Tag: #AWS

AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon Q

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), today announced the general availability of Amazon Q, the most capable generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant for accelerating software development and leveraging companies’ internal data. Amazon Q not only generates highly accurate code, it also tests, debugs, and has multi-step planning and reasoning capabilities that can transform (e.g., perform java version upgrades) and implement new code generated from developer requests. Amazon Q also makes it easier for employees to get answers to questions across business data such as company policies, product information, business results, code base, employees, and many other topics by connecting to enterprise data repositories to summarize the data logically, analyze trends, and engage in dialog about the data. Today, AWS is also introducing Amazon Q Apps, a new and powerful capability that lets employees build generative AI apps from their company’s data. Employees simply describe the type of app they want, in natural language, and Q Apps will quickly generate an app that accomplishes their desired task, helping them streamline and automate their daily work with ease and efficiency. To learn more about Amazon Q, visit aws.amazon.com/q.

“Amazon Q is the most capable generative AI-powered assistant available today with industry-leading accuracy, advanced agents capabilities, and best-in-class security that helps developers become more productive and helps business users to accelerate decision making,” said Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Artificial Intelligence and Data at AWS. “Since we announced the service at re:Invent, we have been amazed at the productivity gains developers and business users have seen. Early indications signal Amazon Q could help our customers’ employees become more than 80% more productive at their jobs; and with the new features we’re planning on introducing in the future, we think this will only continue to grow.”

Amazon Q Developer

Today, developers tell us that only 30% (or less) of their time is spent on coding, while the rest is spent performing tedious and repetitive tasks. This could be researching best practices from various parts of the web or learning how things work through documentation, forums, and conversations with colleagues. Developers also have to manage infrastructure and resources, troubleshoot and resolve errors, and understand operating costs. When they switch projects, they have to spend time learning the existing code base to understand its programming logic. Finally, there is all the work of testing and refactoring code, upgrading applications, debugging and optimization, and ensuring security by having to carry out vulnerability scanning and applying appropriate security fixes in a timely fashion. Companies want to empower their developers to spend less time on this coding muck and more time on creating unique experiences for their end users, while being able to deploy faster.

Q assists developers and IT professionals (IT pros) with all of their tasks—from coding, testing, and upgrading applications, to troubleshooting, performing security scanning and fixes, and optimizing AWS resources. Amazon Q delivers advanced and tailored generative AI capabilities, including:

  • Most accurate coding recommendations: Amazon Q helps developers build faster and more securely by generating code suggestions and recommendations in near real time. Customers such as Blackberry, BT Group, and Toyota are already using Q to increase developer productivity and speed up innovation in their organizations. Amazon Q Developer has the highest reported code acceptance rates in the industry, for assistants that perform multi-line code suggestions, with BT Group recently sharing that they accepted 37% of Q’s code suggestions and National Australia Bank reporting 50% acceptance rates. Q also has a powerful customization capability that securely leverages a customer’s internal code base to provide more relevant and useful code recommendations. With this capability, Q is an expert on your code and provides recommendations that are more relevant to save even more time. Q keeps customizations completely private, and the underlying FM does not use them for training, protecting customers’ valuable intellectual property.
  • Amazon Q Developer Agents: Q has a unique capability, called agents, which can autonomously perform a range of tasks–everything from implementing features, documenting, and refactoring code, to performing software upgrades. Developers can simply ask Amazon Q to implement an application feature (such as asking it to create an “add to favorites” feature in a social sharing app), and the agent will analyze their existing application code and generate a step-by-step implementation plan. Developers can collaborate with the agent to review and iterate on the plan before the agent implements it, connecting multiple steps together and applying updates across source files, code blocks, and test suites. Carrying out these tasks, Q has achieved the highest scores of any software development assistant available today, scoring 13.4% on the SWE-Bench Leaderboard and 20.5% on the SWE-Bench Leaderboard (Lite), a dataset that benchmarks coding capabilities.

To save customers months, even years, of time upgrading applications, Q can also automate and manage the entire upgrade process–with Java conversions available today and .Net conversions coming soon to help people move from Windows to Linux. In their IDE, developers simply ask Amazon Q to “transform” their project and the agent analyzes application source code, generates new code in the target language or version, executes tests, and completes all code changes. A five-person team at Amazon used Q to upgrade more than 1,000 production applications from Java 8 to Java 17 in just two days (the average time per application was less than 10 minutes), saving months of time, and improving application performance–previously, many of these applications would each take a couple of days to upgrade.

  • Best-in-class security vulnerability scanning and remediation: Q scans code for hard-to-detect vulnerabilities, such as exposed credentials and log injection. With a single click, Q automatically suggests remediations tailored to the application code, allowing developers to quickly accept fixes with confidence. Q’s security scanning capabilities outperform leading publicly benchmarkable tools on detection across most of the popular programming languages, helping to significantly improve the security and code quality of a developer’s application.
  • Q is an expert on AWS and optimizing your AWS environment: Amazon Q Developer is an expert on AWS and is in the console to help IT pros optimize their cloud environments, as well as diagnose and resolve errors and networking issues, select instances, optimize structured query language (SQL) queries, extract, transform, and load (ETL) pipelines, and provide guidance on architectural best practices. To further help customers optimize their cloud environments, today Amazon Q Developer includes a new feature that helps customers list their AWS account resources, configurations, and analyze billing information and trends, making it easier for them to manage their accounts. For example, IT pros can simply ask, “What instances are currently running in US East 1?” or “What’s my S3 bucket encryption?” or “What were my EC2 costs by region last month?” and Amazon Q Developer will list the resources and details in a summarized answer with links to learn more.

 

Amazon Q’s conversational interface is available wherever it is needed—in the AWS Console, in Slack, or in IDEs, including Visual Studio Code and JetBrains–to give developers the ability to use the conversational experience of Q within their favorite software development solutions. To extend the Q experience to more places developers work, AWS is announcing new partner extensions from Datadog and Wiz, and an integration with GitLab Duo that will offer joint customers a unified interface—whether working in AWS or GitLab.  By integrating Amazon Q’s generative AI capabilities with solutions that developers know, use, and trust, developers can update and create software faster.

