You have a background in Engineering. What motivated you to choose these studies?

I studied electrical engineering. I was always curious how things work, from cars to television devices. Also growing up in a modest environment I wanted to pursue a career that would allow me to be financially independent and care for my family. And last, I like doing things that others don’t do. So, the fact that very few women undertook engineering studies was also appealing. Now, I try to help bring more girls to technology and STEM in general. I recently joined the “Patronat” for the Swiss Engineers’ Day to help advocate for more engineers and ideally for more female engineers in Switzerland.

Since 2019, you’re General Manager of AWS Switzerland.  How would you describe the situation for female leaders in tech in Switzerland?

Well, in general there are still too few women in leadership but also in tech. There are so many big challenges that companies, institutions, and the society need to solve for. From business resilience to sustainability and efficiency, many of them can be addressed with technology. It is a privilege to work in this field and be able to make a difference. However, there are structural barriers that still make it difficult for women to enter these careers and leadership positions. The first of these barriers is the lack of quality childcare facilities. Today, technology makes it possible to work from anywhere and the pandemic has accelerated this cultural shift. I hope this will make it easier for women to balance family and career.

Why do companies use the data storage and computing power that AWS provides instead of building their own infrastructure?

One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity to replace up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scale with your business. With the cloud, businesses no longer need to plan for and procure servers and other IT infrastructure weeks or months in advance. Instead, they can instantly spin up hundreds or thousands of servers in minutes and deliver results faster. The cloud gives customers the flexibility and agility they need to instantly scale up or down along with the needs of their business, which also reduces cost and improves the customer’s ability to meet their user’s demands. The cloud also allows customers to innovate faster because they can focus their highly valuable IT resources on developing applications that differentiate their business and transform customer experiences instead of the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing infrastructure and data centers. Lastly, customers can deploy globally in minutes.

What does AWS offer other than storage and computing?

We have been continually expanding our services to support virtually any cloud workload, and we offer more than 200 fully featured services, including compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, application development, deployment,  management – and much more. As we continue to innovate, you will also see more horizontal solutions that solve a specific problem like Amazon Connect for call centers, or our machine learning enabled communication services (Amazon Comprehend, Textract, Translate, Transcribe, and Polly). In other cases, this means launching even more vertical solutions like Amazon HealthLake for healthcare and life sciences customers, or Amazon Monitron and Amazon Lookout for manufacturing, or Amazon FinSpace for financial services customers.

AWS contributes most of Amazon’s profit. Andy Jassy, who led AWS since its inception in 2006, became CEO of Amazon. AWS has become a very important part of Amazon and is already the undisputed leader of the cloud market. Is there room for growth?

Cloud is one of the defining technology trends of our generation and the reason the cloud has taken hold is because it allows organizations to fundamentally transform how they operate. The IT industry is trillions of dollars in size and continues to grow rapidly as more companies realize just how central technology is to their underlying businesses. The vast majority of IT and of workloads will move to the cloud over time because the benefits are just so compelling. However, today only a small percentage of IT has moved to the cloud, it is the early days of a very significant migration. I’ve seen estimates that anywhere between 5% to 15% of IT spending has moved to the cloud. So yes, we’re still at the very beginning.

Why did the pandemic fuel demand for cloud computing? What pushes existing clients to use more of AWS’s offering?

When the pandemic hit everybody was thrown into upheaval in a lot of different ways, in terms of where people were working, in terms of some industries really seeing the bottom drop out from their demand, other industries seeing a dramatic uptick in demand, there was a dramatic acceleration of the trends that were already happening. And it hasn’t stopped, because events like COVID made them realize digital transformation is an imperative and cloud is how they’ll get there. Through the change, we’ve seen this new “culture of cloud” evolving, maturing, and bringing with it more opportunities for us to deliver for customers. When we look back we’ll see that the pandemic accelerated cloud adoption by years.

How difficult is it to find talent in Switzerland?

We have been impressed with the level of local technical talent in Switzerland. We are hiring across our business as quickly as we can to keep up with the growth as we continue to build teams of account managers, technical account managers, partner managers, systems engineers, solutions architects, professional services, and more roles to help customers of all sizes move to AWS. Currently we have around 100 open positions in Switzerland. But at the same time, we know that Switzerland has a rapidly growing ICT industry that is forecast to face a shortage of 35,800 ICT specialists by 2028. Companies need to act now by implementing programs that will address this skills shortage in the Swiss market. An important approach is upskilling people and building a culture that embraces lifelong learning.

AWS has announced that it will open an infrastructure region in Switzerland in the second half of 2022. Why is this relevant for your customers?

At AWS we have the concept of a Region. A Region is a physical geographic location where we have a cluster of datacenters. Each Region is made up of isolated locations known as Availability Zones, which refer to technology infrastructure in separate and distinct geographic locations with enough distance to significantly reduce the risk of a single event impacting availability, yet near enough for business continuity applications that require rapid failover. Each Availability Zone has independent power, cooling, and physical security, and is connected to national backbone networks via local telecom carriers’ high-speed fiber optic networks. Where we locate our Regions is based on a combination of factors. We consider locations in terms of how much geographic area we can cover, to give customers low latency when running applications, and the local government’s long-term commitment to investing in technology infrastructure. In that respect, our new infrastructure around the Zurich area will provide low latency for virtually all cities across Switzerland.

