Maxis is working hard on delivering a full complement of services to their customers – be it consumers or businesses. This week saw the launch of one of their newest offerings: Maxis Right Cloud, a one-stop solution for the management of multi-cloud operations developed in-house at Maxis.
Maxis Right Cloud will enable adopters to manage their business clouds from a single platform. Naturally, being a convergent platform, Maxis Right Cloud is cloud-agnostic. This means that it supports not only services from Maxis but also from leading private and public cloud providers like Amazon web services (AWS), Microsoft, and Google. It will allow companies to use a single dashboard to access all the information needed to run the business.
Source: Maxis
The platform is supported end-to-end by Maxis’ very own, in-house expertise. Everything from assessing, designing, migrating, building, securing, and managing cloud infrastructure will be easily accessible on Maxis Right Cloud. Right Cloud is complemented by the company’s competent technical team who have been certified by companies like AWS and Microsoft for their expertise. In addition, the company has also acquired the necessary expertise to complement its workforce from recent acquisitions such as its acquisition of ICMS and Peering One not too long ago.
The Maxis Programmable Network (MPN) provides the backbone for the new offering. The MPN is the first programmable software-defined network with Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) 3.0 certification. This backbone provides a level of scalability and customizability that allows users to be agile and adapt to the fast-changing IT environments without having a lapse in performance.
When it comes to cost, Maxis is looking to adopt a pricing structure similar to leading cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft. Typically, this would entail a pay-as-you-go pay model which should enable SMEs and startups to benefit from the offering.
The introduction of Maxis Right Cloud comes as the latest in series of announcements that gear Maxis to be one of the foremost providers when it comes to converged solutions. The company has been building its capacity to leverage its infrastructure to spur digitization efforts and prepare businesses in Malaysia for 5G adoption.
When I was a young boy growing up in Jersey in the British Channel Islands, I’d turn on the grainy TV to warm up so I could watch sports with my father and brother. FORMULA 1 racing was the most exciting sport for us, even though the cars often sped by faster than the camera operator and the technology could keep up.
Now, racing is covered in a far richer and more engaging way, especially since F1 launched F1 Insights powered by AWS in 2018, bringing data analytics as a live feed to my screens. Watching on my phone in Singapore, I love the real-time Car Performance Scores, which include thousands of data points streamed every second from every car on the track, giving me a much better understanding of where my favorite car ranks in the field – and what’s driving its performance.
It’s exactly this type of real-time information that businesses need to understand their performance, so they can make decisions rapidly and keep up with market changes. During the pandemic, we have learned that speed matters, whether you’re a digital native or a more traditional organization. As all businesses faced social distancing measures, those who survived the pandemic adopted new ways to do business, and they adapted fast using the cloud.
Some moved faster than others. Some enterprises with legacy systems seem resigned to moving slowly. Even today, I often hear comments like, “It’s just the nature of our size and heritage.”
We must debunk that myth. Speed is not preordained by heritage. Speed is a choice that any organization can make if it is prepared to harness the cloud. As a recent McKinsey article put it: “For CEOs, cloud adoption is not just an engine for revenue growth and efficiency. The cloud’s speed, scale, innovation, and productivity benefits are essential to the pursuit of broader digital business opportunities, now and well into the future.”
Culture Change
Many organizations can look for ways to change their culture and embrace speed, creating an environment that values urgency. In a culture designed for speed, people are actively encouraged to experiment and are rewarded for it. Although, flipping a switch won’t suddenly deliver speed – companies have to build muscle while they learn how to innovate at pace, all the time.
Amazon has been around for nearly 27 years, and to this day we maintain what we call a “Day 1” culture – approaching everything we do with the entrepreneurial spirit of being on the first day of your organization. We do this by giving our teams autonomy, on the understanding that they operate within the guardrails of our culture.
We believe the more we can equip people to make high judgment decisions at all levels, the better off we, and our customers, are. We encourage employees to make high-velocity, high-quality decisions by setting the vision and context for teams. Since Amazon was founded in 1994, we’ve consistently operated based on three big ideas that every employee knows. The first is to obsess over customers. This is cemented in our mission statement to be “earth’s most customer-centric company.” The second is that if we focus on the customer it will force us to innovate – to look at new ways of solving problems on behalf of our customers. The third is to be stubborn in sustaining our long-term vision while being flexible in how we get there.
As Jeff Bezos explains, “In a traditional corporate hierarchy, a junior executive comes up with a new idea that they want to try. They have to convince their boss, their boss’s boss, their boss’s boss’s boss and so on – any ‘no’ in that chain can kill the whole idea.” Systems and processes that identify, validate, and approve new ideas from within the business are invaluable in democratizing company-wide idea exploration and driving experimentation in business as usual. For example, at Amazon, we make it easy for those closest to our customers to raise ideas for speedy review. Imagine a time-wasting process or one that results in a poor customer experience. People complain about it regularly, but they know that it can be so hard to implement change, that it’s not worth the effort. The problem is put in the “too hard” basket and no one says anything. Now, imagine actually rewarding teams for suggesting a fix. Imagine if the process was fast and painless and resulted in change. How many great ideas would happen every week?