Amazon Q Business

Organizations possess vast amounts of data spread across multiple documents, systems, and applications. Employees across every organization and department spend hours every week searching internal sources for information, piecing together analyses, writing reports, building presentations, gathering insights from dashboards, and adapting content for different audiences. Generative AI can help solve these challenges. However, the offerings available today are not connected to business data or internal resources and are not built from the ground up with security in mind. Because of these barriers, many organizations cannot safely tap into the full potential of generative AI.

Q Business is a generative AI–powered assistant that can answer questions, provide summaries, generate content, and securely complete tasks based on data and information in your enterprise systems. It empowers employees to be more creative, data-driven, efficient, prepared, and productive:

  • Q unites more data sources than any other generative AI assistant available today: Amazon Q Business easily and securely connects to 40+ commonly used business tools, such as wikis, intranets, Atlassian, Gmail, Microsoft Exchange, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)–more than any other generative AI assistant available today. Simply point Q at your enterprise data repositories, and it will search all of your data, summarize logically, analyze trends, and engage in dialog with end users about the data. This helps business users to access all of their data, no matter where it resides in their organization.
  • Built from the ground up with security and privacy in mind: Amazon Q Business seamlessly integrates with a customer’s existing identities, roles, and access permissions to personalize the interactions for each individual user, while maintaining the highest levels of security. It generates accurate responses based on enterprise information, and customers can restrict sensitive topics, block keywords, and filter out inappropriate content. Q also does not use customer content to train the underlying models for anybody else. Amazon Q Business outperforms all published results for other assistants on correctness, truthfulness, and helpfulness for general Q&A (using the MultiHop-RAG dataset), as well as industries like finance (using a FiQA dataset sample) and technology (using a LoTTE dataset sample).
  • Inventive generative BI allows analysts to build detailed dashboards in minutes and business users to get insights fast: Amazon Q brings its advanced generative AI technology to Amazon QuickSight, AWS’s unified Business Intelligence (BI) service built for the cloud. With Amazon Q in QuickSight, customers get a Generative BI assistant that allows business analysts to use natural language to build BI dashboards in minutes and easily create visualizations and complex calculations. It is also the only BI product where business users can get AI-driven executive summaries of dashboards, ask questions of data beyond what is presented in the dashboards, and create detailed and customizable data stories highlighting key insights, trends, and drivers. Business users can ask to “build a story about how the business has changed over the last month for a business review with leadership;” and in seconds, Amazon Q creates a narrative with specific insights and supporting visuals, including specific ideas of how to improve the business. Users can choose to layout the content produced by Q in an easy to share document or presentation where they can customize text, images, and themes, and use Amazon Q to rewrite and improve the text.
  • First-of-its-kind capability that helps every employee go from conversation to generative AI-powered app in seconds: Today, AWS is announcing the new Amazon Q Apps capability (in preview). Amazon Q Apps allows employees to easily and quickly create generative AI-powered apps based on their company data, without requiring any prior coding experience. With Q Apps, employees simply describe the app they want, in natural language, or they can take an existing conversation where Amazon Q Business helped them solve a problem, and with one click, Q will instantly generate an app that accomplishes their desired task that can be easily shared across their organization.

For example, creating employee onboarding plans for new recruits can be a long and laborious process. They require many hours of searching through different data stores and documents to find the appropriate content for the new employee; and often, the content is out of date or not specific enough to their role. With Q, an HR professional could simply describe they want an app that will create an onboarding plan for a new employee that utilizes the company’s existing best practices, and has an input field for employee ID that personalizes the onboarding plan to their role by drawing from internal data sources specific to their job family.  In a matter of seconds, Amazon Q Apps will build an app that can automatically generate a personalized onboarding plan tailored to the employee, their role, and the department using the latest best practices. The HR professional can then share the app with hiring managers across the company to instantly build personalized onboarding plans for their own teams.  Now, with Amazon Q Apps, business users can easily, quickly, and securely build an app based on enterprise information to improve their work productivity.

What Amazon Q customers and partners are saying

GoDaddy helps millions of entrepreneurs globally start, grow, and scale their businesses. “Amazon Q in QuickSight allows us to ask our data contextual business questions without having to constantly rely on ad-hoc dashboards. For example, now we can much more easily discover and drill into anomalies in business performance across the company,” said Ed Sarausad, senior director, Data & Analytics, at GoDaddy. “This shift not only streamlines our processes, but also elevates our analytical capabilities. What excites us most is the opportunity to unlock insights with profound, previously unasked questions. That allows us to respond more swiftly and with greater depth, enhancing our data learning journey.”

National Australia Bank is one of the largest financial institutions in Australia. “At NAB, teams across the bank are excited about how generative AI can transform our work, and we’ve found a great solution in Amazon Q Developer, a powerful generative AI-powered tool for our engineers and developers,” said Andrew Brydon, executive chief engineer at National Australia Bank. “The tool has seamlessly integrated advanced generative algorithms and tools into our development process, delivering unparalleled benefits like completing tasks faster, increasing productivity, and minimizing repetitive actions. So far, our developers have accepted 50% of the code suggestions made by Amazon Q Developer, and that number continues to increase as we scale. We look forward to seeing how Amazon Q Developer will continue to empower and inspire our engineers to upskill their technical expertise, delivering better service for customers.”

Netsmart is a leading technology provider for community-based care. “The demand for community-based care has grown exponentially, and Amazon Q Developer is helping us meet that demand by fueling our efficiency and innovation,” said Paul Snider, vice president of engineering at Netsmart. “Amazon Q Developer can transform the way our engineering team approaches research, design, and coding. Since using Amazon Q Developer, our team has seen a strong code suggestion acceptance rate of 35%. This has allowed our engineers to efficiently generate high-quality code and documentation, implement new features, which can accelerate development cycles, and significantly reduce manual effort. We are excited about the impact of Amazon Q Developer on our development processes.”

Novacomp provides a diverse range of IT products and services while specializing in Quality Assurance Automation, Software Testing services and Nearshore Outsourcing. “Modernizing applications at Novacomp has historically been a time-consuming task that is often de-prioritized against other development initiatives,” said Gerardo Arroyo, CTO of Novacomp. “Our team turned to Amazon Q Code Transformation to help upgrade a project running in Java 8 to Java 17 with over 10,000 lines of code. This is a task that would typically take an expert over two weeks to manually complete, but Amazon Q seamlessly modernized our project in a matter of minutes. Since adopting Amazon Q across our organization, we have realized a 60% decrease in average in our tech debt.”

