Embracing re:invent 2018 and the USA

Yet again, this promises to be the biggest cloud event of the year.

The purpose of our recent trip to the US was to visit the AWS Re:Invent conference and get better insights about Amazon and AWS. We wanted to see first-hand how the partner network works, meet some of our key partners and get in touch with new ones. Our aim was to learn what the latest technologies, products and trends are and get a wider sense for the Amazon AWS ecosystem as a whole.

In both professional and personal aspects, the trip was a very enriching experience that indeed provided us with new perspectives that we brought home with us. We also really bonded as a team for we shared many new and interesting experiences while we were in the US.

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We got to see some things we had never seen before, including Vegas itself. For some of us, it was our first trip to the US and we were pretty all awe-struck by how big America and everything there is - it was a cultural shock that we all shared.

It’s safe to say that the very first evening of the conference was perhaps the most memorable experience during our trip.  It was an extraordinary event, which combined the serious stuff with a lot of fun in quite a unique blend. There were Guinness World Record attempts, music everywhere and generally a very pleasant vibe.

The conference itself was really useful and it was amazing to see the scale AWS is operating at and how fast it’s moving, especially when you think about where Amazon was just 10-15 years ago. It’s extremely diverse and universal, and we got a taste of many new trends, methods and technologies that are coming up. This enables us to create effective strategies for the future and gain competitive advantages in the industry.

One of the big takeaways was to see how Amazon and AWS are playing a seriously big game and that the migration to the cloud is clearly a global phenomenon. There are many major global organizations embracing the technology and going all-in, gaining numerous ongoing benefits. The applications and the service solutions they offer are fast expanding and really pushing the boundaries of the latest tech.

We also learned a lot about how AI is already changing the cloud industry and its role in the future. This is actually the hottest topic in the field right now and we got to see how AI is constructed to fit within the AWS universe.

The cloud computing industry is absolutely huge and it’s growing overwhelmingly. New services and solutions are developing at break-neck speeds and it’s fantastic to feel that you are part of something of such a scale.

We are obviously very positive about the future and especially so after the conference. Since we are an advanced partner of AWS, the more the platform grows, the more we grow. It was really stimulating to see their improvements, as these are real benefits that we can pass on to our clients and improve the services we provide them.

However, our trip to the US was definitely not all about business and we did have a lot of fun. We visited the Stratosphere Tower in Vegas and on one of the evenings we went to Topgolf. That’s not really golf, but rather a big event for people to hang out, chat and hit golf balls if they feel like it. We also went down to a shooting range and got to shoot with snipers, machine guns and Glocks - things we had never experienced before.

We even rented a car and traveled quite a bit. We got a chance to visit the Hoover Dam and watch the sunset over the Great Canyon which was simply mesmerizing. We can`t wait to go on our next journey!

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