15 years ago, Amazon announced its cloud storage service, S3. It was conceived as a tool that would help companies that sold their products through online retail to store your photos and other content. But it ended up becoming the germ of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Taking advantage of this anniversary, in Engadget we had the opportunity to chat with Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, vice president and general manager of Amazon S3, who ensures that all the new services that are being added to the AWS cloud maintain “the basic concepts of durability , reliability, scalability, availability ”with which S3 was born.
All are data, although different
Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec acknowledges that in these three decades AWS customers continue to store data in S3, although their typology (and quantity) has varied enormously.
“There is an explosion of data taking place. The amount of data created over the next three years will be greater than the data created over the past 30 years, according to a report from IDC last year. The world will create more than three times as much data during the next five years than in the previous five ”, contextualizes this directive.
“We still have a lot of files, images and videos,” he says. However, while private consumers continue to generate a lot of these types of files, “the content created by companies is also growing and changing rapidly.” Thus, in addition to making backup copies of their databases, “they have evolved to include business data such as transaction records. When a company wants to do, for example, analysis of its information, what they do is put all their data in S3, and then they run their analyzes on that data“, Explain.
Why all companies will go to the cloud
These data are “the backbone of innovation”, according to this person in charge, who explains that with the analysis of historical data of companies and commercial trends, businesses can have all this information structured to develop a predictive forecast.
Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec defends that doing all these things in the cloud entails optimizations in the cost of all these operations. “You can determine that the forecast is in one year, or in two or three. You can do it in minutes and without building a lot of infrastructure, “he details, adding that” you can’t do that on premise the way you can in the cloud: not for speed, not for cost.
Therefore, it is convinced that, “In due time”, all companies will want to move to the cloud. “That will give them the information and the ability to run their business in a way that was impossible for them to do on their premises. Both companies and governments need the advantage that the cloud provides ”, he emphasizes.
The vice president and general director of Amazon S3 gave several examples of Spanish companies that are using AWS services, such as Volotea, an airline that is moving all its infrastructure to the AWS cloud to, within a couple of years, close most of your CPDs.
To do this, Volotea will build a data lake on S3 and, from there, build and train a machine learning system that helps it better predict all its operations.
“In S3 we have more than one hundred billion objects stored. It started as an answer to what customers needed in 2006 but when they tried to use it to be their data core, S3 started to grow and became the basis for all commercial applications”, She assures, convinced that machine learning will be key and critical for all companies.
Other reasons to jump
Clearly, Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec defends the benefits of going to the cloud for companies. And he gives as an example another Spanish company, Meliá Hotels. “With the pandemic, they had to move their 500 call center workers to their homes. They were already using the AWS cloud, but they also started using Amazon workspaces, which is a service that gives you a virtual desktop. ” In ten days, they set up 500 offices in the home of these employees. “Being in the cloud gives you the ability that, in a crisis, you can pivot and start something that your company needs. It is one of the most important reasons to move to the cloud, “he says.
In addition, Melia has started using contactless check-in at its hotels. “Guests do not communicate with the front desk and thus they were able to eliminate the need for physical contact between a guest and a hotel employee when they check in.” Something for which they have used a service called Amazon Recognition.
“Meliá came to Amazon because they wanted to save money on costs. They wanted to scale down and not use their computing and storage as much. If you are not in the cloud, you cannot, because you have bought all the infrastructure and you are tied to your data center. Meanwhile, when you use a service en the cloud, you can increase and decrease your power without incurring sunk costs“, She adds to be convinced that” all companies will go to the cloud due to the cost and the ability to raise and lower power, but also due to the agility and the ability to react when it is necessary to do so “.
Public administrations also move
Despite all these benefits that the cloud offers, some executives acknowledge that 80% of customer workloads are still on-premises. Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec not only thinks this is a very high figure, but also ensures that even sectors as traditional as public administrations are moving their operations to the cloud.
Among them, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a regulatory body of the United States stock exchange. “They have been with us for five or six years. Maybe even more, ”he explains. “Going to the cloud takes time. We have customers who take that step in different ways, at different degrees of speed. But there are many companies and governments around the world that are moving to the cloud, although at different speeds depending on why they do it, “he details.
Asked if there are any industries that are taking a slower pace, especially some of those that are highly regulated (such as finance or health), the vice president and CEO of Amazon S3 believes that the key is in leadership and corporate culture. “The leadership’s ability to set an ambitious goal and help drive toward that goal is what makes the difference. It often means it’s not just technology, but it also means a change in culture. “
The Spanish market
The vice president and general director of Amazon S3 has, in this sense, a good taste of the Spanish scene. “I was in Spain a couple of years ago. It is amazing to see how the economy and innovation and entrepreneurship are thriving in the Iberian Peninsula”, He assures.
According to AWS, its customers in Spain number in the tens of thousands. More than 75% of the Ibex 35 companies are using AWS Cloud technology to “accelerate the launch of new products and reduce their costs”.
Some data that, among other things, led AWS to announce the new AWS region in Spain, which is currently under construction. “Our goal is to provide our Iberian customers with a region that has the three availability zones so that they can run their workloads and store data in Spain, which has an infrastructure with the highest levels of security and compliance and data protection” .