Persistent Systems is a multi-national technology services company that builds software that drives digital transformation. “Amazon Q Apps has the potential to revolutionize the way we approach generative AI,” said Praveen Bhadada, head of generative AI at Persistent Systems. “We can now empower everyone on the team to quickly build and integrate applications with a no-code approach, using enterprise data sources while carefully aligning with existing identities, roles, and authorization levels.”

Smartsheet is an enterprise software as a service offering for collaboration and work management. “Amazon Q Business is streamlining knowledge management and accelerating employee productivity at Smartsheet,” said Bani Bedi, senior vice president, corporate development and strategy at Smartsheet. “Previously, it was too difficult for our 3,300 employees to find the information they needed across public help documents, training courses, and hundreds of all-employee Slack help channels. We have consolidated our organizational knowledge into a single AI engine to give our workforce immediate answers, significantly boosting employee productivity. Now, employees can simply tag @AskMe in any Slack channel, ask a question, and Amazon Q will instantly give them an answer. Our CEO uses Amazon Q Business to obtain answers and conduct research, getting the information that he needs without interrupting an employee’s workflow. We accomplished all of this in a couple of weeks and without writing a single line of code, using our existing identity system. Additionally, our engineering teams use Amazon Q to summarize incident statuses, identify action items, access API documentation, and troubleshoot technical issues more efficiently, so they can focus on delivering exceptional products to our customers.”

Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization. “Together with AWS, we’re leveraging generative AI to help our people work more efficiently and deliver superior digital experiences to our clients,” said Laura Money, EVP & chief information and technology innovation officer at Sun Life. “Adopting Amazon Q Apps will enable our teams to build secure and seamless solutions that create value and differentiation across our business. For example, empowering our teams with access to Amazon Q in just a few clicks will streamline the creation and sharing of applications tailored to their respective needs.”

Salesforce Products Now Available in AWS Marketplace in Ireland

Salesforce announced today that select Salesforce products are now available for purchase in Ireland via the AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy and deploy software that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Ireland. This expansion is in addition to recent availability in the UK, the US and Europe, including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Available products via AWS Marketplace include Data Cloud, Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Industry Clouds, Tableau, MuleSoft, Platform, and Heroku, making it even easier for AWS customers to subscribe to and manage Salesforce offerings. Customers will benefit from a single view across their information technology (IT) spend, simplified procurement processes, and flexible options like private pricing and consolidated billing through AWS, providing a seamless way to leverage pre-approved budgets and increase business performance.

AWS and Salesforce have been global strategic partners since 2016, with deep product integrations across data and AI, making it easier for customers to seamlessly and securely manage their data across Salesforce and AWS, and safely and responsibly infuse the latest generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into their applications and workflows.

“Today is a significant moment in our strategic partnership with AWS. With our combined offering and expertise, we’re enabling Irish customers to accelerate deployment of Salesforce products and generative AI technologies through seamless buying and billing experiences,” said Paul O’Sullivan, UKI CTO and SVP Solution Engineering, Salesforce.

“The expansion of our partnership will respond to customer demand in an AI-first digital economy, offering enhanced access to new opportunities to innovate and experiment, in turn driving better outcomes and faster time to value,” added O’Sullivan.

AWS customers in Ireland can now conveniently purchase select Salesforce products in AWS Marketplace. For more information on the availability of products and to get access to Salesforce products on the AWS Marketplace, get in touch here.

Dell Technologies Storage Advancements Accelerate AI and Generative AI Strategies

Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) is helping customers achieve faster AI and generative AI (GenAI) performance with new enterprise data storage advancements and validation with the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD AI infrastructure.

“Storage performance is a critical factor for successful AI and generative AI outcomes,” said Arthur Lewis, president, Infrastructure Solutions Group, Dell Technologies. “Customers are relying on us to continually push the boundaries of storage innovation, including removing data access bottlenecks that limit the throughput and scalability of compute-intensive applications. We are addressing these needs by delivering fast, efficient and secure access to data and turning it into a proverbial goldmine of AI and GenAI possibilities.”

Addressing the need for high performance and efficiency for AI storage

New advancements from Dell PowerScale, the world’s most flexible,1 secure2 and efficient3 scale-out file storage system, address increasing customer demands for higher AI and GenAI performance.

Now, with PowerScale OneFS software enhancements, companies can prepare, train, fine-tune and inference AI models more quickly. With new PowerScale all-flash storage systems, based on latest generation Dell PowerEdge servers, customers will see up to a 2X performance increase for streaming reads and writes. 4

“We make an engineering change every 17 minutes, a speed unachievable without a powerful IT infrastructure that underpins all of our processes,” said Dan Keyworth, director of business technology, McLaren Racing. “Thanks to Dell PowerScale, we’re equipped to leverage cutting-edge AI applications, combining high-performance storage with computing capabilities to create a winning formula for success.”

PowerScale will offer a new smart scale-out capability to improve single compute node performance for enhanced GPU utilization, leading to faster storage throughput for AI training, checkpointing and inferencing.

“Dell continues to design its file and object storage solutions with the customer in mind, allowing them to modernize their infrastructure with an AI-ready foundation to support the most intensive workloads, such as generative AI,” said Scott Sinclair, practice director, Enterprise Strategy Group. “With PowerScale’s latest performance advances, customers can improve AI model training and fine-tuning to make better business decisions based on their data wherever it resides with increased speed and accuracy.”

Dell PowerScale undergoes validation for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD 

Through Dell’s collaboration with NVIDIA, customers will be able to take advantage of a validated combination of NVIDIA DGX systems, Dell PowerScale storage and NVIDIA Quantum-2 InfiniBand and Spectrum Ethernet networking to achieve faster and more efficient AI storage. Dell’s solution is expected to be the first ethernet storage solution validated on NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD.