Thinking Big and Acting Small
Thinking big is the hallmark of innovation. But, as we look to move quickly and embrace greater experimentation, we should also look to de-risk the process. This means recognizing that the most powerful innovations often come through simplification. One small, seemingly insignificant cost or time-saving can drive enormous benefits for both companies and their customers when applied at scale. Thinking big also means starting big ideas with very small, reversible experiments. At Amazon, we look for “two-way doors.” If an experiment fails (as they often do), we can back out of the decision rather than being committed to moving ahead through a “one-way door,” which can be expensive and difficult to undo. This way, you learn quickly with very low stakes.
A great example of innovative thinking in the face of legacy technology is FashionValet. As the modest fashion brand grew, its multi-environment hybrid technology infrastructure was unable to keep up with demand during product launches. In 2019, FashionValet went all-in on AWS to optimize processes and meet growing demand. With Auto Scaling Groups and RDS Aurora features, FashionValet can now run 10x more servers during product launches to meet demand, then scale down automatically with no downtime. Using this technology, FashionValet has also accelerated their product development timeline by 200% and reduced their infrastructure management costs by 75%.
Companies don’t have to bet their business on innovation, but they shouldn’t let legacy thinking hold them back. By actively empowering teams, clearing the path to “Yes,” and using small experiments, companies can build capability to promote high-velocity decisions – helping them operate at the speed of F1.
The world is arguably never going to be the same after the COVID-19 pandemic. The sentiment rings true in many aspects and sectors even now, a year on. However, the effects of the pandemic have spurred our normal to take a digital shift in which more companies are accelerating their digital transformation journeys with some further than others. That said, the adoption of technologies has created waves and trends that seem to be influencing everything in our lives.
In a nutshell, these trends are going to change the way we approach a whole myriad of thing from the way we work to the way we shop. We’re seeing businesses like your regular mom and pop shops adopt cloud technologies to help spur growth while digital native businesses and companies are doing the same to adapt to the ever-changing circumstances. The adoption of technologies and, in particular, cloud technologies, is building resilience in businesses like never before.
Our interview with the Lead Technologist for the Asia Pacific Region at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Mr Olivier Klein, sheds even more light on the trends that have and continue to emerge as businesses continue to navigate the pandemic and digitisation continues.
The Cloud Will Be Everywhere
As we see more and more businesses adopt technologies, a growing number of large, medium and small businesses will turn to cloud computing to stay competitive. In fact, businesses will be adopting cloud computing not only for agility but due to increasing expectations that will come from their customers. However, when referring to “The Cloud”, we are not only talking about things like machine learning, high performance computing, IoT and artificial intelligence (AI); we’re also talking about the simple things like data analytics and using digital channels.
Digitization journeys are creating expectations on businesses to be agile and adaptable. That said, businesses with humble beginnings like Malaysia’s TF Value-Mart have been able to scale thanks to their willingness to modernize and migrate to the cloud. Their adoption of cloud technologies has created a more secure digital environment for their business and has augmented their speed and scalability. This has allowed them to scale from a single, mom and pop store in Bentong in 1998 to over 37 outlets today.
The demand for cloud solution is increasing and there’s no deny it. Even businesses like AWS have had to expand to accommodate the growing demands for digital infrastructure and services. The company has scaled from 4 regions in their first 5 years to 13 regions today with more coming in the near future. AWS’s upcoming regions include six upcoming regions, of which four are in Asia Pacific: in Jakarta, Hyderabad, Osaka and Melbourne.
Edge Computing Spurred by 5G & Work From Anywhere
In fact, according to Mr Klein, AWS sees the next push in Cloud Computing coming from the ASEAN region. This will, primarily, be spurred by the region’s adoption of 5G technologies. Countries like Japan and Singapore are already leading the way with Malaysia and other countries close behind. The emergence of 5G technologies is creating a new demand for technologies that allow businesses to have a more hybrid approach to their utilisation of Cloud technologies.
As companies continue to scale and innovate, a growing demand is emerging for lower latencies. While 5G allows low latency connections, some are beginning to require access to scalable cloud technologies on premises. Data security and low latency computing are primary drives behind this demand. Businesses are innovating faster than ever before and require some of their workloads to happen quicker with faster results. As a result, we see a growing need for services like AWS Outpost which allows businesses to bring cloud services on premises, and with their recent announcement at AWS re:Invent, Outposts are becoming even more accessible.
Edge computing is also part and parcel of cloud computing as the mode in which we work continues to change. With most businesses forced to work remotely during the pandemic, the trend seems to be sticking; companies are beginning to adopt a work from anywhere policy which allows for more employee flexibility and increased productivity. That said, not all workloads are able to follow where workers go. With the adoption of 5G, that is no longer the case. Businesses will be able to adopt services like AWS Wavelength to enable low latency connection to cloud services empowering the work from anywhere policies.
The same rings true when it comes to education. The growth experienced in the adoption of remote learning will continue. Services like Zoom and Blue Jeans have become integral tools for educators to reach their students and will continue to see their roles expand as educational institutions continue to see the increased importance of remote learning.
