By Richa Dubey

Image by Julianne Medenblik

“Leveraging best practices for synergistically delivering elasticity across the content value chain to ensure that the asset is delivered to the client as committed priorly”—a gem that popped up in the 2A storytellers chat—makes as much sense as this line from a classic Bollywood film song: “You see, the whole country of the system is juxtapositioned by the hemoglobin in the atmosphere because you are a sophisticated rhetorician intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity.”

And that, dear reader, is what we in the trade call a run-on sentence.

Our storyteller team chat is called the Storyteller Shuffle. Here, we dissect sentences, punctuation, usage, style guides, and grammar. We also like our wordplay, so the shuffle often turns into a rumba…

This is where we take a break, have fun, ask for, and receive, unstinting help from each other. Writing can be a solitary activity, which is why the wisdom, support, and camaraderie we find here is so important. The Shuffle is also where we collectively make your asset shine. If you’re wondering at the ‘collectively,’ try proofing an eBook you’ve written without going cross-eyed. You need a fresh pair of eyes.

Holding each other up, learning together, and having fun is at the core of our little group. Witness this (not entirely) imaginary chat: “I’m slammed for capacity. Can anyone help me with this case study?” Katy Nally, Director of Storytelling par excellence, jumps in, “Sure, I’ve only got a million things to do. But I can take this. And let me fix your calendar so that you’re not overloaded.”

Stuck for punctuation? Kimberly Mass generously weighs in on a hot debate about the merits of commas versus em dashes in a sentence.

Looking to sharpen your interview skills? Shadow Mai Sennar who, with her background in theater, exudes calm confidence while drawing out even the most reticent clients.  

Want to keep up with what’s happening with the cloud biggies? Jane Dornemann keeps us in the loop about all things cloud with her tongue-in-cheek newsy blog.

Wondering how to write about a completely new technology? Get a load of BB Bickel’s confident, successful approach.

Need to pin the client down to answer tough questions? See what happens when Editorial Lead, Forsyth Alexander, wields her trademark Southern charm to soften critiques as she reviews a section of Gandalf’s CV.

Description of the battle with the Balrog in Lord of The Rings, The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter 5, The White Rider: “I threw down my enemy, and he fell from the high place and broke the mountainside where he smote it in his ruin. Then darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell.”

Forsyth marks it up and inserts a comment in the Word document: “Your story is utterly gripping! I was wondering, though, can you explain this gap in your resumé?”

As you can see, it falls to us ask the hard questions. You can also count on us to coax answers out of interviewees, keep your head in the cloud (and feet on the ground), and match the perfect storyteller to your project.

We’ll dot your ‘i’s
And cross your ‘t’s
We’re better than fries
We’re the bees’ knees

Your content, we’ll align
And be sure to make it shine
We’re the bounce in basketball
So don’t you wait—just give us a call

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• The biggest Microsoft news item lately is the multi-year partnership between NVIDIA and Microsoft. Together they’ll build a new supercomputer running on Azure, and it will be the best supercomputer. It will train AI workloads like no other AI workload you’ve ever seen before. (Did you read that in a Trump voice? You should have).
• In the name of national security purposes, Microsoft and AWS are going to have to work together at the Pentagon to upgrade our ground and space communications infrastructure with next-gen networking technology. Things I learned from this article: we actually have a “Space Warfighting Analysis Center.”
• Who cares about space fighting, let’s talk about Earth fighting! Lockheed Martin and Microsoft made a “landmark agreement” to blow shit up all day!!!….by way of the cloud. Microsoft’s latest secure framework will make Lockheed Martin the first non-government entity to independently operate inside the Microsoft Azure Government Secret cloud.
• No money for paying teachers a living wage (unless you’re a college president) but plenty for 5G, say Cal Poly, which is working with AWS to “enhance connectivity” on campus.
• Formula 1 has raced to extend its collaboration with AWS to inform F1 Insights, an AI-driven program that detects vehicle speeds and displays them on TV broadcasts.
• Deloitte has turned to AWS for help launching its digital banking services. Named BankingSuite, Deloitte’s new suite of solutions will leverage Amazon Connect and other services.

Best Friends Forever

• Partner, partners, come get your partners!
  • Jitterbit, an “API transformation company,” has become an AWS Partner and is selling its wares on AWS Marketplace. (That company definitely has a boring holiday party.) AWS Partner Imagine just completed a foundational technical review. And there’s also Magnifi, a video development provider, now an AWS ISV following completion of the same review.IT distributor Ingram Micro Cloud has received AWS certification in AWS Config Service Delivery validation.Consulting firm Credera attained AWS Security Competency. India-based startup Lumiq won AWS Specialty Partner of the Year for Data, Analytics, and ML—for the second year in a row. They want to expand into finserv and insurance markets.
  • Finally, there’s Kibo, an AWS native “composable commerce provider” (????) that just put its platform on AWS Marketplace, targeting retailers. (I bet they don’t even HAVE a holiday party.)
• Optimizely has made its content management, commerce, and personalization solutions available on Azure Marketplace.