With Dell PowerScale becoming validated for NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, NVIDIA’s turnkey data center AI infrastructure solution, customers will be able to confidently accelerate their AI and GenAI initiatives with Dell’s industry-leading network-attached storage.NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD includes the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform to provide a full-stack, secure and stable AI supercomputing solution.

Bringing AI to data wherever it resides

With nearly 87% of companies embracing multicloud strategies,6 Dell is giving customers the freedom to process data wherever it makes the most sense for them – on premises, at the edge or in public clouds.

Dell APEX File Storage for Microsoft Azure, the latest addition to the Dell APEX Storage for Public Cloud portfolio, delivers enterprise-class file performance and management capabilities in Microsoft Azure. Customers will be able to easily meet the needs of performance-intensive AI and machine learning applications like Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI Vision.

Dell APEX File Storage in AWS and Azure allows customers to take advantage of cloud-native AI and GenAI workflows on data in public clouds or on premises with improved data access and movement. For example, through Dell’s expanding Databricks collaboration, customers can choose from a variety of large language models (LLMs) and use libraries from Databricks MosaicML to retrain a foundational model with their proprietary data stored in Dell APEX File Storage, offering flexibility across multicloud environments.

The Databricks collaboration builds on Dell’s data management ecosystem partnerships to help customers accelerate AI and analytics efforts.  Additionally, with Dell’s planned open, modern data lakehouse, customers can extract insights from data wherever it resides with the integration of Starburst’s analytics software with Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell PowerScale, Dell ECS and Dell ObjectScale file and object storage systems.

 Availability

  • The Dell PowerScale OneFS software enhancements will be globally available this month.
  • Next-generation all-flash Dell PowerScale systems and new smart scale-out feature will be globally available in the first half of 2024.
  • Dell PowerScale is being validated with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, with expected completion in the first quarter of 2024.
  • Dell APEX for File Storage for Microsoft Azure will be globally available in the first half of 2024.
  • Dell APEX for File Storage integration with Databricks and MosaicML is available in AWS today and in Microsoft Azure in the first half of 2024.
  • The Dell open, modern data lakehouse solution will be globally available in the first half of 2024.

 

Dundalk Institute of Technology announces winners of its second ‘eHealth Embark’ programme to support Digital Health

Dundalk / Dublin, Ireland. Winners of this prestigious award were EpiCapture Ltd and MedWrite. Both start-ups were commended for their outstanding potential to further digital health innovation and provide unique digital solutions to address healthcare challenges across global markets. EpiCapture will receive up to $70,000 Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits, whilst Medwrite has access to $30,000 credits, with both companies receiving access to hotdesks and support at Dundalk Institute of Technology.

EpiCapture Ltd, develops liquid tests for accurate, non-invasive cancer detection and monitoring and MedWrite, reduces healthcare professionals’ administrative workload and enhances the quality of patient care using generative AI software, were selected as winners by an expert panel of judges, which included Amazon Web Services (AWS), Health Innovation Hub Ireland, EIT Health, and Atlantic Bridge Investments.

Ten companies participated in this specialised entrepreneur development programme. DkIT’s dConnect Digital Health Innovation Hub and the Connected Health & Wellbeing Cluster offered masterclasses and mentoring, ranging from customer discovery and validation, through to assessing market opportunity, mapping funding, product and technical roadmaps. AWS offered tailored and one-on-one mentoring to support participants leverage the latest cloud technologies such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, procurement in the Public Sector, and an introduction to Amazon’s culture of innovation and mechanisms such as the company’s ‘Working Backwards’ methodology.

Edward Simons, co-founder of EpiCapture said, “We are delighted and honoured to have been declared overall winner of the eHealth Embark 2023 programme. The mentorship and expert AWS support provided during this excellent 10-week programme has allowed us to develop an initial architecture for our software solution and identify AWS services that meet our business needs.  The prize allows us to implement this solution supported by AWS and to benefit from their experience across healthcare and cybersecurity as we integrate the EpiCapture-prostate algorithm with commercial laboratories.”

Sean Kirwan, co-founder of the runner up company, MedWrite, said: “The eHealth embark program is a game-changer for health start-ups, offering a comprehensive and invaluable resource for navigating the complex landscape of the healthcare industry. With a tailored focus on crucial aspects like business idea validation, funding, presenting, and practical technical advice from industry-leading experts at Amazon, this program equips entrepreneurs with the tools they need to succeed. It addressed key sticking points such as data privacy, MDR compliance, and cloud architecture for healthcare companies and it provided insights from prominent venture capitalists and Enterprise Ireland, eHealth Embark went way beyond my expectations.”

Carl Power, Director of the dConnect Digital Health Innovation Hub, DkIT, commented: “It has been our pleasure to coach these wonderfully innovative companies who are absolutely determined to make healthcare more efficient, effective, accessible and accountable through the use of technology. I want to congratulate all ten companies who have all received Credits and advice from AWS to develop their technical solutions. I am especially thrilled for the overall winners, EpiCapture Ltd and MedWrite. We encourage digital health start-ups to visit our website to read more about the programme and apply for a place in the next cohort, www.ehealth-embark.ie.”

Breanndán Casey, Manager of the Connected Health Cluster at DkIT which encourages and facilitates increased collaboration between industry, academia, healthcare providers, and enterprise support agencies, said: “Innovation in Digital Health is often dependent on using a wide cross-section of skills, market knowledge, and expertise.  We are delighted to see Cluster members, such as AWS, Nova Leah, dConnect, and Enterprise Ireland, come together to create and deliver the eHealth Embark programme.  The ten participating companies also benefited from supporting each other, and I’m really looking forward to seeing them further develop their business over the coming years and participate in Connected Health Cluster activity to help them scale their idea.” 

Mark Finlay, Head of Public Sector at AWS Ireland said: “AWS is delighted to support these two innovative and worthwhile Irish start-ups. The impressive digital solutions that these companies have put forward embody creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurship. AWS is committed to supporting technological advancement and maintaining Ireland’s reputation as being at the forefront of innovation. I look forward to AWS continuing to support these organisations and seeing how they positively impact healthcare for administrators, medical staff, and most importantly, patients, in the years ahead”.

