At this week's AWS Summit Washington, D.C., held June 7-8, the cloud computing giant made a number of announcements related to its public sector solutions and partners that work with public sector customers.
Max Peterson, Vice President of AWS Worldwide Public Sector, delivered a keynote address that highlighted how organizations leveraged cloud technology to drive mission-critical outcomes.
AWS Summit Washington, D.C. Partner Announcements
There were also a number of announcements aimed at partners, including the availability of AWS SimSpace Weaver in AWS GovCloud U.S. regions.
Government customers and partners, such as federal contractors and systems integrators with customers who have U.S. federal, state, or local government security and compliance requirements, can now use these regions to host sensitive data and regulated workloads in the cloud, AWS said.
AWS also announced it is expanding its Partner Transformation Program (PTP) with a suite of Targeted Transformation Modules (TTMs) that provide topic-specific workshops designed to complement standard PTP engagement. The two TTMs currently available to partners are the Cloud Enablement Engine (CEE) and the CFO Cloud Conversations (CCC), according to the announcement.
AWS Tech Skills and Education Programs
There were also a number programs aimed at upskilling and attracting a larger pool of talent to the IT industry. For example, AWS announced the AWS Skill to Jobs Tech Alliance to boost career readiness for learners and modernize tech programs of study across 78 educational institutions, collectively serving more than 380,000 learners. The initiative will bring together a coalition of Fortune 500 companies and other employers, government agencies, workforce development organizations, and education leaders to address the skills gap in community college and university curricula, and better prepare learners for entry-level tech careers, AWS said.
AWS also launched new skills and education programs to inspire students and empower girls and women to pursue educational opportunities in STEAM. The AWS CloudRoom, a new global program, will help students ages 9-14 gain a deeper understanding of the cloud and the things it makes possible. This coming school year, AWS will roll out the program in Virginia at schools across the state, as well as across the U.S. and globally. In addition, this year the AWS Girls’ Tech Day program will mark its five-year anniversary by expanding into a full-fledged Girls’ Tech Series, transforming a one-off event designed to spark an interest in tech into a recurring series of engagements to help kindle that initial STEAM interest into a lifelong passion.
Finally, a partnership with Deloitte’s Smart Factory Believers Program will empower next-generation STEM learning at District of Columbia Public Schools with support from AWS, the company said.
Deloitte and AWS are bringing their Smart Factory Believers Program to Washington, DC public school students, donating 30 STEM robotics kits, along with the standards-based math and science curriculum and holistic teacher training and coaching, to McKinley Middle School, the first STEM-focused middle school in DCPS. From there, the program will incorporate more middle schools and expand into high schools within the greater DC area, aiming to impact more than 1,600 students in the DC metro area in the coming years.
This slate of educational programs will hopefully supply a larger pool of talent to tech companies, government-focused MSPs, ISVs and VARs in the DC metro area in years to come.
