Building Your Own Q & A Bot Do your customers have questions they need answered 24/7? Ever wanted to build your own Q & A Bot? John Calhoun, AWS Solutions Architect, joins Simon to show you how! Shownotes: Q & A Bot Building Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/creating-a-question-and-answer-bot-with-amazon-lex-and-amazon-alexa/ Amazon Lex: https://aws.amazon.com/lex/ Amazon Elasticsearch Service: https://aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/
May 20, 2018•15 min
Customers around the world strive to maintain a high security posture. But how is this best achieved? The Australian Signals Directorate recommends the “Essential 8” mitigation strategies that organisations should apply. Simon is joined by John Hildebrandt, AWS Principal Solutions Architect, to discuss his recent blog post that shows you how you can implement these mitigations using AWS in new and efficient ways. Shownotes: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/aws-and-the-australian-signals...
May 13, 2018•12 min
Did you know there are more than 10 built-in ML algos you can use when doing Machine Learning with Amazon SageMaker? Simon is joined by Julien Simon (Principal AI//ML Evangelist, AWS EMEA) to discuss how to use them best! Shownotes: Amazon SageMaker: https://aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/ Built-in Algorithms: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/latest/dg/algos.html Amazon SageMaker Examples on GitHub: https://github.com/awslabs/amazon-sagemaker-examples
May 06, 2018•19 min
Another big round up of useful new capabilities for customers! Shownotes: Announcing S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access, a New Amazon S3 Storage Class | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/04/announcing-s3-one-zone-infrequent-access-a-new-amazon-s3-storage-class/ Amazon S3 Select Is Now Generally Available | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/04/amazon-s3-select-is-now-generally-available/ Amazon DynamoDB Adds Support for Continuous Backups and Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR) |...
Apr 29, 2018•32 min
Call in the Solutions Builders! In this episode Simon speaks with Garvit Singh and Tom Horton from the AWS Solutions Builder team about the solutions for Centralised Logging and Game Analytics. Centralised Logging Solution: https://aws.amazon.com/answers/logging/centralized-logging/ Gaming Analytics Pipeline: https://aws.amazon.com/answers/big-data/gaming-analytics-pipeline/
Apr 22, 2018•16 min
How can Government Agencies take advantage of the cloud to deliver better citizen services? Mark Ryland (Director of Solutions Architecture, AWS) chats with Simon about customer experiences in this sector, and what he has seen work. Shownotes Addressing Data Residency with AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/addressing-data-residency-with-aws/ AWS in the Public Sector: https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/ FINRA: https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/finra/ DigitalGlobe: ht...
Apr 15, 2018•22 min
Simon speaks with Adrian Cockcroft (VP of Cloud Architecture Strategy, AWS) about the domain of Chaos Engineering and Architecture. They also discuss AWS activity in the Open Source community. Shownotes: Adrian’s 2017 re:Invent Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLSFGLJ6Byo Drift Into Failure: https://www.amazon.com/Drift-into-Failure-Components-Understanding-ebook/dp/B009KOKXKY Netflix Chaos Engineering: http://www.oreilly.com/webops-perf/free/chaos-engineering.csp Open Source at AWS...
Apr 08, 2018•27 min
Technology can enable people with Special Needs to access more services than ever before, and improve their quality of life. In this episode Simon speaks with Robin Dautricourt, Product Manager for Amazon Polly about some of the things people are doing with Amazon Polly to make this possible. https://aws.amazon.com/polly/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/pollexy-building-a-special-needs-voice-assistant-with-amazon-polly-and-raspberry-pi/
Apr 02, 2018•10 min
It is update time! Simon shares a great selection of new things for customers - what will be your favourite? Shownotes: Amazon Polly Gives WordPress a Voice! - AWS Machine Learning Blog | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/amazon-polly-gives-wordpress-a-voice/ Amazon Polly New Phonation Tag Enables You to Create Softer Speech | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/02/amazon-polly-new-phonation-tag-enables-you-to-create-softer-speech/ Amazon Connect Adds Speech Synthesis Mar...
