Any newborn has a better rate of survival when it is nurtured and supported. A baby bird that falls from the nest is probably doomed, but one protected and sustained will grow stronger until it can stretch its wings and fly.

Like animals, tech start-ups are more likely to hit unicorn status if they are part of a supportive ecosystem. But unlike animals, tech startups must seek out their nurturing “home.” One ecosystem attracting today’s cloud native startups is Amazon Web Systems Inc., which holds over 50% of the infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service market share. The idea is to encourage those innovations most impactful to its ecosystem, able to bridge gaps through collective efforts.

Some of the most inventive AWS cloud-scale startups will share their stories June 16, when AWS and theCUBE present the AWS Startup Showcase: The Next Big Things in AI, Security & Life Sciences digital event. Participating companies stand out for their ground-breaking solutions in the fields of artificial intelligence, security and life sciences. Members of the technology community are invited to join the conversation as the leaders of today’s hottest startups discuss technical advances and use cases in areas such as artificial intelligence transparency and accountability, automated data security and protection, and healthcare personalization. (* Disclosure below.)

AWS empowers cloud-scale operations

The saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is especially true when it comes to tech ecosystems. The “Dummies” guide to the AWS ecosystem says, “Users can find nearly everything they need within the confines of AWS to create almost any application they may want to implement.”

The cooperative and collaborative ecosystem creates win-win-win situations for the startups and for AWS’ customers, which gain access to avant-garde solutions being developed by the next generation of cloud-native companies, as well as AWS itself.

“We chose AWS because we believe that’s where the greatest market share is, not to mention all of the innovation going on at AWS itself when it comes to data infrastructure,” Dipti Borkar, co-founder and chief product officer for showcase participant Ahana Cloud Inc.

AWS startup ecosystem members have access to the marketplace and its 300,000+ active customers, support from AWS’ experts for technical questions, and advice on solving the practical issues of starting and scaling a cloud-native business. Plus, being part of the community offers a chance to network and build connections with industry peers.

“Working together with AWS means that they help us where a startup is lacking the most strength,” Ariel Assaraf, co-founder, and chief executive officer of Israeli log management startup Coralogix Ltd., told John Walls, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s livestreaming studio during a CUBE Conversation. He explained that while startups can develop new technologies and bring them to market fast, they hit slowdowns when it comes to creating proof of concept and dealing with the procurement and legal processes required for large corporations.

“Working together with AWS allows us to, first of all, meet these customers, understand their needs, and then being able to route through the AWS marketplace,” he said.

Next-gen solutions automate cloud security

AWS, it could be said, is the enabler for the digital generation, providing the infrastructure and support to companies born-in-the-cloud and those who are working to build a hybrid cloud.  

“We know digital transformation is transforming industries, every industry is feeling it. We can see and understand the significance of inventions like AWS: It’s an amazing invention, the power of it and what it delivers to us,” Brendan Hannigan, chief executive officer of Sonrai Security Inc., told theCUBE’s John Furrier.

When global fuel provider World Fuel Services Corp. needed to migrate its data to the AWS cloud, Sonrai helped eliminate 20 out of 22 on-premises data centers while tightening World Fuel’s cloud security profile. The process is the topic of Sonrai’s session during the showcase, where company co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Sandy Bird and World Fuel Services’ Avi Boru, director of cloud engineering, will explain how they accomplished this mammoth task in less than two years.

“AI has provided huge advancement for enterprise security: ML provides anomaly detection, threat intelligence and identifying malware variants is increasing speed and agility for blue teams (defenders) and SOC analysts in rapidly identifying threats and malware, and proactively mitigating and containing these malicious elements,” Micki Boland, cloud cybersecurity architect of Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., told theCUBE.

Advancements in AI are an integral part of the next generation of security solutions, with Lacework Inc. and Orca Security Ltd. both billing their very differently architected solutions under the cloud security automation umbrella. Cloud application security and compliance startup Anitian Inc. and API security solution provider Cequence Security Inc. round out the showcase security track.

Life sciences and healthcare get smart

Technology has made an enormous impact in healthcare and life sciences. This was dramatically demonstrated last year with the development of a series of effective COVID-19 vaccinations in record time. Destroying the traditional timeline of years, if not decades, companies shared research and used vaccine platforms as the world waited. 

