Why AWS is betting on cloud adoption by public sector firms

Every private company today avails at least one cloud service for its business operations. However, it is different for the public sector entities.

Dave Levy, Vice President of the Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), believes otherwise. He sees the public sector—governments, health-related organisations, and education—has much to gain from these technology platforms.

Despite a slower pace in cloud adoption, the public sector now sees cloud platforms as a gateway to deliver various services and solutions. 

In an interview with Enterprise Story, Levy discusses the increasing tech modernisation of public sector entities, which, he believes, will set the foundation to engage with AI and generative AI (Gen AI).

Edited excerpts:

Enterprise Story [ES]: What are the broad trends you see in terms of cloud adoption by the public sector?

Dave Levy [DL]: If you go around the world, I don't think any public sector organisation is saying we're not going to do cloud. They used to say that, but they're not saying that anymore. The trend I see now from the public sector is—"what is going to be our cloud and data strategy.”

I hear it consistently because the data really is the driver. It's going to be the foundation for how you're going to move to the cloud and how you do AI and Gen AI in the future. I see a lot of public sector organisations really thinking about their data strategy. It's kind of the launch pad for all the other projects.

The second trend is they're doing a lot of proof of concepts. “How do we now do this at scale? What's the big Gen AI application at scale?” There's a lot of experimentation with Gen AI, and customers are starting to think about what we are going to do at scale across the enterprise. How do we really get enterprise value out of it? 

The third trend is around the workforce. It's not the technical workforce, but our customers now recognise that all of their workforce needs to have some sort of skilling or upskilling. They need to have some sort of foundation to really have an impact on the business.

ES: What do you see as the key priorities of public sector customers today?

DL: There are groups of public sector customers. Some are governments, big healthcare and research organisations, and lastly, there is education. Each group is at a different phase. In healthcare, AI and Gen AI have the ability to improve health outcomes like drug discovery, patient access, visibility to operate, and insurance.

From our perspective, we have to get them to understand that to get to those outcomes in Gen AI, you're going to have to start moving to the cloud. 

On the government side, they have migrated their many systems to the cloud over the years. They've seen a lot of benefits from that, and now they're starting to modernise those systems with newer technologies. 

On the education side, we help them understand how to use the cloud to accomplish things like e-books, teaching assistants, coding assistance, etc.

ES: How does AWS see cloud adoption by the public sector?

DL: The public sector’s mission is to support and serve all of us. They are very thoughtful about things like governance, AI, and responsibility, and they're very thoughtful about how they deploy Gen AI. We are also helping in that regard by contributing our point of view about responsible AI. 

ES: How does AWS approach the issue of digital sovereignty?

DL: Everywhere around the world, sovereignty is an issue, and there are a lot of ways there. I think the definition of sovereignty varies depending on what country you go to. But we're very aware and sensitive to the fact that data sovereignty is very important to countries and jurisdictions around the world.

Data localisation is very critical to them, and we've got infrastructure regions virtually in every part of the world.

We provide many tools to help governments and public sector organisations maintain the security, privacy and safety of their data. I would also say it’s a good strategy, in some cases, to have your data outside of your country, too, for resiliency reasons.

For example, in the case of Ukraine, we helped move some of the country’s critical data given the conflict situation.

ES: How does AWS view the Indian market?

DL: It's an incredible market for us. We've made a lot of investments. There is a trillion-dollar digital economy in India and growing. We see opportunities across the board to help with the transformation of healthcare and education, and we are starting to see big momentum picking up on the government side.

In India, we have strategic partnerships, particularly with the national government. The country is also a great example of digital public infrastructure that the rest of the world can model. That's why we're excited to be there.

ES: What is the renaissance for AWS with the public sector and cloud?

DL: I think, coming out of the pandemic, public sector organisations realised they could accomplish a couple of things with the cloud and these newer technologies. The pandemic showed you need flexibility and agility; it's not just about cost. There are services that citizens want, and they want them fast. They want it to be secure, efficient, and transparent.

Public sector organisations are realising it's not just about the cost but the ability to scale. I believe the trajectory for the public sector looks good, and there is a sense of excitement and enthusiasm.