‘Cloud’ is steadily and surely in the horizon of every business across the world. Cloud services are being increasingly used by companies big and small to reduce IT costs and to better efficiency. For startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) cloud is not just an option, but is an essential lifeline.

One of the largest companies providing ‘cloud’ services is Amazon Web Services (AWS), which offers a range of cloud-based products including compute, storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, Internet of Things, security and enterprise applications. These services help organisations move faster, lower IT costs, and scale.

AWS is active in the Middle East as well, with thousands of companies benefiting from its services. It has two offices in the Gulf  - in Bahrain and Dubai.

Teresa Carlson, Vice President and Head of Worldwide Public Sector, Amazon Web Services, was in Bahrain recently. In an exclusive interview with TradeArabia, she discussed the range of services offered by the company and how they will benefit organisations including businesses, education institutions and government organisations.

At the recently concluded Gulf Air Formula One in Bahrain, AWS showcased its Amazon Alexa, the Amazon Echo and other services.

“One of the biggest changes we have seen over the past few years is that cloud has moved from being something organisations were evaluating to really becoming the new normal. Every company in the world has to keep transforming the customer experience and their business to remain competitive. While having a lower cost structure is an enabler for transformation, it’s typically not the main driver.  The main drivers are agility and innovation, and cloud enables these in a very significant way,” Carlson said.

“We want our technology to help entrepreneurs to work, to experiment and grow their businesses. We fundamentally believe that technology is an enabler and a great equaliser for businesses around the world,” she said.

When AWS was started, it was individual developers and engineers taking advantage of its services, then those individual developers started companies. Later small businesses, big companies and governments started using the service. “We had a lot of naysayers too, but you cannot fight innovation. When companies began to see the game-changing opportunities they had with technologies at their fingertips, it paved the way for disruptive innovation,” she added.

Carlson is in charge of AWS’ business related to governments around the world; the education sector, not-for-profit groups, NGOs and the eco-system partners of these organisations.

“What my team is doing with educational institutions and governments is we are working with a new model to bring technology, not just into the governments themselves, but for governments to innovate on behalf of their citizens. We also explain to them that by allowing access and openness to technology within your country, and having the right infrastructure that allows you to become a digital nation, you create the right ecosystem, the entire elements that drive a country for business.”

AWS has millions of customers around the world, in more than 190 countries. "We have a lot of momentum around the world with our customers, who are looking for opportunities for innovation, improve productivity and reduce costs. AWS is a great addition in their portfolio, along with the cybersecurity capabilities that we provide.”

Excerpts from the Interview:
•    What are the key services provided by you in the region and how they have been received by companies/organizations?
All AWS technologies are available to customers in the Middle East. This has led customers in the region to be amongst the first to adopt cloud services when we launched AWS in 2006. Since then we have seen customers go from using our foundational services like storage (Amazon S3), compute (Amazon EC2), and database (Amazon RDS) through to using higher level and advanced services such as our suite of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.

All AWS technologies have been well received by customers in the region. As a result AWS now counts some of the Middle East’s most well-known and fastest growing businesses as customers, including Dubizzle, PayFort, and Careem, as well as government institutions and some of the largest companies in the Middle East, such as flydubai, Souq.com, and Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC). There are also thousands of SMEs and startups using AWS services.

It isn’t just technology that AWS provides to organizations in Bahrain and the Middle East, we also provide training and education to give citizens in the region the 21st Century skills they need to be successful. A good example of this is AWS Educate. AWS Educate is a global initiative to provide students and educators with the resources needed to accelerate cloud-related learning and helping education institutes get into the cloud. This is already available in Bahrain at institutes such as Bahrain Polytechnic and is also available for students and educators attending institutes in Saudi Arabia, such as King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, institutes in UAE, such as Higher Colleges of Technology, as well institutes in Oman, such as Oman College of Management and Technology, in Jordan, at institutes such as the Jordan University of Science and Technology, as well as many others across the Middle East.

We are actively hiring staff in the region and are very excited about creating a really nice business in the Middle East.

•    Tell us your view on cloud computing and why it makes sense for companies and government organizations to invest in cloud? How will it help them in the current business environment?
The cloud gives organisations access to storage, compute, database and many other technologies on a pay-as-you-go basis, from anywhere in the world. Anyone with some basic knowledge of IT, an idea, and a credit card can get access to near infinite amounts of compute and storage on demand. This is allowing startups to launch their businesses globally and enterprise businesses and public sector organisations to lower the cost of experimentation, enabling them to innovate more often.

The benefits of cloud can be summarised with five characteristics: No capital expenditure, pay only for what you use, elastic capacity, speed and agility of deployment, and the ability to focus on your core competence. These benefits are the reason well-known Middle Eastern companies such as Careem, flydubai, Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC), Souq.com, and many others choose to run their infrastructure on AWS as well as well-known global companies such as Coca Cola, Netflix, Unilever, and Shell.

•    States in the Gulf are keen to provide e-services to enhance the quality of government services. How do services provided by AWS help in this direction?
Previously some people in the Middle East have had the perception that cloud is only used by startups and that larger, security conscious organizations, such as those in the Public Sector, will not use AWS for more than development and test environments. We have seen that this is not the case. We are already working with academic and research institutes, such as Bahrain Polytechnic, to help them innovate by moving some of their core applications to the cloud. We are also in conversations with central government departments in Bahrain, and across the Middle East, to educate their staff on cloud technologies and start to move citizen services to AWS.

