Insights from AWS re:Invent 2019

In Denmark, we are known for our enthusiasm for Microsoft. That's why it's no surprise that Microsoft Azure is firmly implanted on the cloud market in Denmark, holding 60 % of the cloud solutions. The second place is held by AWS with only 6 % of the Danish market (Computerworld.dk). But on the world stage the situation is different. Here AWS (RightScale 2019 State of the Cloud, Flexera) dominate. So there is good reason to keep up with the latest development and participate in this year's AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. The latest knowledge about cloud, microservices and how businesses can move from a monolithic software architecture to microservices software architecture will be presented here. We will share that knowledge in this blog post, which will be updated during the conference. It is our colleagues Rasmus Hagemann, Director & Head of Self-service and Cloud solutions, and Jacob Dalgaard, CTO, who are the messengers.

AWS insights. Monday December 2, 2019

"On the first day of AWS re:Invent we have both been al the way down in the technical details and all the way up in the stratospheres of higher organisation. We have dived into the components of EC2 and learned how to put together resources for the specific needs and how to optimise costs. We have heard how Amazon is successful in organising their delivery organisation into small so-called 2-pizza teams, still ensuring high quality and a cohesive solution. Another very interesting session was when AWS explained how to optimise costs by using the various cloud components correctly. " – Jacob Dalgaard, CTO.

AWS insights. Tuesday December 3, 2019

"In Tuesday's sessions, the focus was very much on modernisation. We saw how AWS specifically broke a classic web application into serverless microservices, and we walked away with a lot of good approaches to the challenge. We also got an answer as to why you should spend the energy moving your old monoliths in the cloud at all? Firstly, Microsoft has announced that .Net core will be their preferred solution in the future. Therefore, it will at some point become necessary to rewrite solutions to keep them supported. Secondly, a lot of money can be saved, both on licenses and operating costs, if you manage to choose the right components in the cloud." – Jacob Dalgaard, CTO.

AWS Insights. Wednesday December 4, 2019

"Today we were inside the engine room of both Uber and Airbnb. Uber told us how they use AWS Batch to run simulations on the software they are developing for their self-driving cars. Although they own a huge facility where they can test the cars in real situations, it would take ages to expose the cars to the many imaginable scenarios they may face. So they have built a giant simulation engine that can test the software in the various situations. Something as simple as a right turn in a junction can go wrong in a lot of ways, depending on how other drivers behave. The engine can simulate the same situation with many different variables and describe in which cases the software would fail.

Airbnb related how they had built fraud detection to reduce the number of suspicious bookings, and how they used Amazon SQS queues to secure the decoupling of the components and thus a scalable solution. Although the vast majority of all major companies have a digital transformation plan, there are still a lot of legacy systems and technical debts. In an end of the day panel debate, it was discussed how much these systems are preventing the company from transforming. " – Jacob Dalgaard, CTO.