AWS Cloud for Enterprises was an event on cloud computing held by Amazon Web Services(AWS) and BlazeClan Technologies, exclusively for CEOs, CIOs and IT Decision makers. It was held at the Westin Koregaon Park Pune on the 17th of April 2013. Among those attending were the CIOs and CEOs of acclaimed companies of the Non-IT industry.
The idea behind holding such an event was to increase awareness of cloud among companies of industries other than IT. The aim was to acquaint leaders of such companies with cloud, through an introduction to AWS and AWS Services along with information as to how BlazeClan, advanced partners of AWS, can help organizations to adopt and leverage benefits of Cloud.
The evening began at 7pm, with a video of an overview of Amazon Web Services. The podium was then approached by Mr Supratik Ghatak, Founder and President, Business Development of BlazeClan. Revealing the agenda of the evening, he said that the aim was to showcase and explain what cloud computing could mean to enterprises and the basic technical aspects of AWS Cloud. He called upon Mr Santanu Dutt of AWS to Introduce AWS Cloud.
Mr Santanu Dutt, Solution Architect, Amazon Web Services
Mr Santanu began by explaining some AWS Cloud concepts.
- The first was Elasticity, which allows you to scale up and scale down the resources, within minutes, depending on the traffic demands.
- The next was the idea of ‘No capex and more opex’ which means less capital expenditure, because you are not purchasing the resource, you are only using it and paying for as much as you use.
- You can pay as you go. As your consumption of the resource reduces, so does the cost, ensuring that resources are not standing idle.
- Next was Automation where he spoke about how cloud helps you cut down on operating costs. AWS provides APIs (Application Programming Interface) and SDKs (Software Development Kit) which can be used to enhance automation.
In the following few minutes, he covered global infrastructure and the platform for cloud computing. AWS has what they call ‘regions’ which are geographic locations that house and provide computing resources. There are 8 such regions, plus 1 which is specifically US government space. So 9 regions altogether. The concept of CDN (Content Delivery Network) is applied, where a cache of data is maintained at centers across the world. Clients can access this data at lowest latency, where the edge location geographically closest to them, replies to the request.
He then outlined some of the services offered by AWS. Whether it is monitoring resources or acquiring a ready to use database within minutes, AWS has services to meet specific, characteristic IT and business requirements requirements. To read about the services in detail, Click Here.
Talking about the uniqueness of AWS he mentioned points like,
- AWS Cloud does not require any upfront charges. Moreover prices have never been increased at AWS and have been consistently dropped close to 30 times.
- Another was that the new services are designed and created, based on customer feedback that has been collected. One of these was a change made where, even the license on a software can be leased out instead of the client having to buy buying it. So, since the infrastructure is leased, you do not need to spend on the licensing either.
- Amazon’s Whats New page will keep you updated on all the changes and additions made to the services.
He closed his presentation by mentioning the benefits of AWS Cloud. He did this by answering some of the commonly voiced concerns about cloud computing in general.He spoke about what can be done to keep data safe on cloud, take backup and make copies of data, how the storage system works in terms of backup and recovery, a cold storage solution offered, management of BigData, and Hadoop, among other such benefits to users.
Mr Santanu then handed over to Mr Veeraj Thaploo, Founder and President-Engineering – BlazeClan.
Mr. Veeraj displayed and explained a screen-cast showing how easy it is to spin up a server. How a cloud application can be architected in a way that even if one EC2 instance goes down, it has no impact on your application. How infrastructure running in one data center can easily be shifted to another, even across continents, and explained the process of each.
Mr Varoon Rajani explains Cloud Adoption Methodology
Mr Varoon Rajani, Founder and President Cloud Consulting spoke next, about the process of migration to cloud. He explained the three phases of Planning, Deploying and then Optimizing your implementation on cloud, along with what each phase entails.
He spoke of the services offered by BlazeClan like migration and adoption of cloud, application development services around cloud computing and enterprise level migration application, migrating databases and ERP applications to cloud.
Then followed use cases that BlazeClan has worked on and the cloud solutions delivered. Click Here to read the Case Studies. BlazeClan also has Prebuilt Solutions that allow faster migration to cloud.
BlazeClan’s focus area is Cloud Computing, ensuring dedicated cloud service and effective, contemporary solutions.
Client speaker, Mr Vishwas Gaur of Bajaj Allianz
Mr Vishwas Gaur, representing Bajaj Allianz, one of the clients of BlazeClan, was present as BlazeClan’s Client Speaker. He shared his and his team’s experience with BlazeClan and using cloud services. He spoke of why and how his company found value on cloud. The features of cloud like the ability to scale up and scale down the resources allowed dynamic running and operating of business, allowing major saving of cost. Other features like pay per use and others that allowed faster roll-out. He described how BlazeClan helped his company to discover and use the Virtual Private Cloud, allowing an isolated environment along with multiple levels of access.
The evening came to a close with a session where the representatives of companies attending, could speak to the cloud experts and consult with them about their queries and concerns about cloud computing.
Mr DD Mishra, Founder CIOSpecialist during the discussion
The event was a success and achieved what it had set out to do, which was to introduce cloud to the non-IT industry and make IT decision makers aware of the basics of how to harness and use cloud as a solution to IT problems.
Read our blog “Q&A Round – AWS Cloud for Enterprises ” for further details on the Q&A round.
