Blog AWS On the Road Government
It was great seeing everyone last week at the AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C! This is one of our favorite events to sponsor each year, and we wanted to share some highlights of the event.
Sharing Best Practices
On Wednesday, our VP of Product, Shane Quinlan, presented his Lightning Talk, “Guardrails and governance: How to build better in the cloud.” During this 15-min session, Shane discussed topics that can help organizations transform their business with the cloud: access with guardrails, how to build unicorns, governance by default, and owning your budget.
VP of Product, Shane Quinlan, presenting his Lightning Talk, “Guardrails and governance: How to build better in the cloud.”
Shane first touched on how organizations can place effective cloud guardrails with authentication, authorization, and silos.
Next, he elaborated on how businesses can raise cloud unicorns. With 80% of IT leaders stating that inadequate employee skills are holding them back from expanding their cloud use, organizations need to focus on upskilling, retention, and hiring the right individuals for the job. While the era of “move fast and break things” is over, governance as code (GaC) and continuous governance is practicable. To successfully govern by default, businesses need to have baselines, inheritance, and compliance.
Lastly, Shane focused on how organizations can own their budget. 94% of IT leaders admit to having avoidable overspend. With this in mind, it’s crucial that your organization have a cloud cost management plan that includes spend visibility, flexible budgets, enforcements, and optimizations so you can get the most out of your cloud spend.
A slide from Shane's presentation, “Guardrails and governance: How to build better in the cloud.”
Details on how we helped a large civilian federal agency.
Shane also spoke on Thursday at the AWS Summit Partner Forum on accelerating transformation with U.S. Federal Partners. When asked what a successful partnership between federal customers, Kion and AWS looks like, Shane replied, “One team. That’s the feeling you want to have. One team supporting the mission and business you want to drive.”
Shane participating in the AWS Summit Partner Forum.
A few of our colleagues attended the session, “Working backwards from employer demand to create new cloud talent.” This session shed light on the cloud skills gap and how representatives from the New York City Mayor’s Office and Queensborough Community College, part of the CUNY system in New York, are preparing training programs for the next generation of builders. Whether it’s local government, universities, or big commercial businesses, responding to the skills gap is critically important today. One way higher ed universities are helping to close this gap is by stressing the importance of welcoming individuals who may have nonconventional backgrounds.
If you’ve been looking to expand your cloud skillset, we’ve compiled a list of 2023's Top Resources for Higher Education that Cloud Providers Offer for Free.
Having Fun and Giving Back
If you were able to stop by our booth this year, we hope you took away one of our Kion Koalas. Stuffed animals are typically a big hit, and we always love handing these out so individuals can take them back home and share them with their children, or pets! While we typically host raffle drawings at events, we wanted to do something a little extra this year by giving back. Alongside our $250 Amazon gift card raffle prize, we also donated $1 per badge scan to the Capital City Food Bank.
The Kion team on Day 1 of the event.
One of our koalas hanging out during a demo.
Great turnout for our raffle drawing.
Andrew, Tim and Dustin - members of our sales team - supporting their favorite Kion tagline.
Learn More
If you weren't able to attend the AWS Public Sector Summit this year or didn't have a chance to stop by our booth, no worries! Below are a few resources to help you see how Kion delivers complete cloud enablement as an agency's front door to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
- At the 2022 event, we shared how you could reimagine cloud management. Watch the replay for four recommendations to help you get started on the path to effective cloud management.
- Discover how government agencies can collect the sweet benefits of the cloud without breaking the (national) bank.
- Learn more about how we partnered with CTAC to help one government client simplify the process for provisioning and deprovisioning AWS accounts, as well as maintain compliance with the necessary security and privacy requirements.
- Get the details on how Kion delivers total cloud control for Federal agencies.
About the Author
Sam Sloman
Sam is the social media and community lead at Kion.