Gossip (for nerds)

• Amazon has a hiring freeze in place through Q1 2023 and is totally boosting morale with statements like “target low performers.” The company has reportedly asked managers to rank employees like they’re a bunch of dudes in a dorm room rating chicks from 1 to 10. Maybe AWS didn’t get the memo that the capitalist overload approach didn’t bode well for Elon Musk.
  • Word on the street is that Amazon layoffs will touch Amazon Alexa staff, contractors, cloud gaming (within the devices division), retail, and HR.
• Maybe Microsoft was tired of all the attention AWS has been getting from employee harassment claims, so they’ve taken matters into their own hands (WHICH THEY WILL KEEP TO THEMSELVES). The company released a 50-page annual report containing recommendations for not harassing peeps. One example? If you’re dating a co-worker, we all have to know. Microsoft employees can send their juicy office romance deets to [email protected]. P.S. I am super jealous of whoever’s job it was to conduct a “misconduct audit.” I would wear a bowtie every day, have very slick hair parted directly in the middle, and wear poofy pantaloons and the shiniest shoes and nobody could mess with me because that’s what I’m there to audit.
• Two big things are happening for Microsoft on March 23: I go on vacation, and it’s also the deadline by which EU regulators decide whether Microsoft’s Activision deal can go through—or not. European incels who spend way too much time playing Call of Duty, mark your calendars!

World domination

• If you need another reason to come to North Carolina next year aside from having a blast at a renaissance fair with myself and Forsyth, you can soon visit Microsoft’s $1B campus just outside Charlotte. Somehow all that money will only generate 50 new jobs.
• More North Carolina news: AWS has entered a partnership with Duke Energy, a company that loves to keep charging me for heating at my old address. AWS will supply the cloud technology for Duke’s new smart grid software and services.
• There’s a new AWS Region opening in Spain, which, among other things, will help European countries comply with EU privacy regulations like GDPR because those countries actually care about the people who live there.
  • Go further east (or west, whatever) and you’ll find a new AWS Cloud region in Zurich, too. AWS will invest $6B over 14 years in the city’s data center (versus the $2.5B in Spain).
• Microsoft is all in on data centers across 11 regions in Asia, and Satya Nadella is giving special attention to China and India. China offers the opportunity for Microsoft to work with more multinational companies, and India is generating a high demand for cloud-native apps.
• In the ongoing race for telecom dominance, AWS has secured a lead over Microsoft.
• AWS has 5G stuff to sell and potential customers might need a little inspiration following speculation that it’s not that much better than 4G. Targeting buyers with bloated budgets and bad decision-making skills, AWS joined a coalition with Dell, Splunk, and Cisco to get government agencies to adopt 5G.
  • But the UK is on the 5G bandwagon—Vodafone plans to expand its AWS Wavelength-powered technology to customers who need to be within a certain distance to a cloud or compute instance.

New stuff

• While companies are laying off staff and leaving one person to do the job of three, Microsoft thought it would be a good time to release games on Teams for “when you’re bored at work.” Engaging in some Solitaire and Minesweeper with your colleagues (the ones who are left!!!!) can make you “20% more productive” according to research from BYU, a school that only recently removed “homosexual behavior” as an honor code violation, so should be legit.
• Microsoft announced its Supply Chain Platform which fuses AI, low-code, SaaS, and collaboration tools to create supply chain agility. Mexican snack powerhouse Grupo Bimbo is among the user pool, so never will your local store be out of Bimbos. And we can all relax about cheese, too, ‘cause Tillamook is on board.
• After talking about the release of SQL Server 2022 incessantly since the dawn of time, it’s now released, and nobody cares because we all know. We know, OK?
• Less talked about than SQL Server 2022 (basically any topic fits into that category) is Azure Quantum Research Estimator. What does it do? It “creates and refines algorithms for quantum computers,” which will bypass computation limitations of future quantum computers.
• Passwords are not cool anymore, says Microsoft, which has made it possible to connect to Azure Active Directory using certificate-based authentication. It’s meant to protect hybrid workers doing business on their own devices from phishing scams.
• Microsoft is tightening security on Azure for DevOps with granular Personal Access Tokens. It provides damage control when credentials are leaked or stolen.

Miscellany

• Gartner released its newest Magic Quadrant for cloud infrastructure and platform services, and the usual suspects made the cut. Tidbits:
  • 3 of the 8 providers originate from China
  • AWS has the most breadth and depth of capabilities but needs to refine its strategy for customers who want a multi-cloud solution
  • Microsoft customers are frustrated by increasing Azure costs
• AWS is accepting applications for its next cohort, calling for startups with solutions that address healthcare worker burnout.

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• Honeywell has integrated its Walkie Talkie app with Microsoft Teams for “highly mobile” frontline workers, but really this push-to-talk app will be used by those obnoxious people on public transportation who have directionless convos over speakerphone and make you cringe when you think about how you’ll have to fight them for a can of beans in the climate change apocalypse.
• If the spoiled rich “Daddy can you put more money in my account and I’ll love you foreverrrrrr” kid was a person it would be OpenAI, which is asking Microsoft for additional funding to pile on top of its $20 billion valuation. The deal could help grow Azure usage while also keeping OpenAI from AWS and Google Cloud.
• Swiss banking firm UBS is expanding its partnership—and cloud footprint—with Microsoft to co-develop solutions for the financial services industry. Apps like “subprime mortgage bundling” and “auto-open tax dodging accounts” are likely to hit the marketplace next fall.
• Uniphore, a “conversational automation” company that specializes in parent-child exchanges such as, “How was your day?” “Fine,” is officially an AWS ISV.
• D-Wave Quantum has sauntered into AWS Marketplace, as has asset visibility and security company Armis.
• Finally, Snowplow, a data creation software company that probably pissed off Snowflake when it launched, is now on AWS Marketplace.
• OpenLegacy has joined the AWS Partner Network and slapped a solution on Marketplace. It helps companies connect their legacy systems to digital services via an API.
• Another new partner is Digital River, which is helping AWS commerce customers with critical back-office functions to enable faster growth.
• AWS Marketplace also welcomes solutions from Sentient Energy, which sounds like the small business of someone who rubs crystals all over you while making a weird moaning sound to channel another frequency. This company is more about analytics and visibility for power grids on the edge.

