Validation, Stop Lights & Musical Genius: AWS re:Invent 2022

We just wrapped up an exciting week at AWS re:Invent 2022 and I’m already looking forward to next year because I expect our relationship to continue to grow exponentially. But I’m also eager for 2023 simply because it’s re:Invent — the conference that never disappoints (but a year break is needed for spending a whole week in Las Vegas)!

This year, we enjoyed great customer interactions, ran some truly insightful and exciting meetings with our partners at AWS, and hosted a few fantastic events. We may have started a band, too, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Here are a few of my highlights from the week.

Traffic Lights for Conversations

If you’ve ever been to a show like re:Invent, you have to be ready to talk. If you stop at a booth that catches your interest, someone like me is sure to hurry over, say hello, and start pitching. This year, AWS changed the tone a little by handing out pins that advertised your interest level in these engagements. The pin was a wheel divided into three parts: green, yellow, red. You could pop one on your jacket, shirt, or lanyard, move a pointer to one of the three colors, and let everyone know whether you were open for conversation or not. The “green” indicated that you were happy to chat. If you switched to yellow, that meant you’d converse but only if you initiated the talk, and “red” basically meant you wanted to be left alone.

My Nasuni colleagues and I found this interesting for a number of reasons, but it proved surprisingly useful, too. I was mostly green. I set mine to yellow when I was moving around the floor, but when my boss sat me down to talk about my expenses one day, I flipped the pointer to red. And it’s still on red — for him — as I write this now. Sorry, sir, but that conversation’s going to have to wait.

Validating Our AWS Synergy

While I can’t divulge all the details of our conversations with customers or our partners at AWS, one common theme did emerge. It’s not news, exactly — more affirmation or validation. Basically, AWS is incredible, but it doesn’t do everything natively (hence the need for partners). Nasuni is an ideal complement, seamlessly solving challenges together jointly. Our cloud-native file system architecture is unique in the space, and for an increasing number of use cases and industries, the combination of Nasuni and AWS is the optimal solution.

The File System Five

In the midst of all our strategic meetings with AWS, customers, and valued partners like CDW and Presidio, we did manage to find a few seconds here and there to enjoy ourselves. After the AWS Storage Happy Hour, an invitation-only event, we retired to a suite in our hotel, where I was quickly reminded what an incredible and multi-talented team of professionals we’re building at Nasuni. A few of us brought instruments, and Field CTO John Capello, the brains behind our Global File Acceleration technology, sat down at the piano to show off his skills. The guitarists played along. There may have been some attempts at singing. The takeaway? We might need to start a band. Possible names include Filez, The Filers, or, if we go the jazz route as John might like — The File System Five.

On a more serious note, it truly was another incredible week at re:Invent. Two years ago, we all struggled through an unusual virtual meeting. Last year was a welcome return to networking normalcy. And if I had to capture this year in a single word, I’d say validation. Every meeting, every session, every Nasuni-related interaction cemented my conviction that we have a one-of-a-kind platform that both global organizations and AWS truly need. I don’t know if we’ll get the band back together, but I can’t wait for next year.