AWS SUMMIT BAHRAIN OVERVIEW
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit in Bahrain took place on September 15th, bringing technologists together to connect, collaborate, and learn more about AWS. With the recent launch of the AWS Middle East Region in Bahrain, the summit was an opportunity for attendees to learn more about the new infrastrcuture and how they can benefit from it to innovate and grow. The full day summit also included various educational and training sessions on topics ranging from getting started on AWS, to deep dives into innovative cloud technologies such machine learning, serverless computing, data analytics, and much more.
The keynote was delivered by Teresa Carlson, Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS, who highlighted how the newly launched regional data centers bring flexible, affordable, reliable, and secure cloud computing technologies close to end users in the Middle East, helping organizations speed up their digital transformation initiatives and more rapidly innovate for the citizens of the region. The keynote also featured AWS customer presentations by Shaikh Salman bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, Deputy Chief Executive, Operations and Governance, Bahrain Information and eGovernment Authority; Sael AlWaary, Deputy Group CEO, Bank ABC; and Ahmed Hamadan, CEO and co-Founder, Unifonic.
The day also included a We Power Tech panel discussion, bringing together leading women in technology who are driving digital transformation across organizations in the Middle East powered by diversity and inclusion. The panel included Huda Ahmed Mohsen, Chief of Information Technology at Bahrain Ministry of Information and Authority; Louise Blake, VP Data, Seera Group; Mais Rihani, Chief Technology Officer at Aramex; and Sameera Mohammed Al Atawi, Information and Communications Technology Director at the American University of Bahrain.
In July, AWS announced the opening of the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region. With this launch, AWS now spans 69 Availability Zones within 22 geographic regions around the world. The new AWS Middle East (Bahrain) Region offers three Availability Zones. AWS Regions are composed of Availability Zones, which each comprise at least one data center and are located in separate and distinct geographic locations with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high availability applications. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security and is connected via redundant, ultra-low-latency networks. AWS customers focused on high availability can design their applications to run in multiple Availability Zones to achieve even greater fault-tolerance. AWS infrastructure Regions meet the highest levels of security, compliance, and data protection.