Gossip (for nerds)

• If sales of antiperspirant and whiskey have skyrocketed lately that’s because it’s earnings time! Microsoft is down 30% from last year which explains why my 401K performance graph looks like a toddler was drawing and then fell asleep at the end. Of note: the energy costs associated with providing cloud services are a real money suck for Azure.
  • But even with that, they want to give you a deal! Microsoft has created a new payment option called Azure Savings Plans for Compute that can save customers 65% more than the pay-as-you-go model.
  • Perhaps Microsoft feels sufficiently buoyed by its gaming division following a record year of Xbox console sales. And they are super excited about their expanding partnership with the recession when nobody will have any money to do anything but play video games, especially after they’ve been laid off.
• Ah, the schadenfreude of watching powerful companies stumble on earnings calls. Like Microsoft, AWS cited rising energy costs and sluggish customer spending as a factor for its slowest YoY growth since 2014. At a measly $20.5B, slightly above what Azure pulled in over Q3, it’s hard times. Looks like Bezos might have to sell his yacht, you know—the one with built-in parking space FOR ANOTHER YACHT. Steps away from a Dickens novel, I tell ya.
  • But AWS wants to keep business spending by lowering customer costs…somehow.
• Or, a great way to lower cloud costs is to get off it entirely, according to Basecamp and Hey (why would you name your company Hey?). Parent company 37signals (which is not an early 2000s emo band) says they tried all the cloud had to offer and it sucks, hard—and calls on other larger companies to think about alternatives.
• OK, nobody panic, Forrester is here with some common sense: the cloud market will actually become more lucrative during a global economic downturn, the firm says. The report was based off an intern bringing in her Magic Eight Ball and asking it “Will cloud be OK in 2023?” five times until she got “It is Decidedly So.”
  • A reporter with Yahoo! Finance who probably makes $25K a year and has a master’s degree is also not worried about AWS, so we’re all good.
• The AWS exec who led the company’s professional services arm has skedaddled after bullying, discrimination, and harassment claims—which have since culminated in a lawsuit from an LGBTQ+ employee. I combed through the filing so you don’t have to: a male co-worker called her a bitch; she alerted HR, he was promoted to a “Level 10” position like this is the Church of Scientology, and she was fired. Sounds like my first job on Wall Street in 2003! The Wolf of Wall Street was extremely triggering for me!!!
• GitHub workers, be ready to call Saul because Microsoft “stole” some (publicly available) code to train its AI tool in Visual Studio. Like open-source nerds would, the GitHub group launched a website about the investigation, ironically biting off the Wall Street Journal illustrative style.

New stuff

• Microsoft has brought AI-translated Teams messages in more than 100 languages to your mobile device. So, if you’re on the go and need to send a reminder about deadline to your collaborators in Inuinnaqtun, Zulu, or even in KLINGON for Dave in accounting, you can.
• AWS has doubled the computing power of its Snowball Edge device, so, um, congrats to that thing, I guess!
• The company has also made it easier to run batch workloads in the cloud with a new integration from AWS, which connects AWS Batch and Amazon EKS services.
• There’s a new serverless option for Amazon Neptune and you’ll never believe it, but it’s called Amazon Neptune Serverless.
• A new solution to the Microsoft scene is AKS Lite, a tool for running Kubernetes in resource constrained IoT and edge environments.
• DDoS attacks, the method of choice for amateur hackers, my second favorite type of hacker after really good professional hackers, can be a thing of the past for SMBs with Azure DDoS IP Protection now in public preview.
• Windows Dev Kit 2023, a device that lets developers build Windows apps for Arm using an AI processor and absolutely looks like something I would leave behind in an Uber, is officially on sale in select countries.

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security

• Trend Micro says threat actors are attempting to grab access keys from Amazon EC2 using a technique called “typosquatting,” an issue I also have until my eyeglass prescription gets updated this month.

Miscellany

• Since AWS launched that big career training center last month, it has decided to shut down the teams behind the AWS online tutorials. Now what am I going to fall asleep to?? Maybe I’ll take a cue from my husband and drift off to that Japanese guy on YouTube who makes knives out of meat.
• A Container Build Lens has become part of the AWS Well-Architected Framework, which is a fancy way of saying they updated a mind-numbing whitepaper that the noob in IT is going to have to read so they can be the human CliffsNotes for the CIO.
  • The noob should also earmark that AWS got a FedRAMP certification for High Authority to Operate for its cloud-based contact center service, Amazon Connect.

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Brandon Conboy

When BB Bickel was 8 years old, she established a neighborhood newspaper called The Daily Blab—and while it was an adorable examination of items like the neighbor’s newest garden addition, it was also a discovery of her love for communicating information.

Today, BB writes marketing content from her sunny Florida home as a storyteller for 2A. Her ability to write about anything for anyone stems from a longtime career as a PR professional, which began with her position at a leading global PR agency, where she became a senior vice president.

Eventually, she left agency life to practice as a communications solopreneur, serving clients like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Sun Microsystems.

“Every project I took on was brand new, and I’d have to learn about a lot of topics. Clients would ask, ‘Can you write about non-small cell lung carcinoma? Can you write about liquid regasification?’ Sure!” she said.

Not only does BB have a talent for learning about any topic enough to write about it, but she also helps clients consider a different approach when it makes sense. One client was interested in producing thought leadership content and had recruited BB to write whitepapers.

“But they weren’t whitepapers. So, I said, let’s publish a set of vision papers—a term I had coined—because that’s really what they were,” BB said. The client loved it, and so did the client’s audience.