Mar 25, 2018•30 min
Elections and their associated campaigns are important, complex and an great example of a “spikey one shot deal workload”. Simon speaks with Michael Jackson (Strategy Lead, State & Local Government, AWS) and Leo Zhadanovsky (Principal Solutions Architecture, AWS) about how Elections are run on AWS and some great “war stories” from past campaigns. Shownotes: https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/election-as-a-service/elections-management/
Mar 19, 2018•23 min
Simon is joined by Jeff Barr, Ana Visneski & Daniel Westermann-Clark to discuss why the AWS Blog exists, how it gets produced and a few other interesting things you might want to hear about!! The AWS Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/
Mar 06, 2018•23 min
Do you have SFTP in your environment? How about need to do a lift-and-shift of a high volume system? Simon speaks with Jeff Thorn, CEO of Thorn Technologies about how they have helped customer overcome these and other challenges using AWS. Shownotes: SFTP gateway: https://www.thorntech.com/products/sftpgateway/ SMS Cloud Migration: https://www.thorntech.com/story/cloud-migration-top-tier-wireless-carrier/ Mobile Banking in AWS: https://www.thorntech.com/story/ongo/
Mar 05, 2018•21 min
What is a WAF and why would you use it? Simon speaks with Sundar Jayashenkar (Senior Product Manager, AWS) to get into some detail. https://aws.amazon.com/waf/
Feb 26, 2018•14 min
Simon chats with Sandy Carter (AWS VP of Enterprise Workloads) about her blog post where she discusses her experiences joining Amazon. Blog post: http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2017/09/01/seven-valuable-lessons-from-a-new-amazonian/
Feb 19, 2018•23 min
Simon & Jeff get together to review a raft of updates large and small! Shownotes: Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) now Allows Customers to Tag Their Elastic IP Addresses | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/12/amazon-virtual-private-cloud-vpc-now-allows-customers-to-tag-their-elastic-ip-addresses/ Amazon WorkSpaces Now Supports Configurable Storage and Switching Between Hardware Bundles | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/12/amazon-workspaces-now-supports-configu...
Feb 12, 2018•38 min
With the GA launch of AWS Greengrass and bundled support for embedded Lambda Compute in Snowball Edge appliances, AWS is broadening the scope of opportunity for customers with varying edge computing needs. Simon speaks with Todd Varland and Ian Perez Ponce about what "edge computing" really means and the emerging use cases they see across a range of industry sectors. They also discuss the value Snowball Edge delivers as a hybrid platform capable of providing ephemeral compute resources and petab...
Feb 05, 2018•22 min
How do you manage fast time to market whilst maintaining governance in a large Enterprise? AWS Service Catalog can help! Simon speaks with Clive D’Souza (Global Head of Business Development for AWS Service Catalog) about how customers are modernising their governance and deployment processes. https://aws.amazon.com/servicecatalog
Jan 29, 2018•21 min
Simon speaks with Trevor Sullivan (Solutions Architect, AWS) about the capabilities of AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell. Are you an AWS CLI fan? Are you a PowerShell guru? This episode is for you! Shownotes: https://aws.amazon.com/powershell/
Jan 22, 2018•18 min
Simon reviews some of the updates to AWS services, a new Alexa Skill, a repository of all AWS re:Invent 2017 content as well as a black-belt tip! Shownotes: Amazon Route 53 Releases Auto Naming API for Service Name Management and Discovery | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/12/amazon-route-53-releases-auto-naming-api-name-service-management/ Elasticsearch 6.0 now available on Amazon Elasticsearch Service | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/12/elasticsearch-6-0-now-av...
Jan 15, 2018•22 min
Simon speaks with Carla Cole (Vice President, Sales) and Mick Bass (Senior Vice President, Big Data Practice) at 47Lining about an AWS Quick Start available to get your Data Lake up and running fast! https://aws.amazon.com/quickstart/architecture/data-lake-foundation-with-aws-services/
Jan 08, 2018•16 min
How can you manage preventative maintenance without having to learn low level SCADA languages? Simon speaks with Shane Baldacchino (Solutions Architect, AWS) about applying AWS Greengrass, AWS Step Functions and AWS Lambda@Edge. Watch Shane’s AWS DevDay Session: https://aws.amazon.com/devday/australia/on-demand-2017/ AWS IoT Blog: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/iot/
Jan 01, 2018•18 min
Gaming, media and entertainment have never been bigger business. Amazon Polly makes it easy to add voice for both static and dynamic content; developers can animate avatars and highlight text as it is currently spoken in mobile apps and video games, or vocalize dynamic content on the fly. Simon speaks with Robin Dautricourt, Product Manager for Amazon Polly and Felix Duchesneau, Software Development Manager for Amazon Lumberyard. They share a few of the ways in which text-to-speech can be used t...
