Aviatrix Blog 
Well, it’s been a week plus since AWS re:Invent, the biggest cloud event of the year, wrapped up in Las Vegas, but the cloud conversations continue to sizzle. And the opportunity to help enterprises harness all the efficiencies of AWS and other clouds is in pure abundance.
Doug Merritt, our enthusiastic and seasoned leader, had numerous fruitful conversations with customers and prospects, and spent time talking about trends, Aviatrix, the power of AI, and more with theCUBE and GeekWire. Throughout the conference, we were honored to have some of our most cherished champion customers share their cloud journey and how Aviatrix has played a significant role. Check out the talk tracks and interview videos below.
At Aviatrix, we have some of the top talents in the industry, including seasoned solutions engineers who think outside the box. I asked some of them who attended AWS re: Invent and a few others to share their thoughts—memorable conversations they had with customers, prospects, and partners at our booth and in meetings and their overall thoughts. Below are some snack-size scoops, tales, and comments from the Aviatrix crew. For the purpose of confidentiality, company names have been removed and replaced with the industry they serve.
Aviatrix CEO Doug Merritt and Customers Hit the Stage
- Doug sat down with theCUBE at Supercloud 5 with Co-Founders and CEOs John Furrier and Dave Vellante to discuss adding network visibility and control into the hyperscale experience for AWS users, AI, and more. View full video here
- Doug discussed tech trends and innovations in secure cloud networking and the power of partnering with AWS with GeekWire Host Cassidy Quinn. View full video here.
- Customer Zach Hughes at CHS joined Aviatrix’s VP of Solutions Marketing Rod Stuhlmuller on GeekWire to talk about his cloud journey and how Aviatrix has been an anchor in their multiple cloud initiatives. View full video here.
- Customers Jason Simpson at Choice Hotels and Brent Fowler at Republic Airlines participated in a panel with Director of Product Management Chris McHenry and Rod to discuss Distributed Cloud Firewall for AWS. View full video here.
Highlights from AWS re:Invent
Ron Reed, Director of AWS Partnership and Strategy at Aviatrix, shared his key takeaways from the event, noting that “Generative AI is the next frontier of innovation.” His list of highlights…
- AWS announced new services and tools that enable developers to create novel and realistic content using generative AI, such as images, videos, audio, text, and code. View the biggest news and announcements here.
- AWS is expanding its industry solutions portfolio. AWS launched new industry-specific solutions that help customers solve their most pressing challenges and accelerate their digital transformation.
- AWS is enhancing its data and AI offerings and introduced new features and enhancements to its existing data and AI services—AWS Glue, AWS Step Functions, AWS Free Tier, AWS Lambda, AWS Fargate, AWS SageMaker, AWS Neptune, and AWS Amplify.
- AWS is improving the partner experience and opportunities. AWS announced new initiatives and programs that help AWS Partners and AWS Marketplace Sellers grow their businesses and deliver better outcomes for their customers.
Seven Tales from the Show Floor
- Wesley Edwards, Director, Solutions Engineering
“I had a lot of quality conversations with folks while giving demos at the booth. A few people from a large entertainment company came by the booth and wanted to understand more about our secure egress solution. They were a little embarrassed to say how they were doing egress, but they indicated that if the on-prem firewall went down, people wouldn’t be able to buy their merchandise. After showing them our secure egress solution, and how it works the same across AWS, and other clouds, they were blown away and super excited to dive in deeper.”
- Ben Jendricks, Solutions Engineer
“The best part of the conference for me was the energy. Both of our team as well as prospects and customers. Every conversation, meeting, and demo was meaningful. Getting back to our roots as a true multicloud data plane player is a powerful position to be in. AI came up multiple times during demos as well as serverless architecture/Kubernetes. Distributed Cloud Firewall resonated greatly as well as CoPilot’s visibility that leads to much greater MTTR.”
- Bryan Woodworth, Director, Solution Strategy and Altitude Podcast Host
“My favorite part of AWS re: Invent was the excitement over Distributed Cloud Firewall and our super busy demo stations. One attendee who was familiar with Aviatrix was blown away by CoPilotand couldn’t believe how far we had come on user experience and platform management.”
- Brian Pavane, Solutions Engineer Leader
“Comparing last year’s AWS re: Invent to this year, I noticed that more people know who Aviatrix is. Many sought out our booth to specifically talk to us, including companies that looked at us in the past and did not go with us at that time but are now experiencing pains and circling back. Cost was the #1 pain that customers noted they are experiencing and asked how we can help contain and reduce costs.”
- Rod Stuhlmuller, Vice President of Solutions Marketing
“While waiting to present at our booth, a product manager from a large, well knowns security company walked over to me and said that they are a ‘Last Generation Firewall’ company and Aviatrix is doing it right for the cloud with Distributed Cloud Firewall.”
- John Pope, Regional Sales Manager
“There were two attendees whom I spoke with on separate occasions that asked about our value proposition, perceived competition, and addressable market. They were seeking more information to see if it might make sense to build a practice. One was from a large professional services company and the other, a multinational information and technology services and consulting practices organization. That was a first for me.”
- Corbin Louks, Regional Sales Manager
“My favorite part of the conference was being face to face with customers and prospects. Hearing that we are solving crucial problems for organizations never gets old. One prospect had a specific problem backed by a very compelling event and timeline. We had several conversations throughout the conference and Solutions Engineer Steve Brewer sat down in the expo’s cafeteria with him and deployed the Aviatrix Controller and CoPilot from the AWS Marketplace to kick off a POV! Another company said they are revamping their cloud network architecture across multiple clouds, and it is challenging that everything is built and architected differently in each cloud and that they just purchased a bunch of firewalls, and they were blown away by Distributed Cloud Firewall and how Aviatrix approaches cloud network security.”
Join Aviatrix and AWS for a LIVE webinar, “re:Invent Unpacked” on December 14 at 9:00am PT
We’ll unpack the most significant networking highlights and announcements from the event and discuss their impact on the industry. Don’t miss this chance to level up your understanding of the cloud networking industry, stay ahead of the curve, and enter your chance to win a pair of custom-made Nikes! Register here.
View the Latest Aviatrix and AWS Resources
- Self Service/30-Day Free Trial of Aviatrix available via the AWS Marketplaces here.
- “Better Together”— Aviatrix and AWS here. Demos here.
- Joint AWS and Aviatrix ebook: Redefine Cloud Network Security here.
- Ned’s Journey to Enhance AWS Native Networking Services video here.
- Top Ten Reasons: AWS and Aviatrix Secure Cloud Networking here.