Participants offered enthusiastic feedback on the programme. Robert Kelly of Heart Rhythm Ireland said, “The eHealth Embark programme has been quite an experience. Working with other innovators in Digital Health was interesting – it’s a tough path, but overcoming the challenges is part of what makes it rewarding. Sharing knowledge was key, and seeing how each company has grown over the months leading up to the final pitch day has been very inspiring.”

AWS launches Startup Loft in Dublin to support early-stage tech entrepreneurs reach their potential through the Cloud

The AWS Startup loft is a home for technology startups in one of AWS’s Dublin city centre offices in Charlemont Street. This co-working space is free to use for startups and is equipped with open seating, phonebooths, WiFi and coffee to keep startups fuelled.

The loft regularly hosts office hours and talks with venture capital, legal and accounting firms. Every Wednesday and Thursday startups can sit down with an AWS solution architect or account manager for ‘Ask the Expert’ sessions. This could be an opportunity to discuss a startups technology roadmap, architecture guidance or cost optimisation.

Vyra – Eoin Le Masney (Sector – Sustainability EdTech)

Backed by behavioural science, the Vyra Platform provides businesses with a highly engaging solution to up-skill employees rapidly and at scale. Whether it is through Vyra’s best-in-class learning modules or bespoke company learning programmes, the Vyra Platform is there to deliver to 50 or 5000 employees. https://vyra.ie/why-vyra/

KowRoo – Sheelagh Brady (Sector – Travel and Corporate Security)

Risks associated with travel, such as delays, accidents, criminality, or even death, can have an enormous impact on a business. The global security market is estimated to have an annual turnover in excess of $66.9B for the US alone. KowRoo combines analysis of real-time data that is personalised for the user, whilst integrating the risk appetite of the business, and communicating dynamic risk rating results via an app to the user. KowRoo will have a mobile app and desktop user interface, behind which a large volume of historical risk assessments generated from past analyses and real time incidents will be used as inputs to modern AI algorithms to build a real time robotic analyst “KowRoo”.

Elkstone Capital – Kate Fullen (Venture Capital)

Elkstone is a leading Irish Investment House focused on Entrepreneurs, Senior Executives, Institutional LPs, the Venture Community and Irish Diaspora. Their mission is to increase the economic value and overall wellbeing of the Island of Ireland by enabling deserving investments and delivering superior investment performance.

Minister of State in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Minister Dara Calleary :

“The Start Up Loft initiative is an important addition to the entrepreneur and start up ecosystem here in Ireland. This space and others like it play a vital role by supporting early stage and start-up companies test out their ideas, pitch for investment, and build their networks. I’m pleased to support the launch today which will complement the range of government supports and schemes available through our enterprise agencies, including the Local Enterprise Office network and Enterprise Ireland, to help Irish start-ups scale up, grow, and succeed both at home and on the global stage.”

 Mike Beary – Country Manager, AWS Ireland:

“At AWS, one of our leadership principles is to “Think Big”. Here in Dublin, we want to enable a culture of “thinking big” by providing some of Ireland’s brightest entrepreneurs with a space for their ideas to grow. This new Startup Loft will create the ideal forum for new companies to meet other founders, interact with VCs, and discuss how to take their businesses to the next level.”

Kate Fullen – Elkstone:

“Spaces like this give the VC community a chance to work with some of the most interesting founders in the country as they get their new companies up and running. The AWS Startup Loft is a great addition to the business ecosystem in Dublin.”

 Sheelagh Brady – KowRoo:

“Putting a company together from scratch is a hugely complicated and exciting project. The Startup Loft gives me a dedicated space to expand my business while learning from other entrepreneurs as we move our projects to the next stage. Having access to VCs and AWS experts is an added bonus. ”

 Eoin Le Masney – Vyra:

“The AWS Startup hub has been a game changer for Vyra – we have met some fantastic founders, solved problems with solutions architects and even used the space to pitch to mentors and investors. AWS Startup Loft is always creating value through events and regular check-ins and I know that in the future we will reference the AWS Startup hub as a key ingredient in our early stage success.”

AWS – Harnessing the power of plants to decarbonise our data centres

In January 2023, Amazon Web Services (AWS) started transitioning to hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) to power backup generators at its data centre sites in Europe, with sites in Ireland and Sweden among the first to make the switch. Backup generators are used at data centre sites to provide back up power in the very rare instances when the main source of power is interrupted.

HVO is a renewable, biodegradable and non-toxic fuel that can be made from waste cooking oil, or vegetable, plant and residue oils. It can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% over the fuel’s lifecycle when compared with fossil diesel. HVO and other renewable diesels are proven to be more compatible with industrial machinery than biodiesel as they don’t require any modification to the fuel systems and can remain stable even in the coldest winter temperatures. This versatility allows AWS to fill the tanks of its backup generators with HVO without any operational changes and use it across different regions and colder climates.

In the future, AWS aims to use HVO at all its data centre sites across Europe, certified through AWS certification. But for this to happen there has to be an accessible, steady, and sustainable supply of HVO. That’s why AWS is helping to develop a global supply chain, working with local organisations like Certa in Ireland, and is investing in the procurement of HVO that only comes from renewable sources, with raw materials that are traceable to their origins and not derived from sources that would impact highly biodiverse areas.

Andrew Graham, Managing Director of Certa Ireland said: “We’re excited to be working with AWS to help drive their renewable energy transition through the supply of our HVO. At Certa, our mission is to connect our customers with the most progressive energy solutions available, and as a straight drop-in replacement for conventional diesel, our HVO Bio Fuel provides up to 90% reduction in carbon emissions instantly with no generator retrofitting required. We look forward to continuing the energy transition journey alongside AWS.”

Neil Morris, Director of Infrastructure Operations, Northern Europe, at AWS said: “At AWS, we’re committed to and invested in sustainability because it’s a win all around—it’s good for the planet, for business, for our customers, and for our communities. Transitioning to HVO is just one of the many ways we’re improving the sustainability of our data centres, decarbonising our operations, and working towards Amazon’s company-wide goal to meet net-zero carbon by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. By making this commitment to using sustainably-sourced HVO at our data centres sites, we hope to pave the way for other businesses, and help establish a global supply chain that will accelerate change across Europe working in collaboration with other organisations.”

