UPDATED 09:00 EDT / NOVEMBER 27 2018

CLOUD

Amgen and Korean Air jump aboard the AWS train

Big name brands just can’t get enough of Amazon Web Services Inc., if its rate of customer acquisitions, or at least its announcements of them, is anything to go by. The company today said it has signed up another pair of marquee customers, just a day after it landed Ellie Mae Inc. and Intel Corp.’s Mobileye division as major clients.

The public cloud infrastructure giant announced the new customers on the second day of its annual re:Invent conference, where it’s showcasing a large number of new updates and services.

The first of today’s new customers seems well-suited to make use of Amazon’s array of cloud services. Amgen Inc. is a biotechnology firm that uses computer simulations and data analytics to aid the development of a range of medical drugs that are used to prevent infections in patients undergoing cancer and treat other conditions.

The company said it’s migrating the vast majority of its computing infrastructure onto AWS in order to beef up its analytics capabilities with the ultimate aim of developing new medical treatments for various medical conditions. It will use a range of Amazon’s cloud services, including its database and machine learning services, in order to develop new applications and automation processes that can speed up its research.

Amgen has already seen the benefits of shifting these kinds of research operations to the cloud. Since 2012 it has been working with AWS to run high-performance computing workloads to support things such as clinical pharmacology modeling and simulations. By moving to the cloud, it has also been able to improve more general business processes, such as analyzing sales data to better understand how its sales teams are performing in the field.

“Biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies like Amgen are turning to the cloud to better leverage the vast amounts of clinical data available, unlocking deeper insights faster to help medical professionals treat their patients,” Mike Clayville, vice president of worldwide commercial sales at AWS, said in a statement.

The other new customer announced today is Korean Air Lines Co. Ltd., which said it’s going “all-in” on AWS with an eye to using its machine learning services in particular. Company officials said the plan is to use AWS SageMaker to build, train and deploy machine learning models to improve predictive aircraft maintenance systems and automate repairs so that its fleet of aircraft are safe and always ready for travel.

The airline will also use Amazon’s Sumerian service, which provides virtual reality development tools that can be used to create “virtual employee training programs” that simulate a range of in-flight scenarios and make sure staff are prepared for any kind of situation in flight.

“We are overhauling our entire IT infrastructure in the next three years, moving all of our websites, cargo management, flight control systems, and enterprise resource planning and other systems to AWS,” Kenny Chang, Korean Air’s chief information officer, said in a statement.

Image: AWS

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