Machine Learning is The Way
As edge computing and Cloud become the norm, so too will machine learning. Machine learning is enabling companies to adopt new approaches and adapt to changing circumstances. The adoption of machine learning solutions has paved the way to new expectations from customers that has and will continue to spur its adoption. In fact, Mr Klein, tells us that businesses will not only be adopting machine learning for automation but also to provide better customer experiences. What’s more, a growing number of their customers are also going to expect it.
Machine Learning’s prevalence is going to grow in the coming years – that’s a given. Customers and users have already had their experiences augmented by AI and machine learning. This has and continues to create expectations on how user experiences should be. Take for instance, services like Netflix have been using machine learning and AI to recommend and surface content to their users. Newer streaming services which lack these integrations are seen to be subpar and are criticised by users.
Aside from user experiences, businesses are getting more accustomed to using machine learning to provide insights when it comes to making decision making and automating business operations. It has also enabled companies to innovate more readily. These conveniences will also be one of the largest factors in the increasing prevalence. It will also see increased adoption which will be largely attributed to the adoption and development of autonomous vehicles and other augmented solutions.
Companies like Moderna have been utilising machine learning to help create and innovate in their arena. They have benefitted from adopting machine learning in their labs and manufacturing processes. This has also allowed them to develop their mRNA vaccines which are currently being deployed to combat COVID-19.
To Infinity & Beyond
The growing adoption of digital and cloud solutions is also spurring a new wave of technologies which allow businesses deeper insights. These technologies allow businesses to access insights gained from satellite imaging. Data such as ground imaging and even ocean imaging can be used to gain actionable insights for businesses. Use cases are beginning to emerge from business involved in logistics, search and rescue and even retail.
However, the cost of building and putting a satellite in orbit is nonsensical for a business. That said, we already have thousands of them in orbit and it would make more sense to use them to help gain these insights. AWS is already introducing AWS Ground Station – a fully managed serve that gives businesses access to satellites to collect and downlink data which can then be processes in AWS Cloud.
These trends are simply a glance into an increasingly digitised and connected world where possibilities seem to be endless. Businesses are at the cusp of an age that will see them flourish if they are agile and willing to adopt new technologies and approaches that are, at this time, novel and unexplored.
Today, thanks in large part to the cloud, actions such as communicating over text or transferring funds digitally are so commonplace, we hardly even think about how incredible these processes are; as we enter the golden age of machine learning, we can expect a similar boom of benefits that previously seemed impossible.
Machine learning is already helping companies make better and faster decisions. In healthcare, the use of predictive models created with machine learning is accelerating research and discovery of new drugs and treatment regiments. In other industries, it’s helping remote villages of Southeast Africa gain access to financial services, and matching individuals experiencing homelessness with housing.
While the short term applications are encouraging, machine learning could potentially have an even greater impact on our society. In the future, machine learning will be intertwined and under the hood of almost every application, business process, and end-user experience. However, before this technology becomes so ubiquitous that it’s almost boring, there are four key barriers to adoption we need to clear first.
Democratizing machine learning
The only way that machine learning will truly scale is if we as an industry make it easier for everyone – regardless of their skill level or resources – to be able to incorporate this sophisticated technology into applications and business processes.
To achieve this, companies should take advantage of tools that have intelligence directly built into applications that their entire organization can benefit from. For instance, 123RF, a homegrown stock photography portal, aims to make design smarter, faster, and easier for users. To do so, it relies on Amazon Athena, Amazon Kinesis, and AWS Lambda for data pipeline processing. Its newer product Designs.ai Videomaker uses Amazon Polly to create voice-overs in more than 10 different languages. With AWS, 123RF has maintained flexibility in scaling its infrastructure and shortened product development cycles and is looking to incorporate other services to support its machine learning & AI research.
As processes go from being manual to automatic, workers are free to innovate and invent, and companies are empowered to be proactive instead of reactive. And as this technology becomes more intuitive and accessible, it can be applied to nearly every problem imaginable–from the toughest challenges in the IT department, to the biggest environmental issues in the world.
Upskilling workers
According to the World Economic Forum, the growth of AI could create 58 million net new jobs in the next few years. However, research suggests that there are currently only 300,000 AI engineers worldwide, and AI-related job postings are three times that of job searches with a widening divergence. Given this significant gap, organizations need to recognize that they simply aren’t going to be able to hire all the data scientists they need as they continue to implement machine learning into their work. Moreover, this pace of innovation will open doors and ultimately create jobs we can’t even begin to imagine today.
That’s why companies in the region like Asia Pacific University, DBS, Halodoc and others are finding innovative ways to encourage and nurture more young talents to gain new machine learning skills in fun, interactive hands-on ways, such as the AWS DeepRacer League. It’s critical that organizations should not only direct their efforts towards training the workforce they have with machine learning skills, but also invest in training programs that develop these important skills in the workforce of tomorrow.
Instilling trust in products
With anything new, often people are of two minds – either an emerging technology is a panacea and global savior, or it is a destructive force with cataclysmic tendencies. The reality is more often than not, a nuance somewhere in the middle. These disparate perspectives can be reconciled with information, transparency, and trust.