BB relays her enthusiasm for storytelling to any tale, even if the topic is on the dry side. Once, she had to interview a librarian about the software that ensured a university library’s printers were full of paper.

“Boring, right?” BB said. “But this was a really exciting topic for the librarian, and for the people who were going to read it, and I was able to bring that through in my writing.”

As a discerning communications professional, BB knows a good thing when she sees it, which is why she came to 2A. While running a freelance practice was a great experience, she is happy to work with a team again and learn about the newest developments in technology.

Her personal interests are as varied as her industry knowledge. She’s a cook, an avid reader, and a coffee aficionado who drinks black coffee with every meal. And she puts as much effort into exercising as she does into her presentation.

“I have to admit, I own 76 makeup brushes,” she laughs. “In another life, I would have been a makeup artist.”

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• Parallel Wireless, a telecoms service provider in New Hampshire, has selected AWS, specifically Amazon EKS, to deliver cloud-native “Any G” (2G through 5G). I hope this young rapper from Belgium does not file a cease and desist!
  • Any G the rapper isn’t the only one coming for you on this one, AWS—Microsoft wants to stop eating your dust in the telco market. That’s why they’re prepping to launch commercial Azure Operator Distributed Services (AODS). They COULD really get ahead with telecoms if they produced some amazing industry case studies with 2A, but if they want to do this the hard way, they can.
  • But better act fast because AWS is co-developing a new set of computer vision AI services with SK Telecom.
• Now that I’ve dry heaved into my office wastebasket after simply seeing a mention of Meta, you should know the company has partnered with Microsoft to bring content, Windows apps, and Teams integrations to the Metaverse—part of Zuckerberg’s $10B plan to “make it impossible for remote workers to hide from their bosses.” ::pulls wastebasket closer::
• Obviously, anyone driving a fossil fuel-powered Benz is thinking first and foremost about sustainability even if they clearly had the budget to buy an electric car. That’s why Mercedes-Benz has partnered with Microsoft to connect passenger car plants to Microsoft cloud! Now Mercedes-Benz can produce fossil fuel cars while monitoring how much natural resources they are using to do it. Great idea, love the innovative thinking.
• Microsoft may have landed Mercedes-Benz, but AWS has snagged BMW Group. The two will develop customizable cloud software to simplify data management and distribution among millions of connected vehicles.
• This popped up in my recent Google search but CIO.com has 404’d it… scandalous. The since-deleted report said that IBM and AWS are working together to pursue a variety of industry-specific solutions.
• Newly minted AWS ISV Illumio has made its Zero Trust Segmentation Platform available on AWS. Also new to the ISV club: Syte, a product discovery platform, and SysAid, a provider of IT service automation.
• So many partners, so little time. So, I’ll be brief:
  • Red Hat unleashed its Ansible Automation Platform on Azure in Azure Marketplace, helping customers simplify hybrid cloud automation.
  • Cisco extended its SD-WAN integration with Azure by doing stuff that I don’t understand because when I was growing up “computer science class” meant playing Oregon Trail in 8-bit. Thanks, Brooklyn Public Schools.
  • MongoDB is one of several companies that makes up Microsoft’s news Intelligent Data Platform Partner Ecosystem. Developers using MongoDB Atlas can now build apps within Marketplace and Azure Portal.
  • Fivetran (which makes me think of a boy band) has added capabilities with Azure to accelerate data-driven transformations. They are ALSO part of the Intelligent Data Platform ecosystem and this club is getting less exclusive by the minute. If Microsoft keeps this pace they are going to end up like Michael Kors.
  • Anblix, a cloud data analytics provider, earned its solution partner designation in data & AI, digital & app innovation, and infrastructure solution areas.

World domination

• AWS can’t take over the world unless there’s a center for ants kids who can’t read good, which is why it’s opening a learning facility in Arlington, VA. The center is mostly to skill 29 million adults, but some unlucky classrooms will be bussed to the “interactive exhibits on the role of cloud computing.” A really cool initiative, though, is that the center will offer career support to Ukrainian refugees.
• New data centers, yay! AWS is bringing three data centers to Loudoun County, VA, which will be too busy to notice because they are banning “sexually explicit books” like 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale. If they think 1984 is steamy, wait until they read Ezekiel 16:17, Ezekiel 23:18-21, Exodus 4:25, Genesis 19:35…you get the idea.
  • AWS also announced plans to launch an infrastructure region in Thailand, a country that has not yet regressed to banning important classic books that have shaped their literary culture.
• AWS Graviton2 chips are huge in Japan, with two of the archipelago nation’s largest companies saying they’re consuming 72% less power than the previous chips they were using to support their 5G network.

New stuff

• Microsoft unveiled three new Surface computers (tablet, laptop, desktop) available 6 days before Halloween because that’s how I measure all time once October 1^st hits.
• AWS launched The Landing Zone for Healthcare, which sounds like an indoor trampoline park but is actually a no-code solution for governing multi-account environments.
• At Ignite this year, Azure was the diamond of the season (that was for my Bridgerton geeks), with several items/features announced for general availability—Azure Arc for SQL Server, Edge browser, and Azure Cosmos DB for PostreSQL.
  • Don’t forget Power Platform, the successful, modern cousin who everyone mentions at family gatherings, but nobody ever sees anymore because ever since he moved out to L.A. he’s just too good to come home to see his extended family in Tulsa, I guess. Anyway, Power Platform has been updated with natural language AI capabilities that have a few neat use cases, as well as some governance features. This nice-looking man, who may or may not be actively building a miniature of Mordor to scale in his basement, says Power Platform is among several offerings that will continue to be a focus of Microsoft.
• AWS is expanding its Amazon WorkSpaces desktop-as-a-service portfolio with a new managed infrastructure-only cloud VDI offering. VDI sounds like something you get when you hook up with too many people (such a thing??) but actually, it’s “Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.”
• Welcome Syntex (again), a low-code AI and automation product relaunched by Microsoft that automated content creation, indexing, and discovery.
• SMBs can get in on that firewall action with Microsoft’s Azure Firewall Basic, now in public preview.

