www.acumensolutions.com)
o Foxhole Technology (https://www.foxholetechnology.com)
o Information Concepts (https://www.infoconcepts.com)
o Touchstone Consulting Group (https://www.touchstone.com)
o Turner Consulting Group (https://www.tcg.com)
From the AWS point of view, the stated objectives were to provide a high level overview of AWS, share their technology roadmap, develop joint sales/marketing strategy with key partners and to build stronger relationships within the Federal marketplace.
Personally, this was the first time I had ever heard the seminal AWS question: Do we have to start from 1st principles every time? In retrospect, this view really makes sense. AWS focuses on the “undifferentiated heavy lifting” letting their customers focus on their business – “differentiated value creation”. This was also the first time I had heard of the “70/30 switch”. Traditionally, up to 70% of an organization’s IT resources are dedicated to necessary and mundane grunt work:
  • hardware management
  • software management
  • maintenance
  • load balancing
  • scaling
  • utilization
  • idle machines
  • bandwidth management
AWS optimizes the grunt work and enables the switch, allowing their customers to focus that 70% on value creation.
The morning session focused on describing the various AWS services. Some key points included:
  • Nothing on the AWS platform is language or technology dependant. Strings and HTTP seem to be the basis of everything
  • AWS offers application and operating system level visibility allowing customers to use their own application and/or operating system level monitor and scale solutions
  • Licensing software on AWS is dependant on the software provider. Microsoft won’t let you bring your company’s licenses into the cloud. Oracle and IBM, on the other hand, will let you put all your licenses on the cloud platform.
  • Software that binds itself to specific hardware can still be a problem.
  • Stay tuned for some exciting innovations around developer account capabilities (Account and subaccount availability)
The afternoon session did a deep dive on security. Yes, their system is secure. In the end, technology is not an issue. Within the Federal space the question is policy on the government side and a valid business case on the Amazon side.
(6/19 Update: In response to reader comments, security depends on the metrics an organization is required to meet. My statements on AWS security is not valid for all potential implementations.)
I would like to thank Carl Moses, Eric Lee and Kevin Kelly for today’s welcomed and insightful session. The (unofficial) existence of AWS Federal is exciting news. I can’t wait to learn more tomorrow.

Follow me on https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson
Posted in , , ,

G C Network

2 Comments

  1. andy on June 18, 2009 at 8:32 pm

    I always enjoy learning how other people employ Amazon S3 online storage. I am wondering if you can check out my very own tool CloudBerry Explorer that helps to manage S3 on Windows . It is a freeware.
    With CloudBerry Explorer PRO you can even connect to FTP accounts



  2. Blogking on June 22, 2009 at 2:43 pm

    On the subject of load balancing, why not get the highest availability while not getting caught in high prices? Kemp’s got some great load balancers that are low priced and high in quality:

    http://www.kemptechnologies.com/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=pv&utm_content=zs&utm_campaign=home



Cloud Computing

Cybersecurity