Tag: EMEA

The National Institute for Astrophysics (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica or INAF) is an Italian institution that conducts scientific research in astronomy and astrophysics. INAF research ranges from the study of the planets and minor bodies of the solar system to the large-scale structure of the Universe. Recently, INAF has been involved in two large projects where they turned to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud: the ESO Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) and Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA).

GREENSPIN is a startup company from Würzburg, Germany, that works in the area of data analytics for better agriculture. In this blog post, Dr. Sebastian Fritsch tells us how GREENSPIN is using Earth Observation data available via the Registry of Open Data on AWS to improve agricultural practices. Check out the Q&A with Dr. Sebastian Fritsch from GREENSPIN.

Age UK is the UK’s largest charity dedicated to helping everyone make the most of later life. They have the vision to make the UK a great place to grow older and they work every day to achieve this by providing companionship, advice, and support for older people who need it most. Scalability, cost savings, and security are key in delivering Age UK’s services to more than 7 million people every year. In 2012, Age UK turned to AWS to help revamp their technology to better support the older generation in the UK.

Our second annual AWS Summit in Bahrain took place on Sunday September 30th in Manama, Bahrain. More than 2,000 attendees including the Crown Prince and dignitaries within the Bahraini government joined us to get inspired and gain the technical knowledge needed to get more from the cloud. The event included 15 sessions across three tracks – management, technical, and spotlight. The Summit also featured those in the Middle East who have made impressive use of the cloud to foster a spirit of innovation in the region.

Over the years, I have talked to thousands of customers about security and compliance topics. Many of these conversations revolved around specific security controls customers were interested in, or assurances about how specific cloud services are managed, or whether a cloud service complies with a specific regulation. Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) tend to be focused on maximizing control and visibility – and for good reasons. But with the focus on security controls and compliance requirements, one important topic rarely gets discussed: innovation. Overlooking the value of innovation to an organization, and the value of the pace of innovation, can be a serious ROI miscalculation.

The Bahrain government has set a goal to shift the IT infrastructures of all its ministries and offices to Amazon Web Services (AWS). As Bahrain embraces the cloud, AWS is committed to fostering a spirit of innovation in the Middle East. Ahead of the upcoming AWS Summit in Bahrain where we will offer the inspiration and technical knowledge you need to get more from the cloud, we are highlighting how Almoayyed Computers helped the Bahrain Ministry of Information Affairs (MIA) move a mission-critical, customer-facing website onto AWS in less than two weeks with no downtime.

Imagine you are on a city street surrounded by skyscrapers. When you look up to the stars, you will only see the part of the sky that is not blocked by buildings. This type of vision is called sky view factor (SVF). The SVF denotes the ratio between the radiation received at a point on Earth and the available radiation for a hemisphere over that point. Dr. Andrea Pagani, a data scientist at the DataLab of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, has been looking at how to efficiently compute the SVF for the Netherlands. Read on to learn more about Dr. Pagani’s work to help us understand what’s between us and the sky – and why that matters.

One of the hottest security and compliance related topics that customers want to discuss is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). On May 25, 2018, GDPR came into force. This new regulation raises the minimum bar where personal data protection is concerned.

In 2017, a group of students at the Institute for Geoinformatics at the University of Münster embarked on an ambitious project: to build an Earth Observation Infrastructure on AWS that would support disaster preparedness for flooding situations in Europe. We asked Professor Remke about the project, how AWS was used, and his recommendations for similar projects in this Q&A.

The AWS Institute teamed up with James Stewart, co-founder of the UK Government Digital Service and Deputy CTO of UK Government, and Manj Kalar, a public finance specialist, to turn this dialogue into actionable ideas. See their four recommendations below on “Budgeting for Change: Four Ways the UK Government Can Spend Smarter and Deliver Better,” which they discussed at the Institute for Government and will discuss next week at the AWS Public Sector Summit.