Dec 25, 2017•10 min
You have AWS questions? We have answers! Simon speaks with Garvit Singh (Solutions Builder) and John Stamper (Principal Solutions Builder) about solutions that have been built for use by AWS customers. These are fully deployable via AWS CloudFormation and available as Open Source as both a complete solution or the basis for your own extensions. Shownotes: AWS Answers Site: https://aws.amazon.com/answers/ AWS Multiple Account Security Strategy: https://aws.amazon.com/answers/account-management/aw...
Dec 18, 2017•17 min
Simon speaks with Jenny Davies and Marc Napoli (both Technical Account Managers at AWS) to learn more about what the role entails and how they help customers. Shownotes: Interested in a TAM Role? visit https://www.amazon.jobs and search for "TAM" AWS Enteprise Support: https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/enterprise-support/
Dec 11, 2017•24 min
Simon takes you through even more news from re:Invent 2017! Shownotes: Announcing Alexa for Business: Using Amazon Alexa’s Voice Enabled Devices for Workplaces - AWS News Blog | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/launch-announcing-alexa-for-business-using-amazon-alexas-voice-enabled-devices-for-workplaces/ AWS Lambda Doubles Maximum Memory Capacity for Lambda Functions | https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/11/aws-lambda-doubles-maximum-memory-capacity-for-lambda-functions/ Set Concurre...
Dec 01, 2017•17 min
Simon covers a raft of the announcements made at the re:Invent Keynote and other announcements of note! Shownotes: New- AWS IoT Device Management - AWS News Blog | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-iot-device-management/ Presenting AWS IoT Analytics: Delivering IoT Analytics at Scale and Faster than Ever Before - AWS News Blog | https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/launch-presenting-aws-iot-analytics/ In the Works – AWS IoT Device Defender – Secure Your IoT Fleet - AWS News Blog | https://aws.ama...
Nov 30, 2017•38 min
Simon takes you through a “Mega” set of updates and new things. Grab a coffee (he makes a recommendation!) and hopefully there will be at least one update that makes you smile! Links: How to Prepare for AWS’s Move to Its Own Certificate Authority: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-prepare-for-aws-move-to-its-own-certificate-authority/ New Pricing for AppStream 2.0 for Qualifying Education Users: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/new-pricing-makes-streaming-learning-resources-w...
Nov 27, 2017•43 min
Simon speaks with Ken Eisner, Senior Manager of Worldwide AWS Education Programs about AWS Educate. Are you an educator looking for up-to-date content for your curriculum? Are you a student wanting to get modern, relevant qualifications? Do you want to “re-skill” yourself with some of the most valued technical skills in the market? Take a listen to how the AWS Educate program can help - PLUS a special code for $150 of AWS Credit is shared in the episode (NOTE: code valid to 31st December 2017). ...
Nov 20, 2017•19 min
App developers spend incredible time, resources, and effort to grow their app audiences, but once you've acquired a user, it's easier and cheaper to retain and engage them via messaging and notifications. In this podcast we introduce AWS Pinpoint for engaging with your users and getting app and user analytics to drive your business. Amazon Pinpoint: https://aws.amazon.com/pinpoint/
Nov 13, 2017•11 min
Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, making it easy to develop applications that use high-quality speech to increase engagement and accessibility. In this episode Simon speaks with Robin Dautricourt, Product Manager for Amazon Polly to introduce Amazon Polly and walk through popular use cases in specific industries where Amazon Polly's natural sounding voices improve user experience and enables new ways to consume content: Learning/Education, Gaming, Content Creation a...
Nov 06, 2017•14 min