As a first step, leaders in the industry need to help companies and communities learn about machine learning, how it works, where it can be applied, ways to use it responsibly, and understand what it is not.
Second, in order to gain faith in machine learning products, they need to be built by diverse groups of people across gender, race, age, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, culture, and education. We will all benefit from individuals who bring varying backgrounds, ideas, and points of view to inventing new machine learning products.
Third, machine learning services should be rigorously tested, measuring accuracy against third party benchmarks. Benchmarks should be established by academia, as well as governments, and be applied to any machine learning-based service, creating a rubric for reliable results, as well as contextualizing results for use cases.
Regulation of machine learning
Finally, as a society, we need to agree on what parameters should be put in place governing how and when machine learning can be used. With any new technology, there has to be a balance in protecting civil rights while also allowing for continued innovation and practical application of the technology.
Any organization working with machine learning technology should be engaging customers, researchers, academics, and others to best determine the benefits of its machine learning technology with the potential risks. And they should be in active conversation with policymakers, supporting legislation, and creating their own guidelines for the responsible use of machine learning technology. Transparency, open dialogue, and constant evaluation must always be prioritized to ensure that machine learning is applied appropriately and is continuously enhanced.
What’s next
Through machine learning we’ve already accomplished so much, and yet, it’s still day one (and we haven’t even had a cup coffee yet!). If we’re using machine learning to help endangered orangutans, just imagine how it could be used to help save and preserve our oceans and marine life. If we’re using this technology to create digital snapshots of the planet’s forests in real-time, imagine how it could be used to predict and prevent forest fires. If machine learning can be used to help connect small-holder farmers to the people and resources they need to achieve their economic potential, imagine how it could help end world hunger.
To achieve this reality, we as an industry, have a lot of work ahead of us. I’m incredibly optimistic that machine learning will help us solve some of the world’s toughest challenges and create amazing end-user experiences we’ve never even dreamt. Before we know it, machine learning will be as familiar as reaching for our phones.
Maxis is one of the only telecommunications companies in Malaysia already embracing the cloud. The company embarked on its journey to become a one-stop provider for connectivity and infrastructure for Malaysia back in 2019 with an early partnership with AWS (Amazon Web Services) who is currently the most prolific web service platform in the world. Today, they are announcing that they have successfully achieved new accreditation as an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner; making them the only telecommunications company in Malaysia to have done so. This solidifies their claim to being one of the most equipped converged solutions providers in the country.
The new accreditation certifies that Maxis is equipped to provide its customers and partners with the technical support and know-how to migrate and sustain their businesses in the cloud. To achieve this, Maxis has to demonstrate a sustained competency in their workforce equipped and certified by AWS for the many services that their platform provides. This includes taking advantage of the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence components available on AWS.
In addition to this, Maxis is now also offering AWS Direct Connect. AWS Direct Connect allows customers to access AWS directly via a dedicated network connection with one of the many AWS Connect locations using industry-standard 802.1q VLANs. This also allows customers to partition the connection into multiple virtual interfaces easing access to object instances in the AWS public and private clouds while maintaining network separation.
The new accreditation comes on the heels of Maxis having announced key acquisitions that have bolstered the company’s position as one of the most equipped telecommunications companies in Malaysia able to empower businesses in their digitization journey. The company has also been certified in the AWS Public Sector Partner program with over 300 Maxis employees being accredited and undergone comprehensive training by AWS.
Maxis Berhad, one of Malaysia’s biggest telecommunications providers, has been actively differentiating itself from its competition. The company has, in recent months, been focusing on complementing it’s telco services with services which make sense to businesses and also consumers. Not too long ago, the company announced it’s consumer-focused OnePrime, which has now been rebranded to the Maxis Unlimited Postpaid & Fibre, which gave consumers the flexibility of having their mobile and broadband service in a catch-all subscription with added benefits.
At the same time, Maxis has been busy building its portfolio for its business clients with partnerships with companies such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and more. These partnerships work to bolster the company’s portfolio with more than just telephony and connectivity services. The company has also announced a series of acquisitions including its recent acqui-hire of ICMS (Infrastructure Consulting & Managed Services) which allowed the company to provide better integration with cloud services such as Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365 and more. It also brought deeper partnerships with ICMS’s certifications as a Dell-EMC partner and Commvault partner.
The latest announcement made late last week, gears Maxis to be one of the only telecommunications companies in Malaysia focusing on becoming a truly converged solutions provider. The company has acquired Audeonet (M) Sdn Bhd, a Malaysian based unified communications and voice cloud solutions company to bolster its talent pool and services. The acqui-hire also brings on board a team of skilled individuals which will enable end-to-end deployment of Audeonet’s services. The new products and services brought into the fold will allow Maxis’ enterprise and SME customers access to offerings to help them cope with the rigours of the “new normal”.
The acquisition of Audeonet (M) Sdn Bhd also makes Maxis Berhad the exclusive distributor of Deltapath, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider, in Malaysia. In addition, Maxis Business will now also be a Gold Reseller of Lifesize, bringing a cloud-based 4K video conferencing solution into their list of offered services.