Gossip (for nerds)

• Upon its 2018 acquisition, Microsoft promised that its subsidiary GitHub would remain cloud agnostic and perhaps that’s open to a little interpretation; GitHub has been introducing new features and products built on Azure, which work best on Azure.  “WHAT, WE’RE NOT DOING ANYTHING WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT” —Microsoft
• New Relic yoinked a second AWS person in as many weeks. Their secret? An office kegerator.
• A new KPMG survey of 1,000 executives showed that 67% were reevaluating cloud spending after failing to achieve a significant ROI. The cause, according to this journalist, is that fools rushed in.
• Microsoft has more leaks than my first NYC apartment—this week it’s an internal presentation on the tech giant’s “cloud revenue” for 2022, which hit $91.2B, but without saying how much of that figure is thanks to Azure.
• 1,000 Microsoft employees have seen better days following their layoff this week. Layoffs include the Azure division, which follow the voluntary departures of some Azure execs. Meanwhile, Amazon froze hiring for technology and corporate positions, but AWS will continue to hire new people.
• In an attempt to compete with design app Canva, Microsoft launched—wait for the name—Designer. And it’s free with an Office software subscription. The amount of shade thrown in this article is pretty sweet…in response to the launch, Canva was like, mmm ok that’s cute. And then Microsoft was like, but Adobe is still our BFF! And Adobe was like, that’s right girl ‘cause Canva is for basics with a capital B.
  • And what better time to start using Design, which will be forced upon you like a U2 album, then after you’ve created something in DALL-E 2? It’s coming to (invited) Azure AI customers.
• Oh look, it’s nice Mordor man again! He says that he doesn’t see organizations slowing their move to the cloud amidst economic uncertainty…and he said that 6 days before layoffs. Otherwise known as 19 days before Halloween.
• “Silver and Gold” isn’t just everyone’s least favorite Christmas song, it’s also Microsoft’s least favorite partner strategy—that’s why the company is ditching the silver and gold competencies.

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security

• DataDog released its annual security report on AWS. Among the findings: more than a third of respondents had publicly exposed S3 buckets. Ouch on several levels.

By Annie Wegrich

Image by Brandon Conboy

The audience is settling, light chatter reverberates from high ceilings. House lights blink once, twice, and give way to silence. It’s keynote time.

Lights, camera, action!

The session launches. Video rolls. Enter stage center, a totally fresh take on video—2A’s user interface (UI) animation, just like this one.  

You, passionate business manager, and your CTO also in attendance both sit up a little straighter, this is not the brand hype video you expected. Animation, music, UI, with crystal-clear messaging. You look around. Everyone in the audience from executives to sellers, and engineers to marketers, is paying more attention than usual for a product launch.

Behind the scenes

Tightly targeting your audience is essential in successful marketing. Brands cannot be everything to everyone. But, for something like an event session, product landing page, or PR announcement, you need to resonate with a broader group.

The UI animation is your headliner here. It offers a concise and engaging way to show and tell what makes your product great. It doesn’t bog users down with multiple clicks. It doesn’t require reading. It’s easy to share and mobile-friendly.

Let’s go behind the scenes for a minute to see why these UI animations are so captivating. The animation frames and focuses attention on core product features and interactions. Then the UI-based visuals provide product truth. The audience can follow along thanks to a narrator who explains product benefits in perfect harmony with the visual cues. Lively music catches attention, while words on screen give context. And to top it off, the right fonts, closed captions, and tactical contrast provide enhanced accessibility.

The after party is just getting started

Consider the UI animation to kick off your next marketing campaign or launch event. Let’s make your product the star of the show!

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

Wheelin’ and dealin’

• AWS got a free pass to pahk its cah in hahvad yahd: In an alliance with Harvard, AWS is working to advance quantum networking research with a bunch of awesome nerds. The goal is to inform development of the quantum internet, which I hope involves the ability to grab real doughnuts through my computer screen, and other crucial-to-humanity innovations.
• If you haven’t heard about this, I’d like to rent some space in that rock you’re living under, but: Adobe acquired design platform Figma for $20B. Adobe will likely bundle Figma with its Adobe Creative Suite, which includes its Creative Cloud that runs on Microsoft Azure.
• Management consulting firm McKinsey has joined forces with Microsoft to create an integrated solution that will help companies move toward more sustainable operations.
  • Funny timing because Microsoft has announced it will help oilfield company Schlumberger make “data-driven decisions.” Chevron is also in on this partnership.
• Our Future Health, a UK-based health research program, is going to use Azure for its initiatives around personalized disease detection and treatment.
• Palo Alto Networks’ VM-Series Virtual Next-Gen Firewall is now available on Azure Marketplace for the infamous private 5G* network with multi-access edge compute.
• In a historic move, Oracle has made its MySQL Heatwave database available on AWS, which sounds more like a hair crimping tool from the 80s than anything else.
• AWS named OutSystems its software partner of the year, a “testament to the high-performance power of low-code.”

*4G, ok? It’s 4G right now. Not the creative “4G/5G” they pull in this article. You can’t be married if you’re still engaged.