“Look at the fact that Moderna went from sequence to initial vaccine in 50, 60 days; that kind of delivery is what the market will become accustomed to,” Mike Tarselli, chief scientific officer at TetraScience Inc., told theCUBE. 

The Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine beat Moderna to market for public distribution. But when vaccines went into high-rate production, cracks started to show in the system.

“The realization is that we do not have the capacity in any geography or with any company to meet the demands [for vaccines] that we’re seeing today — demands to get product to market, the demand to get the supply chain right, and make it work for manufacturing,” John Vitalie, chief executive officer at Aizon (formerly Bigfinite, Inc.), told theCUBE’s Lisa Martin in an interview. 

The company’s chief security officer Toni Manzano will be presenting a session during the showcase on how Aizon’s AI-powered platform, built from the ground up on AWS, optimizes the pharmaceutical and biotech production pipeline to solve these problems.

Other startups with sessions in the healthcare and life sciences track include Abacus Insights Inc., Olive Inc. and TetraScience.

AWS has over 25 programs that support startups specializing in AI and ML, offering them the speed to bring their product or service to market and scale as they grow, according to Allie Miller, global head of machine learning business development for startups and venture capital at AWS. 

“Startups can win or lose by their velocity,” Miller stated. 

AWS’ support programs range from enterprise customer introductions to co-funding development work, and the company also provides products and services to support startups. Startups in the AI/ML track of the showcase include Fiddler Labs Inc., which is working on a solution aimed at eliminating AI bias, ChaosSearch Inc., Coralogix Ltd., Ahana Cloud Inc. and external data platform Explorium Ltd.

Dedicated AWS resources and visibility into key initiatives within the data analytics space at AWS are two of the benefits cited by AWS Startup ecosystem member Ahana. 

“At our company stage, this has proven to be invaluable,” Ahana co-founder Borkar told theCUBE.

The linking force between all three tracks is not only their innovation, but that they are attempting to provide businesses (in varying ways and for varying purposes) with quality, fast data insights through automation. They are also all built on AWS infrastructure, giving them the power of Amazon’s cloud to leverage data.

“Part of why we enjoy working with AWS and are really focused on building the partnership together is that it creates awareness of what could be and what possibilities exist,” Lacework CEO David Hatfield told theCUBE’s John Furrier. “All we want is a shot.” 

Livestream of AWS Startup Showcase

AWS Startup Showcase: The Next Big Things in AI, Security & Life Sciences is a livestream event, with additional interviews to be broadcasted on theCUBE. You can register for free here to access the live event. Plus, you can watch theCUBE interviews here on demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch the live coverage of AWS Startup Showcase: The Next Big Things in AI, Security & Life Sciences, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during AWS Startup Showcase: The Next Big Things in AI, Security & Life Sciences include Abacus Insights’ Krishna Kottapalli, chief commercial officer, and Sumant Rao, chief product and operations officer; Toni Manzano, co-founder and chief scientific officer of Aizon; Rakesh Narasimhan, president and chief executive officer of Anitian; Subbu Iyer, vice president of product management at Cequence Security; Thomas Hazel, founder and chief technology and science officer of ChaosSearch; and Jeremy Foran, head of data analytics at BAI Communications.

Also during the event, theCUBE will speak with Arun Sankaran, chief information security officer of LendingTree; Avi Boru, director of cloud engineering at World Fuel Services; Aditya Muppavarapu, global segment leader of DevOps at AWS Partner Network; Ariel Assaraf, CEO of Coralogix; Zach Booth, director of global partnerships and channels at Explorium; and Fiddler Labs’ Krishna Gade, founder and CEO, and Amit Paka, founder and chief product officer.

Plus, don’t miss interviews with Adam Leftik, VP of product at Lacework; Rohan D’Souza, CPO of Olive AI; Gil Geron, co-founder and CPO of Orca Security; Sandy Bird, co-founder and chief technology officer of Sonrai Security; and TetraScience’s Mike Tarselli, chief scientific officer, and Michelle Bradbury, VP of products.

Stay tuned for a complete list of speakers.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Startup Showcase: The Next Big Things in AI, Security & Life Sciences event. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE