Amazon Web Services Inc. has spent years helping transform U.S. government agencies’ information technology for the cloud computing era. Now it’s venturing further into global regions on a mission to propel less-developed nations into the digital age.

“You walk into a country, and they have zero idea how to become a digital nation, [so] you have to — through your influence and your experience — really educate them on what are the elements,” said Teresa Carlson (pictured), vice president of the worldwide public sector at AWS. Each nation has its own idiosyncrasies, however, so that education is a two-way street beginning with an examination of infrastructure, technology, culture and the like.

Carlson spoke recently with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at the AWS public sector headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. They discussed how AWS is trying to nurture digital innovation and social entrepreneurship around the globe.

When AWS scouts a new nation, it first checks for the minimum requirements for technological growth. “You’ve got to think about things like utilities — you know, power, water, land, networking, telecommunications and then education,” Carlson said. “Are there people there that can actually respond and take the jobs that are required?”

Collaborating with regulators to stand up policies, enable acquisition vehicles and set up educational hubs are the next steps. Creating a network of training and entrepreneurship is the key to producing human capital with the skills to digitize a nation, Carlson explained. “It’s working. And the reason I think it’s working is because we go in very humbly,” she said. 

Indeed, Carlson experienced a humbling validation of AWS’ strategy at the Brazilian Embassy recently, speaking to a 23-year-old AWS devotee. “She said, ‘I created my first gaming company at 16 and sold it at 18 for some millions.’ And she was, like, in her third company,” Carlson said. Her success would not have been possible via the old school-route, which requires hefty upfront investment in hardware, she added.

Social entrepreneurship is growing and is no longer viewed as thankless drudgery. “Today, social entrepreneurship is cool. Many young men and women — if you talk to them — they want to be involved in something,” she said. “They want to make money, but they want to be involved in something that’s really doing good things.”

Some of AWS’ recent work for social good includes the Cal Poly Digital Transformation Hub at California Polytechnic State University, which develops technology for justice and public safety. And at the AWS Public Sector Summit this June, the company will be setting its sights literally sky high. The event will feature its first-ever space day, which will examine how to apply AWS technology to areas of astronautics. AWS is working with partners such as Lockheed Martin Space Systems at Lockheed Martin Corp. to integrate machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities into its aerospace gear.

“If you think about ground and satellite stations, a lot of that is very outdated technology, and that’s where cloud computing and the new tools that we are driving in our AI and machine learning space are really going to help — as well as the storage and compute and doing more things at the edge with that,” she said.

Here’s the complete video interview, and there’s more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations at the AWS public sector headquarters.

Photo: SiliconANGLE