AWS re:Cap: Solodev goes “all in” at AWS re:Invent 2016

Last week, the Solodev team attended Amazon Web Services re:Invent, where some 30,000 engineers, startups, executives, consultants, partners, and techies from around the world converged on the Las Vegas Strip to hear the latest and greatest innovations from the brilliant minds at Amazon Web Services, the world’s #1 provider of cloud computing services.

Immediately after our arrival in Las Vegas we found ourselves at an airport covered in AWS Branding, the most notable of which was their new SaaS Subscriptions Program, which Solodev was selected to participate in among a select number of partners. After a five-hour flight across the country, we were greeted with the Solodev logo at every turn from the airport all the way to the conference. What an arrival.

Our direction was clear at re:Invent, show the power of Solodev, and how AWS strengthens that power, to the world. Being the 5th booth once entering the exhibition hall, it was difficult to avoid our booth and within seconds of the doors opening, our booth was packed. I observed how energetic and excited everyone was and most of all, curious about all of the AWS Partners and what they did that was so special. For Solodev, the answer to “What do you do?” was simple.

“We’re the only web development platform (CMS) fully optimized for the AWS Cloud and its entire product suite, giving you unparalleled levels of security, scalability, and redundancy while you build, launch, manage, and host amazing websites and mobile apps in the cloud with Solodev.”

AWS CEO Andy Jassy and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels announced a series of new products and services to add to their already impressive product suite, the most game changing of which are the newly announced AWS CodeBuild, a fully managed build service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to deploy, and AWS X-Ray, which makes it easy for developers to analyze the behavior of their production, distributed applications with end-to-end tracing capabilities. In addition, AWS made tremendous announcements in the Big Data, Serverless Computing, and Artificial Intelligence spaces with the product launches of AWS Glue, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Athena, Amazon Lex, and Amazon Polly.

On a less technical level, the focus of the conference was on how AWS Partners like Solodev can provide better products and services by leveraging the tremendous power of the AWS Cloud and its entire product suite and the implications this rapidly evolving infrastructure in the cloud can provide both existing, new, and emerging startups and organizations. Several AWS Partners spoke at the conference about how leveraging the AWS Cloud empowered their businesses to scale, streamline their cloud infrastructure, and provide better experiences to customers and expand their businesses faster with the power of Amazon Web Services.

The relationship between AWS and its partners isn’t a one-way street as Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO, stressed the fact that all partner relationships with AWS are mutually beneficial and how important partner feedback is to continuous product innovation at Amazon. “The reality is, we are going to direct business to our partners who are committed and who really understand the platform because our customers want partners who understand the details of our platform.” said AWS CEO Andy Jassy.

With the leading minds of tech at a conference held by the leading provider of the most important piece of the engineering puzzle, cloud infrastructure, in the same place at the same time there was a sense of urgency that agility, artificial intelligence, big data, migration to the cloud, the importance of partnerships, and pushing the cloud to its limits through added layers in cloud infrastructure were at the forefront of the messaging coming from AWS speakers and executives.

Although attending re:Invent was extremely informative we were able to accomplish much more than learning about technology trends, new AWS products, and how our fellow AWS partners had leveraged Amazon’s infrastructure to scale and iterate. Being the only web experience platform for the enterprise built for the AWS Cloud makes us stand out and as a result, we were able to meet with Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist for Amazon Web Services, who kindly tweeted our Amazon Marketplace listings after finding out about Solodev from a co-worker.

AWS re:Invent also gave us a chance to expand existing partnerships (AWS, New Relic, Atlassian, Cloudability, DataDog, Zenefits) and explore new ones. An unexpected amount of web development shops were falling over each other to learn about how they could use Solodev to manage their clients hundreds and even thousands of websites while others were looking for new CMS platforms to migrate to. The end result, Solodev was named one of the most talked about products debuting at AWS re:Invent 2016 in “Cool tech at AWS re:Invent” by Network World within 24 hours of landing.

The major takeaway from the event is that the world has embraced cloud computing and much like the space race of the 1960s, it seems like everyone in tech is competing to build the best cloud products and services available and leverage the power the cloud provides to build amazing products. So it can be broken down like this.

• If you’re still on premises, you’re behind
• If you’re considering the cloud, it’s time to pull the trigger
• If you’re already in the cloud, make sure you’re in the best cloud environment
• If you’ve mastered the cloud, leverage its power to build new amazing products and services on top of cloud infrastructure

Solodev is honored to have gained so much recognition in 2016 from winning a series of web design awards to clinching the People’s Choice Award for Best Cloud CMS. 2016 also saw Solodev named among America’s fastest growing private companies by the Inc. 5000 for the second year in a row as well as being among a select number of AWS partners to join their newly announced SaaS Subscriptions Program. Going into 2017, Solodev has 5 listings on the AWS Marketplace, including our latest build of Solodev for Windows on the AWS Marketplace.

About Solodev

Solodev is the world’s first on-demand web experience platform created by developers for developers. It allows organizations to create amazing websites with unparalleled levels of security, scalability and total design freedom.