AWS summit took place last Tuesday and saw many industry players showing support for AWS cloud services. During the keynote speech, CTO Dr. Werner Vogels showed of the various services that AWS offers for their customers, with endorsements by edotco, KFit and Maybank.

Vogels emphasises that cloud revolutionised business models. Vogel explains that cloud removes constraints of location, enables real time analytics, and provides businesses with a platform to experiment and learn. “You have to be a digital company to compete with the best out there, no matter what industry you are.”

During the keynote, he also announced that Amazon Web Services Malaysia has opened an office in Kuala Lumpur to further support the rapidly growing customer base across Malaysia. With 19 other offices within the region, the Malaysian office is now one of the service centres operational and is supporting businesses as they make the transition to the AWS Cloud.

DSA was kindly invited for a front row seat at the summit, and while we were impressed with the technologies and services on display, we were less awed by out media session with the APAC Director; and we have an editorial dedicated to it.  

In a group media interview with Shane Owenby, Amazon Web Services Managing Director of Asia Pacific, he explained that the Malaysian office includes a country manager, account managers, solutions architects, partner and alliance managers, technical account managers, professional services and training services for customers and the partner network to engage directly. He emphasises, however, that it isn’t just about sales and getting closer to the customer base.

“We decline to start with enterprises in certain places if we don’t think it’s good for them. We don’t think it’s good to move all to the cloud day one – we think there’s a sequence of events you need to follow and we will recommend the best options. It’s not about just selling stuff, it’s about making sure it works and the customer is happy.”

He declined to disclose or comment on the revenue breakdown within the region or the size of the team, but shared that AWS has a 10 billion dollar run rate globally.

AWS operates a pay-as-you-go suite of cloud infrastructure services to speed time to market without upfront capital investment. Malaysian customers are adopting AWS to run core enterprise applications, perform data analytics, live streaming of video, build e-commerce platforms, launch new businesses, host websites, deliver global social and mobile applications, and extend on-premises environments. Some of the customers include Maybank, AmInvest, edotco Group, Fraser & Neave Holdings Group (F&N), Fusionex, Grab, iflix, KFit and Kim Teck Cheong (KTC).

AWS services are not restricted solely to big corporations; SMEs in the region can also benefit with AWS. “We offer the same exact technology whether you are GE or you are one man and a dog in Penang. How you apply that technology may very well be different, but when I talk to SMEs they either want to do it themselves or have a partner. We have a lot of partners in Malaysia that can work with these SMEs without a dedicated IT department.”
There are currently no datacentres in Malaysia but Owenby shares that AWS is always looking to expand to all major markets. Owenby explains that data would be housed closest to where the consumers are and AWS is transparent in the location they house client data. He declined to disclose any details on any future plans for datacentres.

“We want datacentres to be close to customers – latency still matter with networks. However, there are many factors to consider, like how much of the current IT landscape is regulated, what the scope of business opportunities are there for that region, quality of datacentres and quality of talent.”

During the discussions, Owenby was certainly confident in AWS’s position in the market and also within the region. He believes that with 10 years’ experiences in the industry, AWS is on solid ground and other cloud service providers may not have the necessary experiences to surpass AWS. He told the media that within the ASEAN region, there are changes in mind-set and perception.

“We see a lot of changes in the conversations in the region. It used to be centred around security, I don’t get asked questions on security anymore. Now it revolves more around the technology and deployment methodology. The risk profile that CIOs are willing to take are very different for this region – people understand the safety of the cloud and us announcing revenue publicly also cements trust from our clients. There’s an old adage “people don’t get fired for buying IBM” – that’s us now.”

Recently Dropbox announced that they have moved out of AWS to their own in-house datacentres. Throughout the media discussions, Owenby strongly advocated that complete eventual shift to cloud will be the future and was very quick to dismiss doubts revolving AWS.

“They feel that running storage infrastructure is a key part of their differentiator. We looked at their numbers and we disagree with them but we did facilitate. It’s not for international operations – they are still fully committed to AWS in international market. Time will tell how that ends. We’ve had a number of customers who’ve decided to go off AWS and they’ve been public in coming back.”

However, he states that legally and technically, it is still relatively easy to move data in and out of AWS and will facilitate move outs according to client requests.