Our top picks for AWS re:Invent 2021

AWS re:Invent is back for 2021! A cornerstone of the tech conference calendar, and in its tenth year, re:Invent’s agenda is massive and narrowing down which sessions to watch can be a daunting task! So to help you navigate, we’ve pulled together our recommendations for the week focused on cost optimisation, serverless and improving your cloud operations.

We’d all love to be heading to Vegas to hear about the latest innovations and connect with like minded techies from all over the world, but thankfully AWS broadcast most sessions live, and even rebroadcast them throughout the conference for those of us not on Vegas time.

There are plenty of opportunities to catch up on demand too. When you register for Virtual re:Invent you are able to select topics you're interested in, and AWS produce a personalised recommended timetable for you.

Monday 29th November

Global Partner Summit Keynote

This is the session where we find out about the work AWS is doing with its partners to drive cloud-powered innovation and help customers in virtually every industry to transform digitally.

When to watch

Live from Las Vegas - Monday 29 November, 3:00PM - 5:00PM (PST)

This session will be rebroadcast on Tuesday 30 November, 3:00PM - 5:00PM (GMT)

Tuesday 30th November

Keynote: AWS CEO Adam Selipsky

Get the latest news, product launches and customer stories, from AWS CEO Adam Selipsky.

When to watch

Live from Las Vegas - Tuesday 30th November, 8:30 AM - 10:30AM (PST)

This session will be rebroadcast on Wednesday 1st December at 8:30 AM - 10:30AM (GMT)

Serverless

Accelerating your serverless journey with AWS Lambda

David Richardson, Vice President, Serverless

AWS Lambda is its core serverless compute product. Building serverless applications means you can focus more on writing code and developing your applications and spend less time on infrastructure management. In this session, David will talk about how a serverless strategy empowers organizations to minimize operations and maximize agility while lowering costs. There’ll also be insight into the latest innovations support new workloads and upcoming features which will improve user experience of serverless tools. 

When to watch

Live from Las Vegas - Tuesday 30th November, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM (PST)

This session will be rebroadcast on Wednesday 1st December, 4:00 PM  - 5:00 PM (GMT)

Wednesday 1st December

Cloud Operations

Ready, set, operate: The AWS Cloud operations model

Bill Vass, Vice President, Engineering – Storage, Automation & Management

AWS has spent more than a decade helping organisations to migrate to and operate in the cloud, and has developed a tried and tested Cloud Operations Model to help you drive the business outcomes you want from the cloud. In this session, Bill Vass will talk about how the Cloud Operations Model can help you build securely and successfully in the cloud and how AWS users are using it to speed up innovation. 

When to watch

Live from Las Vegas - Wednesday 1st December, 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM (PST)

This session will be rebroadcast on Thursday 2nd December, 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM (GMT)

Thursday 2nd December

Resilient application architectures

Dr. Werner Vogels - CTO Amazon.com

Dr. Vogels will take us behind the scenes of the largest and most successful applications in the world and will share his insights on building truly resilient architectures. We’ll hear how Amazon is solving today’s hardest technology problems and the future of software development. 

When to watch

Live from Las Vegas - Thursday 2nd December, 8:30 AM - 10:30 AM (PST)

This session will be rebroadcast on Friday 3rd December,  8:30 AM - 10:30 AM (GMT)

Throughout the week

Cost Optimisation Breakout Sessions and Workshops

AWS themselves have put together this excellent primer of Cost Optimisation focused sessions throughout the week. 

Those attending in person will have access to the breakout sessions and workshops, and some will be broadcast live. Those of us participating from afar will be able to see recordings of some of these sessions when AWS release them via the Virtual re:Invent dashboard which you'll be able to curate once you've signed up. 

Cloudsoft are AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, with Well-Architected, DevOps, Microsoft Workloads and Immersion Day competencies. We’ve been helping customers to migrate to the cloud, manage their environments and make sure they’re well optimised for almost a decade. We’re also founding members of the FinOps Foundation and FinOps Certified Practitioners.