Gossip (for nerds)

• Former Microsoft Azure IoT partner Bert Van Hoof (love the name) is now president AND CEO (greedy, Bert, greedy!) of Willow, a digital twinning proptech firm. Microsoft Teams VP Bhrighu Sareen has moved to software startup Highspot.
  • Some of the Microsoft execs who are sticking around will be richly rewarded with high-stakes projects they better not blow. How do we know this? My fave gossip source: leaked documents.
• Microsoft announced that it will not label fake news on social media as false to avoid any claims of censorship. So, you know, if you want to believe that Joe Biden is the 46^th president and he’s 79 years old and 4+6+7+9=26 and 2+6=8 and it’s 2022 so 2+0+2+2 is 6 and…well well well look at that, another 6. You know what 3 sixes are? That’s right. SATAN.
• There’s more research out of Microsoft Viva that dishes all the dirt on the workplace, such as: 85% of employers don’t believe you’re being more productive in your hybrid work setup, you lazy liars. How can companies fix it? By buying Viva with its new enhanced capabilities.
• A communications watchdog in the UK has opened an investigation into the market domination of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The three own 72% of European cloud spend.
• Security, reliability, and performance improvement company Cloudflare has AWS in its sights. Cloudflare is pulling from the AWS playbook, wooing startups by connecting them with VC firms looking to invest in Cloudflare users. Weird flex, but OK. “We’re not ‘stealing’…we’re earning it,” said the Cloudflare CEO, which is the same argument I’ve heard millionaires make about tax evasion through Panamanian bank accounts.
  • Cloud storage company Wasabi Technologies is also set to compete with AWS (psshh sure) after a $250M investment.
• The secrets to AWS’ growth strategy? APAC/Japan expansion and telco partnerships—as reflected in its investment in India and recent partnership with Sateliot, a satellite telecoms operator, to build a cloud-native 5G service.

New stuff

• Microsoft released a bunch of new security features for Windows 11, emphasizing Zero Trust. Their differentiator? A focus on hardware-based protection.
  • They also released some other features for Windows 11, which is growing in popularity now that support for Windows 10—which accounts for 72% of its Windows users—ends in 2025.
• In a bid to compete with AWS’ custom Graviton systems, Microsoft has unveiled its family of Azure VMs running on Ampere Arm-based processors. Like every family, these VMs pick fights with each other when bored and “borrow” clothes without asking.
• AWS Glue is great if you don’t sniff it, especially now that it supports a bunch of stuff that will take me 100 years to understand.
• New Relic has some new blood after poaching some AWS and Salesforce execs.
  • To get even, AWS and Salesforce are not inviting New Relic to their strategic expansion party, which will be Buzz Lightyear-themed. An integration between Amazon SageMaker and the Salesforce platform will allow mutual customers to easily build AI models.
  • To make nice, New Relic announced support for Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Flow Logs.
• AWS has established a startup accelerator for sustainable cities. Smart infrastructure entrepreneurs will be “rewarded” with $10k in cloud credits, some Snickers bars, and other things that don’t actually pay the rent.
• AWS has also created the brand new AWS Smart City competency, largely intended to help the public sector. AWS Partners can get this competency in part by sharing customer case studies.
• AWS can’t get enough smart stuff—it has also launched AWS IoT FleetWise for general availability. Like an overly possessive boyfriend, the service collects vehicle data from built-in sensors.
• AWS customers can now deploy Amazon EKS clusters on AWS Outposts, making AWS even more Kubernetes-friendly.

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security

• Researchers found a vulnerability that would allow malicious actors who have Microsoft file system access to steal credentials from Teams users. This impacts all Government Community Cloud Desktop Teams customers, including defense contractors and infrastructure operators.
• The storytelling team doesn’t have to worry about a hacker “mimicking users while online” because as soon as they see that our chat is full of debates about commas and citations, they will peace out faster than you can say, “Dirimens copulatio” (look it up!).
• Even with all this, analysts over at Seeking Alpha say Teams is overtaking Zoom in the corporate world.
• Another security firm found ways to exploit flaws in Azure Active Directory. The good news is that one of the crypters is named DarkTortilla, which sounds like a super cool nightclub residing in a strip mall that I’d go to. Because I go to those.

World domination

• People who are glad they weren’t on Microsoft’s M&A legal team this past year? Me. Microsoft Teams is merging with Deutsche Telekom’s mobile network, dubbed “Mobile für Microsoft Teams” and you HAVE to say it in an angry scary German accent or else it means something else.
• More München! German open-source software company SUSE has entered into a multi-year collaboration with AWS to offer migrations acceleration programs for customers moving from SAP to AWS.
• Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” stores are set to expand their merchandise, and new ones recently opened in Dallas-Fort Worth and DC airports. After 2A worked on the latest promo video for Just Walk Out at Lumen Field, Amazon has decided to make our very own Guy Schoonmaker their mascot. Because who doesn’t want a super nice dude greeting you on your milk-and-bread run?
• AWS had so much fun at DarkTortilla with us that it has decided to expand its presence in Mexico starting in 2023. Aside from opening a few offices in various Mexican cities, it will construct a new Local Zone in Querétaro, considered the country’s “third most beautiful city.”

By Nora Bright

Image by Suzanne Calkins

Hiring for short-term roles can be tricky. Especially now that the labor market is cooling off, candidates are warier about taking on short contracts knowing they’ll be back on the (possibly less favorable) job market soon.

Luckily, we’ve learned a thing or two over the years from sourcing talented embedded consultants for our clients’ short-term roles, ranging from parental leave coverage to quick-turn projects. Whether you’re working with an agency or not, these tips can help you land a stellar hire that can make a major impact on a reduced timeline.