As the world rapidly evolves, digitalization is taking place across all aspects of life, and ushering in a rise in cloud adoption. Today, it is vital for employees to understand and acquire the skills it takes to succeed and stay relevant for jobs in the digital economy. Cloud architects must keep up with the pace by adapting and expanding their existing skillset in order to be considered valuable candidates and employees.
As cloud adoption rises, it is not surprising to see growing demand for cloud expertise. Based on the Malaysian Institute of Accounts’ “MIA-ACCA Business Outlook Report 2020,” 25% of organizations in Malaysia say they are allocating at least 10% of their budget for technology, including investing in big data analytics (64%), cloud computing (57%) and more.[1] Yet, research shows that 90% of IT decision-makers report cloud skills shortages in their workforce.[2]
When I first started out in the IT industry years ago, the role of cloud architect was almost nonexistent. However, cloud adoption has grown considerably since then, and the role of cloud architect is currently in high demand and will continue to present endless opportunities for business growth and innovation.
But first – what does a cloud architect do?
Cloud architects are responsible for managing an organization’s cloud computing architecture. They have in-depth knowledge of the architectural principles and services used to develop technical cloud strategy, assist with cloud migration efforts, review workload architectures, and provide guidance on how to address high-risk issues. To do this, cloud architects need a mix of business, technical, and people skills, as well as an understanding of the always-evolving, technical training that may benefit their team.
At Amazon Web Services (AWS), I lead a team of cloud solutions architect in Southeast Asia, and we are constantly on the lookout for individuals with a builder’s mentality and a desire to build, invent, and innovate on behalf of their customers. This is especially important as the role of cloud architect has evolved beyond just architecting infrastructure solutions like database and storage, to building and innovating reliable solutions that involve emerging technologies such as machine learning.
What skills are most important for a cloud architect?
Flexibility and Eagerness to Learn
A cloud architect must be able to work in a wide variety of scenarios and be open to learn the unique requirements of each project. With a curious mind-set, cloud architects can be better equipped to seek out new approaches to problem solving.
Cloud architecture professionals must possess strong time management skills. Their days are varied and can include customer meetings to discuss problems and needs and designing architectural frameworks for those needs. As such, cloud architects are mindful to plan their days, prioritize their time on tasks, and understand how to maximize small pockets of time.
Communication Skills, Business Acumen, and Decisiveness
Cloud architects are encouraged to ask for a seat at the decision-making table and be prepared to communicate their design to any stakeholder. Successful cloud architects know how to communicate to audiences with little or no technical knowledge, while aligning their recommendations to business imperatives and the bottom-line. Other than that, stakeholders also rely on cloud architects to provide guidance from a calm, leading place of domain authority.
Industry Technical Credentials
A cloud architect must also possess the necessary technical skills to serve as the foundation for cloud architecture planning and management, including basic programming, software development and continuous integration, database, networking and security skills, modern application architecture skills, and more.
Additionally, cloud architects can attain an industry-recognized certification, such as the new AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate certification, which validates the ability to design and deploy well-architected solutions on AWS that meet customer requirements.
Over the last few years, I have seen cloud computing evolve from a relatively unknown technology to a leading driver of business results. While the technology has grown and changed significantly, most skills needed to succeed in its use have remained largely constant. By committing to understand how to use cloud to its full potential – and empowering the professionals who make that possible – we can make the most of the tremendous opportunity cloud creates for businesses and employees to thrive.
[1] MIA (Malaysian Institute of Accountants) and ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants), Business Outlook Report 2020, 2020
Paul Chen is the head of Architecture for Amazon Web Services ASEAN, Paul is responsible for managing a regional team of Solutions Architects, creating architectural best practices and working with customers on how they use the cloud for business transformation.
He has 30 years of pre-sales leadership and solutions experience in the IT Industry, with 15+ years in technical management across ASEAN and Asia Pacific. His breath of technology experience includes cloud architectures, application solutions development, database platforms, web-based applications, networking, enterprise mobility solutions, virtualized unified communications and customer experience platforms.
Can you briefly explain AWS Outposts?
AWS Outposts is here to support your applications that have low latency or local data processing requirements on premise. These applications may need to make near real time responses to end user applications or need to communicate with other on-premises systems or control on-site equipment. These can include workloads running on factory floors for automated operations in manufacturing, real time patient diagnosis or medical imaging, and content and media streaming. You can use AWS Outposts to run applications that need to access data stores that will continue to remain on-premises.
Businesses in Malaysia are stuck somewhere in between when it comes to could computing and going digital. Can AWS Outposts help them accelerate their digitisation? How can they benefit from it?
We continue to believe that in the fullness of time, the vast majority of companies will run almost all of their IT workloads in the cloud. It is today and always has been a priority for us to make it easy for customers to run AWS as a seamless extension of their existing on-premises infrastructure. However, we have many customers who are going to be running on-premises data centers alongside AWS for many years to come and at varying paces. These customers are looking to us to help ensure that they have seamless integration between these two environments. That’s why we have been investing so much in hybrid capabilities over the past several years.
