Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been making tons of product and partnership announcements since the onset of this year’s virtual AWS re:Invent. After walking through last week’s plethora of announcements, we’re back this week to introduce you to all the companies that AWS has announced collaborations with since the beginning of December. Available as a free three-week virtual event, AWS re:Invent began on Nov. 30 and will run through Dec. 18. AWS re:Invent 2020: The product announcements so far === BlackBerry and AWS joins forces to create intelligent vehicle development platform [Full story] === AWS announces a no-code mobile and web app builder [Full story] === AWS is making moves in Canada, but so are its critics as protests disrupt summit [Full story, 2019]
AWS announced on Dec. 11 that the semiconductor and software design company Arm will be using AWS to migrate the majority of electronic design automation (EDA) workloads to AWS through the use of the AWS Graviton2-based instances (powered by Arm Neoverse cores). According to a press release, Arm ultimately plans to reduce its global datacentre footprint by at least 45 per cent and its on-premises compute by 80 per cent as it completes its migration to AWS. Arm says it uses Amazon elastic compute cloud (Amazon EC2) to streamline its costs and timelines by optimizing EDA workflows across the various specialized Amazon EC2 instance types. In addition, Arm uses services from AWS partner Databricks to develop and run machine learning applications in the cloud.
Siemens Smart Infrastructure, a business of the Siemens AG group focusing on energy distribution and intelligent buildings, is moving its SAP infrastructure to AWS, thereby becoming the first company within Siemens AG to move production-scale, business-critical SAP environments to the cloud. As part of this collaboration, Siemens Smart Infrastructure will migrate over 20 enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems, based on SAP HANA, to AWS before the end of 2021. These systems support business-critical processes in areas such as manufacturing, operations, and sales across different business units of the company including Building Products, Electrical Products, Digital Grid, and Distribution Systems.
Zoom Video Communications has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider in a multi-year agreement that extends the longstanding relationship between the two companies. AWS noted in the announcement that Zoom will continue to use AWS’s global infrastructure and services – including capabilities in compute, storage, content distribution, and security, which will allow Zoom to extend its data centres securely. In addition, AWS and Zoom are collaborating to develop new solutions for Zoom’s enterprise users, using AWS to integrate Zoom services with Amazon devices and capabilities in an attempt to make it easier for organizations to run hybrid office and remote work models. Zoom has been using AWS since 2011. Over the past year, Zoom has grown on AWS to accommodate an increase from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to more than 300 million a day regularly since April 2020. AWS says since February, it’s added tens of thousands of Amazon elastic cloud compute (EC2) instances (virtual servers) to Zoom’s overall capacity, even adding thousands of instances in a day as usage demanded.
AWS and the BMW Group have teamed up to jointly develop cloud-enabled solutions and upskill up to 5,000 BMW Group-affiliated software engineers in the latest AWS technologies. These cloud-enabled solutions are being jointly developed by the two companies with the goal to increase efficiency, performance, and sustainability across every aspect of the automotive life cycle, from vehicle design to after-sales services. The two companies will also collaborate on innovative products and solutions to improve operational performance and increase transparency in the supply chain, says AWS. BMW’s PartChain Platform uses AWS services such as Amazon elastic Kubernetes service (Amazon EKS) in conjunction with open-source blockchain management tools to enhance the traceability of automotive parts and raw materials throughout the automotive industry’s highly complex global supply chain. In addition, BMW is using Amazon SageMaker – AWS’s service for building, training, and deploying machine learning models in the cloud and on the edge – to examine data from vehicle subsystems, using machine learning to predict the performance of parts, recommend maintenance, and inform parts suppliers of potential issues with their manufacturing processes to improve quality.
Thomson Reuters has completed a large scale migration to AWS as part of its transformation strategy and ongoing move to the cloud. The company has migrated hundreds of revenue-generating applications and thousands of servers to AWS. This partnership is an expansion of the long-standing relationship of Thomson Reuters with AWS. In 2018, Thomson Reuters partnered with AWS Professional Services, AWS Managed Services, and AWS Certified third-party experts from multiple consulting partners to move hundreds of legacy applications from across their global business units to the cloud and into production quickly. In addition, Thomson Reuters has developed an internal platform to apply machine learning at scale using Amazon SageMaker to help developers and data scientists quickly gain new insights from real-time and historical data in a fully managed and secure environment. AWS says the platform saves developers and data scientists countless hours of coding by providing all of the components used for machine learning in a single toolset so models get to production faster with much less effort and at a lower cost, enabling Thomson Reuters to deliver new, intelligent solutions for their customers.
Global media and entertainment company ViacomCBS picked AWS as its preferred broadcast cloud provider to facilitate one of the largest digital transformations in the media and entertainment industry. The portfolio of ViacomCBS includes CBS, Showtime Networks, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, CBS All Access, Pluto TV and Simon & Schuster, among others. The company delivers the largest share of the U.S. television audience and boasts one of the industry’s most important and extensive libraries of TV and film titles. The company also provides capabilities in production, distribution and advertising solutions for partners on five continents. The company says it also plans to use AWS Elemental media services as well as AWS machine learning technologies, including Amazon Rekognition (AWS’s service that adds intelligent image and video analysis to applications) and Amazon SageMaker (AWS’s service for building, training, and deploying machine learning models), to scale video processing resources, automate workflows, and predict audience preferences.
AWS recently announced a multi-year partnership with Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) to modernize its core media supply chain and enterprise-wide media distribution platform. The company is in the process of migrating its content library and SAP workloads to AWS in an attempt to power its media supply chain as well as support its content rights and distribution processes. Running on AWS, MGM will distribute content across multiple platforms quickly and at scale. MGM’s new cloud-based media supply chain will use AWS compute, serverless, storage, machine learning, and media services to modernize its infrastructure. The company will build a data lake on AWS using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) that, AWS says, will provide up-to-date content rights and ownership information and connect to a microservices architecture that will simplify and automate workflows and processes throughout MGM’s complex media supply chain. MGM will be using AWS Media Services, including AWS Elemental MediaConvert, to automate the processes for preparing and delivering MGM’s library of feature film and premium television content, optimizing video for viewing on any screen.
AWS is teaming up, well, everyone
In case you missed it:
Arm will be using AWS for its cloud use
Siemens Smart Infrastructure selects AWS as its preferred cloud provider for SAP environments
Zoom elects AWS
BMW teams up with AWS
Thomson Reuters driving large-scale migration to cloud
Are you not entertained? ViacomCBS expands strategic agreement with AWS
Metro Goldwyn Mayer modernizes its media supply chain
