Each year, Amazon Web Services Inc. awards partners in its Public Sector ecosystem for their innovation, but more importantly, for the positive impact their technology is having on the world.

Winning an AWS Public Sector award isn’t a token honor. There are more than 1,800 members of the public sector ecosystem, and each is creating unique solutions that benefit humanity. Winners are selected based not only on the innovative qualities of their products, but their embodiment of Amazon’s leadership principles, level of involvement with the AWS Partner Network and dedication to their customers.

“These awards shine a light on AWS partners who share our commitment to impact the lives of our customers around the globe,” Sandy Carter, AWS vice president of worldwide public sector partners and programs, told theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio.  

This year’s award winners will be recognized during the 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards event to be broadcast live on June 30, 2021. The event is jointly hosted by AWS and theCUBE and will feature interviews with award winners and their customers. Attendees at the free virtual event should look forward to technical discussions on the solutions, along with use-case examples of how the honored solutions are solving real-life problems today. (* Disclosure below.)

“Awardees represent every AWS Public Sector vertical — health, education, nonprofit, government, energy, space, financial services and telco; and the partner work represents innovation in containerization, AI/ML, IoT, serverless, security and more,” Carter said. 

A new award for 2021 recognizes pandemic-inspired solutions

This year was different in one sense. Choosing the 2020 winners meant taking into account the challenges of a year when COVID shut some companies down while sending others into overdrive. Refusing to let the pandemic slow her down, Carter took a whirlwind virtual tour of partners that covered 68 countries. During that time, she spoke with 100 partners, one a day, to assess how AWS could respond to their needs. This resulted in AWS forming the global COVID-19 partner solutions campaign. The goal was to help companies rapidly develop solutions for pandemic-related problems, such as test-and-trace programs and remote education, and then make them easily accessible to those who needed them.

The winner of the new best COVID-19 solution award was Palantir Technologies Inc.’s Foundry platform, which provides organizations with faster access to data insights by synchronizing back-end data management and front-end data analysis. The platform was used by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service to coordinate its response to the virus. 

“In a crisis response, inconsistencies in this data could cost lives,” the National Health’s technology team NHS said in a post on the effort shared by Palantir.  

Automated solution monitors wildfire risk

COVID-19 wasn’t the only natural disaster that hit the globe in 2020. Between January and March, nearly 500 people died in bushfires that swept across Australia. Winner of the most innovative AI and ML solution, Kablamo Pty Ltd. developed a platform on the AWS cloud that takes advantage of advanced machine learning capabilities to identify areas at high risk for fires.

“After the devastation of the Australian bush fires of 2020-21, our whole team wanted to apply what we do best to helping to support the nation’s firefighting capacity,” Angus Dorney, co-chief executive officer of Kablamo, told theCUBE.

Kablamo’s engineers spent more than a year working with firefighters and agencies to establish their current procedures and build a solution to automate them. 

“We recognized that key was integrating a vast amount of disparate data flows and inputs into a single, user-friendly platform that could handle near-limitless data,” Dorney said, noting that the company’s partnership with AWS was critical for the project’s success. 

Looking to the future, Kablamo hopes their solution will benefit firefighters across the world. 

“The global recognition means so much to the Kablamo team because it tells us and the firefighting community that we are closer to vastly improving the firefighting future state for everyone,” he said.

Twenty-five companies from 22 different countries are recognized in this year’s awards, and winners come from every AWS Public Sector vertical. Awarded best migration solution for its innoWake application modernization solution was global professional services company Deloitte.

The honor is a “game-changer for public sector and enterprise clients looking to undergo mainframe migration,” Bjoern Langmack, global application modernization and migration leader and principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP, told theCUBE. “We’ve seen interest in Deloitte’s mainframe migration solution grow globally and across all industries as enterprises migrate their legacy applications to the cloud and require a proven, reliable and efficient way to do so.”

Amazon’s announcement of the awards, listing all categories and winners, can be found on the AWS Public Sector blog. 

Livestream of 2021 AWS Global Public Sector Partner Awards

The 2021 AWS Global Public Partner Network Awards is a livestream event with interviews to be broadcasted on theCUBE. You can watch theCUBE interviews with award winners for free here. Plus, you can watch on demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch the live coverage of the 2021 AWS Global Public Partner Network Awards, 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

For a complete list of theCUBE event guests, visit the 2021 AWS Global Public Partner Network Awards event website.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for 2021 Global Public Sector Partner Awards. 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