AWS offers the broadest and deepest hybrid capabilities including data integration and transport services, integrated and dedicated networking services, and identity and access management solutions fully integrated with the on-premises environment. Today, customers can take the tools they have from VMware and use them to run their workloads on AWS. This partnership makes it easy for customers to run in a hybrid mode between AWS and their VMware-based on-premises deployments using the same VMware tools and skillsets they have today. And with the availability of AWS Outposts, customers can now use the same AWS APIs, control plane, tools, and hardware on-premises and in the AWS cloud to deliver a truly consistent hybrid experience.
Why choose Outposts instead of using the AWS’s pre-existing cloud infrastructure?
AWS Outposts is designed for several different uses cases where workloads need to run on premises due to latency requirements, like:
Manufacturing automation—operating manufacturing process control systems and automated plant assembly lines
Health care—delivering real-time medical diagnostics and imaging to physicians
Telecommunications—building new network services and deploying virtual network functionality
Media & entertainment—delivering live event streaming, real-time gaming, rendering, and VFX
Financial services—developing low latency trading platforms in a secure environment
Retail—delivering real-time interactive retail services and unifying apps across environments
With Outposts, customer can benefit of running low-latency workloads, processing data locally and be able to harness the innovative services available on the AWS cloud. This can mean advanced analytics to monetize data or adding machine learning and artificial intelligence services such as Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Personalize and Amazon Comprehend.
Customers should run AWS Local Zones when they need to run their applications with single-digit millisecond latencies close to end users, but they don’t want to build and operate a datacenter or co-location facility. They can run the parts of their application in the Local Zone that requires ultra-low latency and connect back to the rest of their application and the full range of services running in AWS.
Customers should run AWS Wavelength when they want to build an applications that require single digit millisecond latency to mobile and connected devices over the 5G network. A range of emerging applications like machine learning inference, industrial IoT, and AR/VR require ultra-low latency to serve mobile users and connected devices, ad developers can place the parts of their application that require single-digit millisecond latency at the edge of the 5G network and then connect back to the rest of the application and the full range of services in AWS.
During the launch at AWS Re:invent last year, AWS announced that it was partnering with Verizon in the US. Why launch with a telco provider?
Amazon is partnering with Verizon to incorporate AWS WaveLength technology into parts of its wireless network. Amazon is also working with other global partners, such as Vodafone, KDDI and SK Telecom to provide this capability. This capability will result in fewer disruptions and shorter lag times when streaming videos, among other applications.
Who are your partners in rolling out Outposts in Malaysia? What are the roles that they are playing in providing the service to customers?
One of the partners in Malaysia is Maxis where they will incorporate Maxis cloud offerings and professional services to incorporate hybrid cloud and technologies to address edge computing.
We also have InfoFabrica who will be working with us to help outfit interested customers with Outposts.
We operate on a few models; customers will come directly to us or work with partners with Malaysia. Marketplace model – direct from us. Reseller model – contact reseller and work with the customers on the Outposts. – NSI model – customer work through NSI.
AWS Partner Network (APN) Partners provide technology and consulting services to help customers migrate, build, and run applications using AWS services.
APN Consulting Partners around the globe can help you with strategy and technology advisory services to migrate your on-premises applications onto Outposts as well as a variety of installation and maintenance options. You can also use Outposts validated technology partner solutions to build and run your applications on Outposts.
Does Outpost require a stable internet connection to operate? Can customers use Outpost offline? What happens to workloads if internet connection is lost suddenly?
To provide a consistent user experience, AWS advises customers to have 1GB internet over direct connect or VPN. The rack only needs 10MB to run but AWS recommends a default of 1 GB to be safe.
An AWS Outpost relies on connectivity to the parent AWS Region. AWS Outposts are not designed for disconnected operations or environments with limited to no connectivity. We recommend that customers have highly available networking connections back to their AWS Region. If interested in leveraging AWS services in disconnected environments such as cruise ships or remote mining locations, learn more about AWS services such as Snowball Edge.
If connection is lost suddenly, EC2 instances and EBS volumes on the Outpost will continue to operate normally and can be accessed locally via the local gateway. Similarly, AWS service resources such as ECS worker nodes continue to run locally. However, API availability will be degraded, for instance run/start/stop/terminate APIs may not work. Instance metrics and logs will continue to be cached locally for a few hours and will be pushed to the AWS Region when connectivity returns. Disconnection beyond a few hours however may result in loss of metrics and logs. As Route53 DNS will not resolve when disconnected, an on-premises DNS resolver should be used if network disconnections are expected. If you expect to lose network connectivity, we strongly recommend regularly testing your workload to ensure it behaves properly in this state when an Outpost is disconnected.
AWS Outposts are a managed service according to your website. What does “Fully Managed” mean? What does this entail?
AWS Outposts is the only fully managed offering available to customers today. AWS delivers, installs, and maintains the infrastructure the same way as we do in our data centers. Competitive offerings do not address key customer pain points in a production grade hybrid environment. They require customers to build against a limited set of services and APIs, forcing them to write custom software that quickly becomes inconsistent and incompatible with cloud services. It requires customers to set up and manage different operating environments for each site, resulting in duplicate effort, higher complexity, and increased risk. Customers must also manually manage, upgrade, and patch software themselves, and risk dropping out of compliance if they fail to upgrade. Customers also have to purchase hardware from third party vendors, who are responsible for providing the first line of customer support, making it administratively difficult to debug and resolve their issues.
How secure is AWS Outpost? Are there built-in redundancies when it comes to preventing data loss and data security?
Each AWS Outposts rack has a built-in tamper detection and a lockable door. AWS engineered a capability in a form of security key that looks like a screw specifically made for the chip. To remove the hardware from the rack, you must use the screw and turn it and it will crush the security chip key and once its crushed, the server and the data is protected. It is also encrypted by default.
AWS Outposts builds on the AWS Nitro system technologies that enables AWS to provide enhanced security that continuously monitors, protects, and verifies your Outpost’s instance hardware and firmware. With AWS Nitro, virtualization resources are offloaded to dedicated hardware and software minimizing the attack surface. Finally, Nitro System’s security model is locked down and prohibits administrative access, eliminating the possibility of human error and tampering.
AWS Outposts have an updated shared responsibility model underlying security. AWS is responsible for protecting Outposts’ infrastructure similar to how it secures infrastructure in the cloud today. Customers are responsible for securing their applications running on Outposts as they do in the Region today. With Outposts, customers are also responsible for the physical security of their Outpost racks, and for ensuring consistent networking to the Outpost.
Securing data
Data-at-rest: Data is encrypted at rest by default on EBS volumes on Outposts.
Data-in-transit: Data is encrypted in transit between Outposts and the AWS Region.
Deleting data: All data is deleted when instances are terminated in the same way as in the AWS Region.
AWS Outposts have been out for more than half a year now. How many countries is the service available in?
Outposts can be shipped to and installed in the following countries
NA – US, Canada, Mexico
EMEA – All EU countries, Switzerland, Norway, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), Israel, South Africa
APAC – Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India
SA – Brazil
Support for more countries is coming soon.
Have there been any particular segment of customers that have adopted Outposts more than others? Do you see an opportunity for other segments to take advantage of Outpost?
There has been broad interest in AWS Outposts from both enterprise and start up customers, across a range of industries including financial services, e-commerce, healthcare and manufacturing.
With AWS Outposts infrastructure, customers in manufacturing can AWS services to run manufacturing process control systems such as MES and SCADA systems and applications that need to run close to factory floor equipment. These on-premises applications can integrate with services running in the AWS Region for centralized operations.
Healthcare customers can apply analytics and machine learning AWS services to health management systems that need to remain on premises due to low latency processing requirements. This will enable rapid retrieval of medical information by storing data locally on Outposts.
At the launch, Andy Jassy mentioned that the launch of AWS Outposts is step in providing services for edge computing. How does Outposts do this?
One common scenario for AWS Outposts is running applications that need single-digit millisecond latency to end-users or onsite equipment. Customer may want to run graphics-intensive applications such as image analysis that need low-latency access to end-users or storage-intensive workloads that collect and process hundreds of TBs daily. Others may need to run compute-intensive workloads on their manufacturing factory floors with precision and quality. Customers want to integrate their cloud deployments with their on-premises environments and use AWS services for a consistent hybrid experience. Outposts is both a way to deploy an AWS-centric hybrid-cloud and an edge computing approach.
How do you see the landscape changing with the introduction of AWS Outposts?
With the introduction of AWS Outposts, customer from a broad array of industries can bring the benefits of cloud computing right to their business door-steps. Business solutions requiring low latency performance can seamlessly be integrated to the cloud and deployed to provide a truly hybrid experience. Customers that have large amount of on-premise data can also process these sets of data in more meaningful ways to monetize the data assets. In this AWS hybrid-cloud approach, you use the same AWS application programming interfaces (API), tools and infrastructure both on your premises and the AWS cloud. Outposts bring native AWS services, infrastructure, and operating models to virtually any data center, co-location space, or on-premises facility.
With Malaysia’s big move into supporting and growing its tech space, particularly its animation and game development segment, where do you see AWS Outposts fitting in?
In the gaming industry, the applications tend to be very sensitive to latency and require considerable processing resources to provide rich animation and customer experience.
With AWS Outposts, gaming developers will have access to the latest GPU innovations on premises for graphics processing, audio and video rendering, and for running other media applications. Support live and real-time event streaming applications that require low latency by running those applications in on-premises locations close to end users.
The world is quickly changing and technology is moving forward at a pace which hasn’t been seen before. The main impetus behind the progress which we experience is the internet. The internet has changed the way we communicate and experience things. In fact, it’s made the world even smaller. However, the way we connect to it needs to continue evolving to keep up with the pace of innovations. We’re talking about low latency connectivity and processing.
Over the years, we’ve managed to push the current connectivity to the edge when it comes to connectivity. With the advent of 5G and more importantly, the Internet of Things (IoT), there is an increasing demand for greater compute power and quicker outcomes. This is where Amazon Web Services (AWS) has stepped up with their new AWS Outposts technology. While Amazon isn’t the first name you’d necessarily think of when it comes to internet technologies, the are one of the foremost companies in the world when it comes to providing cloud infrastructure.