Our commitment to meet net-zero carbon by 2040

The move is a part of Amazon’s commitment to be net-zero carbon by 2040—10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement – and as outlined in The Climate Pledge, which the company co-founded in 2019. The Pledge now has over 400 signatories, including Best Buy, IBM, Microsoft, PepsiCo, Siemens, Unilever, Verizon, and Visa. As part of this Pledge, Amazon is on a path to powering its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of its initial 2030 target. Amazon is the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy—a position it’s held since 2020 according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, and the company now has 401 projects globally, including 164 wind farms and solar farms, and 237 rooftop solar projects on Amazon facilities.

In addition to transitioning to HVO, Amazon is investing in alternative fuel options to replace diesel and other fossil fuels to further decarbonise its operations. For example, Amazon has signed an agreement with Plug Power to supply green hydrogen for its transportation and building operations starting in 2025. Amazon also continues to transform its transportation network, including electrifying its delivery fleet. It currently has thousands of electric delivery vehicles from Rivian in more than 100 cities and regions in the U.S., thousands of electric vans delivering packages to customers in Europe, and several electric vehicle partnerships in APAC. In addition, the company is investing $2 billion in the development of decarbonising services and solutions through the Climate Pledge Fund.

Learn more about Amazon’s sustainability commitments here.

AWS Makes Water Positive Commitment to Return More Water to Communities Than It Uses By 2030

Today at AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced it will be water positive (water+) by 2030, returning more water to communities than it uses in its direct operations. The company also announced its 2021 global water use efficiency (WUE) metric of 0.25 liters of water per kilowatt-hour, demonstrating AWS’s leadership in water efficiency among cloud providers.

AWS is already well on the path to becoming water+ and as part of this new commitment will report annually on its WUE metric, new water reuse and recycling efforts, new activities to reduce water consumption in its facilities, and advancements in new and existing replenishment projects. To learn more about AWS’s water+ commitment visit: https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/water.

 

“Water scarcity is a major issue around the world and with today’s water positive announcement we are committing to do our part to help solve this rapidly growing challenge,” said Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS. “In just a few years half of the world’s population is projected to live in water-stressed areas, so to ensure all people have access to water, we all need to innovate new ways to help conserve and reuse this precious resource. While we are proud of the progress we have made, we know there is more we can do. We are committed to leading on water stewardship in our cloud operations, and returning more water than we use in the communities where we operate.  We know this is the right thing to do for the environment and our customers.”

AWS has been driving four key strategies in pursuit of becoming water+ by 2030: improving water efficiency, using sustainable water sources, returning water for community reuse, and supporting water replenishment projects.

 Water efficiency: AWS is constantly innovating across its infrastructure to reduce water consumption. It achieves its industry-leading water efficiency by using advanced cloud services, such as Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, to analyze real-time water use and identify and fix leaks. AWS further improves operational efficiency by eliminating cooling water use in many of its facilities for most of the year, instead relying on outside air. For example, in Ireland and Sweden, AWS uses no water to cool its data centers for 95% of the year. AWS also invests in on-site water-treatment systems that allow it to reuse water multiple times, minimizing water consumed for cooling.

Sustainable sources: AWS uses sustainable water sources, such as recycled water and rainwater harvesting, wherever possible. Using recycled water, which is only suitable for a limited set of applications such as irrigation and industrial use, preserves valuable drinking water for communities. In Northern Virginia, AWS worked with Loudoun Water to become the first data center operator in the state approved to use recycled water in direct evaporative cooling systems. AWS already uses recycled water for cooling in 20 data centers around the world and has plans to expand recycled water use in more facilities as it works toward becoming water+.

Community water reuse: After maximizing the use of water in its data centers, the spent liquid is still safe for many other uses, and AWS is finding more ways to return it to communities. In Oregon, AWS provides up to 96% of the cooling water from its data centers to local farmers at no charge for use in irrigating crops like corn, soybeans, and wheat.

Water replenishment: To meet its water+ commitment, AWS is investing in water replenishment projects in the communities where it operates. Replenishment projects expand water access, availability, and quality by restoring watersheds and bringing clean water, sanitation, and hygiene services to water-stressed communities. To date, AWS has completed replenishment projects in Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa, providing 1.6 billion liters of freshwater each year to people in those communities. For example, in regions like Maharashtra and Hyderabad, India, and West Java, Indonesia, AWS is partnering with global clean water nonprofit Water.org to provide 250,000 people with access to safe water and sanitation. Building on its existing portfolio of water replenishment programs, AWS today announced several new projects, which, once completed, will provide more than 823 million liters of water to communities each year, including:

  • India: AWS is providing continued support to WaterAid to complete projects in Hyderabad and Andhra Pradesh after they were launched in March 2022. Since then, WaterAid has already completed five piped water systems and new groundwater recharge projects, which will supply 500 households–approximately 2,100 people–with an estimated 47 million liters of water per year. WaterAid also conducted education campaigns on water conservation in these communities to educate residents on practical ways they can conserve clean water, use rainwater harvesting, and conduct water audits.
  • UK: AWS is working with The Rivers Trust and Action for the River Kennet to create two wetlands on a tributary of the River Thames, one of the most important water catchment areas in the UK. The wetlands will recharge over 587 million liters of groundwater per year and improve water quality by receiving and treating polluted runoff from farms and roadways, addressing growing water scarcity and boosting water quality in the Thames River basin.
  • US (California): Beginning this winter, AWS, the conservation non-profit Freshwater Trust, and the Omochumne-Hartnell Water District will recharge 189 million liters of groundwater per year using winter water from the Cosumnes River. This will allow water to gradually flow through the groundwater table and back into the Sacramento and San Joaquin watershed, increasing water flows during drier summer months. This lowers the temperature of the river, improves salmon habitat, and increases summer flows into the San Francisco Bay Delta, a critical water supply source for the communities in the region.

Today’s announcement adds to Amazon’s commitment of $10 million to Water.org to support the launch of the Water & Climate Fund, which will deliver climate-resilient water and sanitation solutions to 100 million people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This donation will directly empower 1 million people with water access by 2025, providing 3 billion liters of water each year to people in water scarce areas.

“Our work with Amazon is supported by the shared belief that solving the global water crisis is possible. We commend AWS for committing to return more water than it uses by announcing Water+ by 2030,” said Matt Damon, co-founder of Water.org. Gary White, Water.org CEO and co-founder, added, “Our collaboration with Amazon and AWS already brings over 805 million liters of safe water to communities around the world every year, and we are excited to continue to work with Amazon to bring even more safe water to families in need.”

“WateReuse Association celebrates AWS’s commitment to go water positive by 2030, and for integrating water recycling as a key component in its goal to protect water resources, local ecosystems, and spur economic development,” said Patricia Sinicropi, executive director of WateReuse Association. “The progress AWS has made in using recycled water for cooling in 20 of their data centers already shows great leadership for the industry. We look forward to collaborating with Amazon to implement water reuse for the benefit of their operations and for the communities in which they operate.”

“AWS’s announcement to be water positive by 2030 demonstrates a clear commitment to water stewardship and sustainability,” said Mary Wenzel, managing director of corporate engagement at The Nature Conservancy. “AWS’s support of our work has helped improve water security for people and nature in water-stressed regions in South Africa and Brazil. We look forward to continuing our relationship with AWS to improve water quality and quantity by protecting and restoring watersheds around the world.”

AWS will report annually on new innovations in water efficiency, community reuse, water replenishment projects, and other activities on its path to achieving its water+ commitment. A full overview of how AWS will meet water+ by 2030 is in the methodology, available here: https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/water

More information on AWS Water+ can also be found on at Amazon’s Water Stewardship in Data Centers: https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/water

How a ham and cheese sandwich got its own algorithm

If you are not yet familiar with Ryanair, here are a few facts: The company operates one of the world’s most-visited travel websites, it is the largest low-cost air carrier in Europe, and—as reported by The Economist—Ryanair’s finance director reckons it is the “largest seller of ham and cheese panini in Europe” (someone approves all those ham and cheese bills).

It is also an Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer, using the cloud across its operations to lower costs, reduce food waste, cut carbon emissions, and ultimately, deliver the best possible experience for its passengers.

“Your holiday starts on the aircraft,” said Aoife Greene, Ryanair’s deputy director ancillary and head of retail, who decides exactly what food, beverages, and other items, and in what quantities, each jet should load every morning. “People want their gin and tonic. They want their ham and cheese panini. They want to sit back and relax. They don’t want to hear, ‘no, that’s not available.’ It’s our job to make sure no one is disappointed.”

What few Ryanair passengers realize as they bite into their sandwiches is that the trollies rolling down the aisle are serving more than snacks. The trollies are a vital source of information about what’s being requested and sold, which is fed into a machine learning tool (nicknamed the “panini predictor”) built using AWS that’s helping the airline forecast precisely which products to put on which plane. But why?

As much-loved as Ryanair’s ham and cheese paninis are, calculating just how many people will opt for one on any given flight is a mightier challenge than first appears. The company has more than 500 aircraft and runs 2,900 flights a day, with a single plane traversing multiple routes across multiple countries. Each plane has limited space—exactly five trollies’ worth—and can only be stocked once every 24 hours.

Previously, Greene’s team relied on written logs and their own observations to forecast demand from very different sets of travelers going everywhere from Athens to Budapest, Lisbon, London, Marrakech, Rome, and Tel Aviv. Unsurprisingly, this was an enormous manual task that encompassed 80 loading bases across the Ryanair network and required employees to review records of what had (and hadn’t) been consumed on previous flights to determine what to load the following week.

“I often joke that my colleagues who manage fuel consumption have an easy life,” said Greene. “They know where a particular plane is going, and they know how long it will take to get there. I have no way of knowing whether we’re going to have 100 ballerinas or 100 rugby players on board.”

While the panini predictor isn’t yet at a stage where it can tell Greene if she’ll be dealing with a Swan Lake troupe or rugby scrum, the tool with its custom-designed algorithm does analyse data such as demand, consumption, flight duration, time of day, season, departure location, destination, passenger nationalities, and number of children on board. This data helps Greene be far more accurate about what’s likely to be popular on a flight.

Ryanair’s Chief Technology Officer John Hurley said the tool is proving particularly useful when deciding on product lines for a new route or adding a new loading base. He added, “Importantly, it has improved customer satisfaction, cut our waste in half, and boosted our sales.”

According to Hurley, ideas like the panini predictor have “been in the background” for a long time. In the last year or so, the technology and the company’s ability to employ it have come together in a way that Ryanair is now exploring other ways to use the cloud to innovate across its business. Other initiatives the company is working on with AWS include:

A new predictive maintenance tool

The tool being designed to forecast when different parts of a plane might be due for maintenance. The tool is a machine learning model, built using AWS and trained to recognize patterns in existing information that are precursors of an issue. This will generate reports for engineers, recommending areas for them to investigate. Thousands of sensors across the entire Ryanair fleet are gathering information on variables in the system, with each flight generating from 5 million to 60 million data points per hour. Fleetwide, that’s a whopping 3 billion data points every hour. So far, it’s been able to demonstrate potential to foresee problems up to four days in advance. The long-term goal is to develop the solution so it can predict issues across a number of the aircraft’s essential systems, preventing as many disruptions to the flight schedule as possible.

A project that allocates the most fuel-efficient aircraft for each route

Ryanair’s fleet are all Boeing 737s, sharing the same style of fuselage but with different engine configurations. When a pilot takes off in the morning, they must have enough fuel to fly the route, an amount that’s calculated based on factors such as distance, altitude, and headwinds. Feed those same calculations into a program that can crunch the data, and it’s possible to make recommendations on which of the company’s aircraft would be the most fuel efficient for a particular journey—optimizing fuel consumption, cutting C02 emissions, and saving millions of euros in the process.

A customer service chat bot

The new chat bot built by Cation Consulting, an AWS Partner, that can converse in seven languages—English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish—handles more than half a million conversations in any given month.

A digitized document initiative

The initiative removes paper from several systems that traditionally used printed documents in the airline industry. For example, the development of Ryanair’s electronic flight plan has saved 20 million sheets, or 90 tons, of paper a year. A “paperless cockpit” plan that replaces hardcopy manuals with digital versions has reduced paper by 15 kg (33lbs) per cockpit, a total of 16 tons per year, which results in a fuel burn savings of more than 600 tons annually.