1. Write a clear and realistic scope of work

When a role’s timeline is limited, the position’s responsibilities and goals must be tightly defined. A clear scope will not only set engagements up for success, but also help attract a strong candidate pool. Candidates (especially the most experienced ones) will sniff out an ill-defined or unrealistic scope from miles away—and might withdraw from the interview process or not apply in the first place. Sharing a clear scope of work in the job description and during interviews will assure candidates that they can be successful in the role and deliver the results you expect.

2. Know what skills and experience are essential—and how that aligns with your budget and resources

We find that candidates interested in short-term roles often fall into two camps. Either they’re experts with a long track record of completing the role’s responsibilities, or they’re early in their careers and eager to ramp up their skills quickly in a fast-paced environment. The experts tend to hit the ground running but come at a high price point (understandably so). Meanwhile, the newer folks generally need more support and sometimes need a reduced project scope. However, their overall rate is less.

Ask yourself what skills and experience are truly necessary for the role and whether you have the budget and support to set them up for success.

3. Decide on an interview process and proceed quickly

Before getting started, decide how many interview rounds there will be and who will join from your team. Sharing these steps upfront with candidates will show that your team is organized and ready to bring them on.

Keeping the interview process rolling along will reduce the risk that you lose your dream candidate to another opportunity. With candidates often interviewing for multiple roles, moving quickly will give you an advantage.

If you’ve got a short-term role to fill, we’ve got your back. Reach out to learn more!

By Jane Dornemann

Image by Evan Aeschlimann

As a marketing agency focused on cloud technology, 2A stays on top of industry developments.

Every few weeks we scour the internet for the latest on AWS and Microsoft—and now we’re bringing that news to you. But in typical 2A style, we’re we’ve made it an entertaining read.

Wheelin’ and dealin‘

• AWS has been going after healthcare and life sciences (HCLS) hard (2A has helped them write toward their dreams). It’s working—a KLAS survey shows that while Microsoft is still the industry’s preferred platform, AWS is nipping at its calloused heels.
  • Since we’re on the topic of hijacking your DNA to make human copies of you in a matrix-like plastic uterus that harvests organs for the rich, AWS wants you to know that 23andMe is doing ANYTHING BUT WHAT I JUST MENTIONED using AWS high-performance computing.
  • And for hospitals that want to deploy Epic EHR on AWS, Sapphire Health and Cloudticity are here to guide the way.
    
• I’m rubber and you’re glue and everything I say bounces off me and sticks to you…unless you’re Bridgestone, a global leader in tires and rubber building, which has partnered with AWS to move to the cloud, launch new customer solutions, and become more sustainable (rubber factories do scream sustainability).
  
• Malls are dead, which in America means one less place to find yourself in a shooting. But for AWS, it means so much more. Amazon will shift tech teams for its physical consumer stores (like Just Walk Out…or Run Out if there’s a shooting) to its cloud division. The goal is to use their experience with shootings retail to expand the company’s retail technology play.
  
• Microsoft has selected Siemens to design a prototype of some semiconductor stuff, part of a Department of Defense initiative. It’s top secret except for this widely distributed press release about it.

World domination

• A second AWS region in the Middle East is munjaz! It’s located in the UAE, so it’s made of pure gold and is encrusted in diamonds.
  • Then there are the new Edge locations in two Vietnamese cities, good luck to the employees who have to cross the street to get there, iykyk
  • …and AWS is also planning to open a 90k-square foot data center campus in the far, far less exotic location of Bristow, VA. NASA told residents to buy their earplugs now because they’ll hear the data center humming, which may be a nice alternative to the recent Loverboy concert that went down at the Jiffy Lube Live.
  • Finally, should one set up a data center in the next war zone? We’ll see.
    
• Read this in Taika Waititi’s voice: Auckland Transportation is moving to Microsoft Azure.

Gossip (for nerds)

• Someone’s being a sore loser about a geospatial intelligence contract, MICROSOFT. The CIA had awarded AWS a $1 billion task order (not gonna pretend to know what that is) to do some super spy shiz. Microsoft is making several complaints, including that the agency didn’t properly justify a competition exception. Sometimes our own medicine be tasting bitter.
  
• VMware employees describe “aggressive” recruiter outreach from AWS following Broadcom’s announcement that it will acquire VMware. (Imagines email titled, You WILL work for us!)
  
• In the digital equivalent of paying farmers to burn crops, Microsoft told Brazilian regulators that Sony is paying developers not to add content to the Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft’s counter-strategy? Giving Xbox customers free dogs*. Because that will absolutely end well. Gamers don’t even remember to feed themselves! Or bathe.
  
• Leaked document time! I love leaked documents unless they are sitting on a hideous carpet at Mar-a-Lago. In short: Microsoft is sick of all the success that AWS has had with giant government contracts, and it’s recruiting Google and Oracle to stop it. The plan? Pushing a “multi-cloud or bust” narrative.
  
• It’s been a decade since Microsoft embarked on its CloudOptimal program, which aims to move Office 365 and Microsoft 365 services to Azure. Still not done. This is like when I tell my husband I’ll be ready in 5 minutes. Sure, 5 minutes. 5 minutes on Venus, maybe.

New stuff

• WE ALL LOVE CHIME SO MUCH, especially those of us who need to restart our computers after using it so we’re not inexplicably muted on Teams all day. Now we can love Chime even more because AWS is live streaming capabilities. Which means nobody has to miss that Loverboy concert at the Jiffy Lube if they don’t want to.
  
• Snowflake, don’t melt with all that hot revenue—80% of your users want to run you on AWS (then Microsoft and then…look at that, Google comes third. Maybe Google ranks first at coming third?).
  