We see great potential for cloud to positively impact initiatives, such as eGovernment, where more citizen services are delivered via internet based applications. AWS can help Public Sector organisations to achieve this in several ways. The first is agility. AWS lets public sector organisations quickly spin up resources as they need them, deploying hundreds or even thousands of servers in minutes. If a new service is popular, they can support it by adding capacity on demand – if it isn’t popular, it can be shut down quickly and inexpensively.

The second reason is cost savings.  If you look at how people end up moving to the cloud, almost always the conversation starter ends up being cost. AWS allows customers to trade capital expense for variable expense, paying for IT as they consume it. With many government departments looking to cut costs, and yet under pressure to continue to innovate for citizens, this is a powerful proposition.

As of April 2017, AWS as reduced prices 60 times. We also have tools for customers like AWS Trusted Advisor to help customers with cost saving. This is a software tool we give customers where we actively show them ways to save money and encourage them to shut down resources that are underutilised or they aren’t using.  AWS also offers a free tier. AWS pricing is similar to how you pay for utilities like water or electricity. You only pay for the services you consume, and once you stop using them, there are no additional costs or termination fees.

The third reason is security. AWS has always made the security, privacy, and protection of customers our number one priority.  We have consistently achieved robust security standards, such as ISO 27001, ISO 27018, SOC 1, 2, 3, and PCI DSS Level 1, and will continue to do so.

By giving government organisations access to scalable, low cost infrastructure that is secure by default, is an exciting proposition and one that many government departments in GCC countries are currently asking us about.  

•    SMEs are a major part of our economies and they are lagging in IT investments. How is AWS geared to address this?  
What we’ve seen in the past few years is a democratization of IT.  With AWS SME customers can get access to the same kinds of technologies that were previously only available to the world’s largest companies. This has levelled the playing field as smaller companies in the Middle East gain the resources to compete in ways that were very expensive and often cost prohibitive in the past.  AWS also makes it possible for smaller companies to grow and quickly become household names, serving millions of customers around the world. A good example of an organization in the Middle East using AWS to achieve this is Careem. Launched in 2012, Careem runs totally on AWS and over the past three years has grown by 10x in size every year thanks to the scalability of the cloud.

As well as offering low-cost infrastructure services, another of the ways AWS is supporting SMEs is through helping them gain the skills they need to be successful with technology. AWS offers Training and Certification programs to help customers develop skills to design, deploy, and operate their infrastructure and applications on the AWS Cloud. Whether they are just getting started or looking to deepen their technical expertise, AWS has a variety of resources to meet their needs. Those that are new to AWS can watch free instructional videos to get started in minutes and can take self-paced labs to get hands-on practice with AWS and learn at their own pace. Customers can also explore more advanced technical training where they can learn to design, develop, and operate their infrastructure and applications on AWS, deepen technical skills and learn best practices from qualified AWS instructors. Customers looking to validate their technical skills with AWS can also get AWS Certified. This allows customers to gain recognition for their AWS expertise through Associate and Professional- level certifications that demonstrate they possess the skills and technical knowledge necessary for designing, deploying, and operating applications and infrastructure on AWS

•    Security is a key issue that worries companies when investing in ‘cloud’. What is your take on this? Are these concerns valid and how can companies address this challenge?
Security is our number one priority at AWS and we understand it is also a top priority for our customers. When customers take the time to understand the lengths AWS goes to when it comes to security, data privacy, and compliance they are pleasantly surprised.

AWS has always made the security, privacy, and protection of customers our number one priority.  We have consistently achieved robust security standards, such as ISO 27001, ISO 27018, SOC 1, 2, 3, and PCI DSS Level 1, and will continue to do so. In order to grow our security and compliance footprint we continue to pursue additional security and compliance certifications that are important to customers in all industries. Due to our commitment to security and privacy we are seeing customers from security conscious sectors such as the public sector, utilities, financial services, oil and gas, and transport moving large portions of their infrastructure to AWS.

A great example of a large, security conscious organisation that had chosen to move to AWS is international bank Capital One. Capital One is using AWS as a central part of its technology strategy. As a result, the bank plans to reduce its data center footprint from eight to three by 2018. Capital One is using or experimenting with nearly every AWS service to develop, test, build, and run its most critical workloads, including its new flagship mobile-banking application. Rob Alexander, Capital One's chief information officer, has been quoted saying in the past, "The financial service industry attracts some of the worst cyber criminals. We work closely with AWS to develop a security model, which we believe enables us to operate more securely in the cloud than we can in our own data centers."

•    What are the big changes you see in the next few years in terms of IT environment in organisations?
In the old world, when you asked engineering teams how long it might take them to get a server to try and experiment, you get answers like 10-18 weeks. In this new world, not only can a company spin up thousands of servers in minutes and pay only for what they use, but they have access to a very robust, full-featured technology offering that lets them go from idea to launch in record time.

This totally changes an organization, impacting the amount of cycles employees spend thinking about innovation because they know, if they have an idea, they have a chance to see if it works.  So it totally changes how you think about innovation, and it expands the group of people inside an organization that are thinking about new ideas. As we move to the future, and more organizations adopt the cloud, I think we will see IT changing to focus more on rapid experimentation in order to more quickly innovate for customers and citizens around the world.