Why does AWS have a special program (AWS Activate) for startups? Small companies are certainly unimportant next to big customers such as Novartis, Richemont, or the Swiss Federal Railways?

I would even state the opposite. Startups are among our earliest customers at AWS. Not only are startups the future large enterprises, but they are also an important catalyst for innovation as they attempt finding solutions for the big problems of our time. I cannot emphasize the significance of startups often enough. In 2021, the startup sector in Switzerland attracted 3.1 billion in invested capital, a record-breaking year. It shows how important the sector has become for Switzerland, especially in the areas of FinTech and HealthTech. What we also see is that startups are not only an inspiration to large corporates, they have the potential to re-define the way how whole industries operate. Just remember how Netflix with its novel approach shaped the whole entertainment industry, changing the way how customers consume shows and movies permanently. We have been supporting startups with different programs. For example, in June 2021, we launched the AWS Clean Energy Accelerator, AWS’s first accelerator focused on fostering rapid growth of clean tech innovations. The goal is to help startups working in clean energy accelerate their impact, access additional resources, and expand their reach. Together with Freshwater Advisors, AWS selected 10 startups from 218 applications received from 38 countries around the world to participate in a five-week accelerator. Selected startups received AWS Activate Promotional Credit, as well as technical, business, and go-to-market mentorship from AWS clean energy experts. The program also offers collaboration opportunities with AWS energy customers and members of Amazon Partner Network looking for clean energy solutions.

What does the offering of AWS Activate entail?

We launched AWS Activate in 2013 to help grow the next generation of Swiss enterprises. This program gives startups access to guidance and one-on-one time with AWS experts as well as web-based training, self-paced labs, customer support, third-party offers, and up to $100,000 in AWS service credits – all at no charge. It is in addition to the work that AWS already does with Verve Ventures, with local founders’ communities like Swisspreneurs, the Swiss Startup Association, and venture capital companies to help startups grow in the cloud.

Can you give a few examples of startups working with AWS?

I’d like to share two examples from the Verve Ventures portfolio. 9T Labs has developed the Red Series 3D printing technology. It radically changes the way high-performance composite parts are made at high production volumes. The 3D printing and software solution reduces material usage and cost and is available as an annual subscription. It thus reduces the barriers for companies from industries such as mobility, medical, and leisure to reap the benefits of high-performance thermoplastic composites. We have been working with 9T Labs C-level team and support them with financial and technical resources.

The other example is RetinAI. AWS opens opportunities for RetinAI to transform the way clinical studies are done. Conducting clinical studies is expensive. It’s estimated that it costs somewhere between $161M and $2B to bring a new drug to market and only 1 in every 10,000 compounds evaluated makes it to the market. RetinAI’s Discovery platform and AI models bring value to these adaptive ways of conducting clinical trials to speed up pharma’s ability to reach the patient sooner with innovative therapies. AWS’ infrastructure and services are at the core of RetinAI’s cloud-based set up to allow for real-time access to centralized data, all whilst decentralizing key clinical trial services. This type of approach is helping to transform how clinical studies are performed, reducing time and expenditures across patient recruitment, clinical site monitoring and clinical site retention that can be up to 30% of the total costs for a clinical study.

What do you do internally to foster innovation?

Innovation is in our DNA and we have a peculiar approach to innovation that is intrinsically linked to how we use technology and organize our teams. We use a structured approach to solve problems, we call them mechanisms. That approach ensures that we’re building the right things and making the right decisions for customers. In this process for example, we start by defining the customer and their needs, and then outline a press release to help us visualize the customer outcome. Writing the press release helps us define the customer benefit and experience right from the start. We then write and answer anticipated frequently asked questions (FAQs) that dive deep into the details of the new service and address the questions that our customers and other stakeholders are most likely to ask. Finally, we bring the customer experience to life through visuals—initially rough sketches which, over time, may evolve into more polished diagrams, wireframes, or storyboards. In this way, the maturity of the visuals match the maturity of the idea. These three elements—the press release, FAQs, and visuals—serve as a mechanism to allow team members to discuss, debate, and help evolve the idea into reality.

Sometimes, established companies are reluctant to work with startups for different reasons, or might not even be aware of emerging innovations. Can AWS through partnerships with venture capital firms (VCs) be a promoter of such collaborations?

AWS has a dedicated team for startups made of exited founders, former investors, and startup executives. The team works with VCs and institutional investors to help their portfolio companies on business and technical needs. Thanks to the presence in local ecosystems, but with a global footprint, the AWS Startup team acts as a door opener and trusted advisor on technical, Go-To-Market and fundraising topics. The AWS startup team works close with Verve Ventures and its portfolio companies, which benefit from the partnership with AWS. The team advises startups on relevant topics like security, scalability, cost optimization strategies and creates connections within their network. Our mission is to accelerate startups’ tech and business journey by unlocking meaningful business opportunities. Sleepiz, Verity and RetinAI, three Verve Ventures portfolio companies, will be present at the upcoming AWS Swiss Cloud Day on the 29^th of September in Zurich.

Register here for the event for free and discover how startups innovate on AWS.