• More targeted ads, same false sense of privacy? That’s what’s coming with Bastion, a new AWS service that lets companies pool data to better target existing and potential customers.
  
• Amazon is previewing AWS Wickr, a managed service that helps businesses and governments meet security requirements using data encryption. So, they get privacy but we get pooled data. Seems fair.
  
• In capitalism’s never-ending strategy to manufacture scarcity, corporations can now have their own 5G networks SO GET YOUR OWN. AWS has launched a new service to help companies deploy these private 5G networks, but here is my favorite part: it’s actually only 4G LTE. It’s all in the marketing baby, just put a little asterisk next to 5G* and make the notation impossible to find and voila, you got yourself a private 5G network.
  
• 2A’s animation was shown at AWS Storage Day event, where the cloud provider announced added features for Amazon Elastic Block Storage to boost data resiliency.
  
• HoloLens wasn’t the massive hit Microsoft expected it to be on the consumer market, so execs were like, who spends a ton of money on crap? Oh, right, the military! Let’s tweak these for carnage, they said. So now $21.9 billion of your tax dollars are going to “high-tech combat goggles.” Phew, good thing none of that money is going to clean drinking water!
  
• VMware is strengthening its collaboration with Microsoft by issuing several new updates to its Azure VMware Solution. Let’s hope the VMware staff working on this aren’t ether-ragged and bagged by AWS human resources.
  
• Datadog now offers its monitoring and security platform for Microsoft SQL and Azure.
  
• It’s a week for Teams news. Barclays has taken a shine to Microsoft’s messaging about how great Teams is and has deployed it as the bank’s preferred collaboration platform worldwide.
  • And if higher-ups at Barclays want to find that great joke they made last week about all the silly poors, now they can with Teams’ new search feature! And they can do it on their Macs using the new Teams for Apple.
  • Also, Azure Communication Services now integrates with/supports Microsoft Teams.
  • One more: Microsoft plans to extend Teams into VMWare and Citrix VDI so users can do SUPER crucial business things like blur their backgrounds.

• Azure Managed Grafana is now generally available. It helps cloud users detect tech issues in their infrastructure.

Ma’am, I’m going to have to call security

• The ease with which one can build and host a webpage on AWS has backfired, making it a popular avenue for phishing attacks, according to a report from Avanan. How they do it is quite interesting, particularly if you are preparing to be tapped by Anonymous, like myself and our editorial lead, Forsyth.
  
• Those evil phisherman better watch out, though, ‘cause AWS and Splunk and some other important peeps are developing the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework. Among other things, it’s meant to support organizations in de-complicating data management, a crucial aspect of security.
  
• Microsoft rolled out Azure MFA Server Migration Utility, a tool specifically for migration security…but once you’re there, MFA may not be able to save you from Russia.
  
• In addition to Russia, there’s also good ‘ole American complacency. Why have one vulnerability when you can have 121? And why patch them when you can….not patch them?  In a recent Patch Tuesday, Microsoft addressed a zero-day vulnerability dubbed “DogWalk,” a.k.a. the thing gamers won’t do with their free dogs. It was discovered like a million Tuesdays ago in 2020 but was “meh’d” and then the U.S. government had to issue a mandatory update.
  
• And then Microsoft employees were like, we can play hardball Uncle Sam….catch this.

*parody news site

By Kimberly Mass

Image by Julianne Medenblik

This is a story about cupcakes. Not just any cupcakes—the kind covered with frosting, crowned with sprinkles, and filled to bursting with even more frosting. In this case, the frosting is comedy, the filling is a deep sense of community, and the sprinkles are the spark Alyson Stoner-Rhoades brings to her role as 2A’s operations manager.

Like the first bite of a cupcake—from the side? from the top?—this story could start just about anywhere and still end up somewhere delicious. Let’s eat!

Goodness baked right in

While Alyson grew up cooking for her family, she learned to bake from scratch (croissants and cookies and yes, cupcakes) at her first job at Specialty’s Café and Bakery. She also learned about the food supply chain, sustainable farming, and the joy that comes from sharing quality food carefully made with the wider community.

Alyson’s experience at Specialty’s prepared her for her next position: store manager at Cupcake Royale. There she learned to do, as she put it, “just about everything,” including baking the store’s signature cupcakes. With its focus on sourcing sustainable ingredients, giving back through donation matching, and serving as a community gathering place, Cupcake Royale was a perfect match for Alyson’s growing skills in operations management and community building.

The perfect mix

Following a brief stint with the Seattle Storm where she further flexed her community building muscles (a job she got in part due to her work with the Storm while at Cupcake Royale), Alyson landed at 2A as operations manager. While she makes sure the computers work and the bills get paid, where she really shines is in our company’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) efforts. “I never want people to feel that they’re not supported,” she shared. “Whatever I can do to help people who need a boost is something I’m going to do.”

In the kitsch-en

Baked into everything Alyson does is her wicked sense of humor and love of comedy. From intellectual humor to observational humor to potty humor, she loves it all. In fact, her husband proposed to her right before going to see John Mulaney at the Paramount here in Seattle and a couple of years later surprised her with a signed copy of an album from that tour. “I know it’s cliché, but laughter really is the best medicine,” Alyson said. “There’s magic in humor, and just being silly is beautiful.”

She makes it look like a cakewalk

While there’s also magic and beauty in a perfectly crafted cupcake, it’s the kind of beauty that lasts only for a moment. For Alyson, the operations management work she does at 2A has a much greater and more meaningful impact on her and the team: “Operations just kind of fell into my lap, but it comes naturally to me. I really like helping people and leaving situations better than I found them. People are what make a business, and it gives me real joy to take care of the things they need.”