Opening Up New Possibilities with Low Latency Hybrid Computing
AWS Outposts allows users and developers to have low latency or local data processing on premises. This enables companies to have near real time responses when using or interfacing with AWS’s many services. It also bridges the lag in communications when the service needs to rely on the cloud. This also opens up larger possibilities to automate and regulate processes in new places such as the factory floor or in production outfits that require low latency. AWS Wavelength further strengthens the low latency with single digit latencies and enables 5G connectivity.
The near instantaneous latency between data lakes and data points on premise allow companies to adapt and react to situations better. Take for instance in the case of healthcare and medicine, having AWS Outposts on site would allow real time diagnostic data to be communicated to physicians for them to be better informed when they make critical treatment decisions. It can also open avenues for real time robotics in surgery. Perhaps more relevant to us as consumers, AWS Outposts also allows more seamless setups when we look into things like streaming (Netflix and Amazon Prime Video) or event real-time cloud gaming. Even AR and VR will expand with the advent of such a powerful architecture. Effectively, the availability of these hybrid cloud solutions will effectively open new doors in every industry.
Seamless Integration with the Cloud
AWS Outposts doesn’t necessarily work alone. In fact, the service will allow companies to quicken their eventual move to the cloud. AWS believes that even with the hybrid computing approach now, “in the fullness of time, the vast majority of companies will run almost all of their IT workloads in the cloud“. With that in mind, they’ve designed AWS Outposts to work seamlessly with their existing cloud services. Companies are able to adapt and experiment with workloads on the cloud and over Outposts for the best outcomes. What’s more, the AWS Outpost rack can be customised to meet the unique needs of the customer – this includes the recently announced AMD EPYC powered instances.
Even when it comes to the user interface, AWS Outposts share the same interface with AWS cloud services. Users won’t need to relearn a new interface to take advantage of AWS Outposts. In fact, they can use the exact same interface for both on-premises and cloud. This also applies to services that are running atop AWS such as VMWare’s on premise solutions. The only difference would be that they will still be able to access their on-premises AWS Outposts server even when internet connectivity goes down. This also serves as a redundancy that will keep local workloads running. Once internet is available again, the servers will seamlessly synchronise with the cloud where necessary. Prolonged outage, though, may cause some data loss.
That said, Outposts doesn’t require the fastest internet to be able to function. In fact, AWS states that the minimum required is a 10Mbps connection. However, they advise to have 1Gbps for better performance.
Innovating Securely & With Peace of Mind
Bringing AWS Outposts to your premises can be daunting when you think of it; you’ll be having a server rack in house. So what happens if something goes awry? Well, first off, you can bring down your blood pressure a little bit as AWS Outposts is a fully managed service which means that AWS will come and service the hardware on a regular basis just like they would any of their own data centers. It also means that if anything goes awry – you can simply call AWS and they’ll get it sorted for you.
Servicing and maintenance aside, with the Outposts possibly handling a large amount of sensitive data, it wouldn’t be surprising to worry about data security. AWS reassures us that the AWS Outposts is safe. In fact, their approach to security starts with the rack which comes equipped with built-in tamper detection and a lockable door. The door is outfitted with a special key that, when tampered with, automatically encrypts the data within the server; making life a miserable mess for anyone who tries to take it.
On top of that, AWS Outposts builds on AWS Nitro – a security system for AWS which continually monitors, protects and verifies the hardware and firmware of the setup. It also secures and locks down instances running on the Outpost to ensure that human error is reduced. However, AWS does stress that the security of AWS Outposts as a whole is a shared effort where it can only secure the hardware and instances being run; but when it comes to the applications and software being developed on the platform, it needs to be secured by the developers.
That said, AWS Outposts is an impetus that could lead to further developments that will spur more advancement. It brings the power of the AWS cloud on-premise for corporations needing low latency connectivity to their compute and also bridges the transition for companies which are still struggling to adopt the cloud fully.
This article was written based on an interview with Paul Chen, Head of Solutions Architect for ASEAN at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
AWS (Amazon Web Services) isn’t slowing down for anything! The company is making quick work of expanding the availability of their Outposts technology. The latest countries to join the fold is Thailand and India with the rollout coming near simultaneously with Malaysia’s.
The new AWS Outposts feature will bring the power of AWS into the on-premises arena in Thailand and India. This will give businesses the flexibility of adopting cloud infrastructure without sacrificing valuable time migrating their on-premises data to a new cloud server. Instead, they will be able to bring the power and flexibility of the AWS cloud to their on-premise data.
The highly flexible and adaptable system allows businesses to deploy all of AWS’s technologies including their EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services), RDS (Relational Database Service) and more to help deploy and make sense of the large amounts of data they may have stored on-premises. They will also be able to keep sensitive data off the cloud while getting the benefit of being able to utilise them in computational and machine learning models. In addition, the close proximity of AWS’s many technologies and services also means that businesses stand to benefit from lower latency when it comes to deploying these assets.
The AWS Outposts on-premises hardware is a fully managed service. Businesses will not need to worry about downtime or learning a new interface. In fact, AWS Outposts shares the same interface as its online counterpart. This also removes the lag time required for staff to learn new platforms and interfaces.