A COVID-19 wallet

The COVID-19 wallet helps customers upload necessary documents required for travel. At the height of the pandemic, Ryanair developed the solution using AWS and rolled it out in less than three days as part of its existing app.

For a home-grown Irish airline that developed into one of Europe’s busiest, Ryanair has always had big ambitions. Today is no different. Working to a 25-minute turnaround time—getting everybody off the aircraft to refuel and then reload in under half an hour—speed, flexibility, and passenger satisfaction are as crucial to its success today as they were when the airline relaunched as a low-cost carrier in 1990. The only difference now is in the possibilities that technologies such as cloud computing offer to help Ryanair improve its customers’ experience while lowering costs and reducing waste and carbon emissions.

“When AWS came on board, it sort of lit the torch paper to get us going,” said Hurley. “We’re testing these projects, analysing all this data, getting the results back, and, for the most part, just saying, ‘Wow.’ It’s a major opportunity to be even more future-focused and efficient.”

Amazon hosts small Irish business bootcamp. #Amazon #AmazonBootcamp #IrishBiz

Amazon, Enterprise Ireland and Enterprise Nation announce the first ever Amazon Bootcamp Ireland, an online event on Tuesday 13 – Wednesday 14 April providing free training and guidance to help businesses increase their online sales and reach new customers, as part of the Amazon Small Business Accelerator, a programme to support more than 200,000 entrepreneurs across the UK and Ireland.

 The event will include practical sessions on how to sell products on the Amazon stores, scale operations, master social media, secure funding and more. Tickets are free but attendees must register in advance via this link.

Amazon Bootcamp Ireland has been created in partnership with Enterprise Ireland, Enterprise Nation, and the Local Enterprise Office. The virtual event will feature interviews, panel discussions and interactive presentation sessions with Amazon experts who will provide hands-on, practical advice of how to sell on Amazon, together with Irish industry leaders such as Pamela Laird, former contestant on The Apprentice, who is now a successful Amazon entrepreneur with her brand Moxi Loves.

The two-day event follows the successful Amazon Academy Ireland, which took place in November 2020, where hundreds of attendees learned how to grow revenues, enhance productivity and develop digital skills. More than 4,500 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have now joined Amazon Academy events across the UK and Ireland to scale their businesses.

 Amazon Bootcamp Ireland comes as recent research from Enterprise Ireland revealed that 9 in 10 Irish exporters to the UK see future opportunities in the UK market, with 4 in 5 businesses (83%) saying their strategy is to grow exports to the UK, topics which the bootcamp will cover. The event is part of the Amazon Small Business Accelerator, a major support package for 200,000 small businesses and start-ups which provides free online training and access to business advice, developed in partnership with Enterprise Nation, a leading small business support network.

“Amazon is proud to work with Enterprise Ireland to offer free training and advice to small and medium-sized businesses across Ireland which we hope will help them grow and prosper in 2021,” said Simon Donegan, Head of Seller Services, Amazon. “More than half of all products sold on Amazon stores come from independent selling partners, most of which are SMEs. We also have a long track record of supporting Irish entrepreneurs and small businesses, most recently with the Amazon Academy Ireland event. Many businesses have found their way through the crisis by providing goods and services online. Through this bootcamp we will be providing hundreds of offline and online businesses with the skills, tools and support they need to succeed in the digital world, to reach customers through Amazon or any other service.”

 “I believe Amazon offers a huge opportunity for small and medium sized businesses in Ireland to grow and I’m looking forward to taking part in the Bootcamp to help get more businesses online,” said Pamela Laird, founder of Moxi Loves. “By listing products on Amazon, SMEs have access and reach to an entirely new customer base. It can be costly to acquire a new customer online, especially if you are new to e-commerce, but Amazon provides a simple and cost-effective opportunity for your products to go global!”

Julie Sinnamon, CEO of Enterprise Ireland: “It’s great to partner with Amazon following our successful event for small businesses last year. Amazon Bootcamp Ireland will build on the strong foundations laid at the Amazon Academy, helping hundreds more companies to take their businesses online. I’m excited to welcome lots of new faces to our virtual event in April.” 

Padraic McElwee, Chair of the network of Local Enterprise Offices: “Selling online has become a key component for Irish small businesses and we saw the difference that made in 2020 when we approved over 13,000 Trading Online Vouchers as traditional businesses pivoted to online. As the Local Enterprise Offices are the first stop shop for start-ups and small businesses in Ireland, it is great to partner with Amazon on this event that will give small companies even greater resources and knowledge on how to build their online skills.”

Emma Jones CBE, Head of Enterprise Nation: “We’re looking forward to returning to Ireland with another fantastic Amazon event, with the aim of helping more small businesses to prepare for growth by embracing e-commerce. Attendees will get an understanding of how to get their businesses online from industry leading experts over the two-day event and we can’t wait to be a part of it.” 

Amazon’s fulfilment network supports millions of businesses of all sizes worldwide through its Fulfilment by Amazon offering, and many of those businesses are based in Ireland. There are hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), authors and developers in Ireland growing their companies and reaching new customers with Amazon products and services. Amazon offers a suite of services to help businesses export their products and services, including providing global delivery and distribution, managing customer services in the local language and translating hundreds of millions of product listings each year on behalf of smaller businesses.

 In 2020, Amazon announced it was creating another 1,000 permanent jobs in Ireland over the next two years. The new, highly skilled roles will be based in locations across the company’s Cork and Dublin sites in Blanchardstown, Tallaght, the city centre, and north County Dublin, and will bring Amazon’s total permanent workforce in the country to 5,000 people over the next two years. This will help to support Ireland’s economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.

For over 16 years, Amazon has been investing and growing in Ireland. The company launched its first cloud infrastructure region outside of the US in Ireland in 2007, and since this time, has grown the number of staff, expanded its collaboration with colleges and universities, invested in skills programmes, and strengthened its relationships with local communities across the country. Amazon, through Amazon Web Services (AWS), maintains the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. Millions of customers – including the fastest-growing start-ups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies – are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster.