Amazon Web Services (AWS) Technical Essentials Special Class was held on January 21 at 12:00 p.m. at LG-POSCO Building Ahn Young Il Hall (Room 625). AWS is the cloud computing business unit of is Amazon.com, Inc.. (hereinbelow Amazon), which currently holds the world’s largest market share in cloud-related fields. In line with the trend of the fourth industrial revolution, Korea University Business School joined AWS as a member institution and provides various cloud services to its members. In addition, the Business Analytics master’s course curriculum, which will make its first start in the 2020 school year, included a description of the AWS clouding system. The AWS Technical Essentials special lecture, was organized by AWS’ director Kang Dong-wan under the theme "Innovation of the Cloud Industry and Case on Enterprise Applications."

The lecture began with an introduction to Amazon. Amazon, the world’s largest E-commerce company, has been providing cloud services to customers since 2006. Besides cloud services, Amazon is also challenging various businesses such as △movies and dramas, △ smart products (artificial intelligence platform Alexa), △robotics for logistics innovation, △Amazon Key, and △automated drones.

“The reason Amazon was able to challenge its global business is because of its robust background servers," Kang Dong-wan said. With AWS’ cloud capabilities that provide solid servers, Amazon Fulfillment Center has also revolutionized logistics services.

Kang then gave a lecture on the cases of local companies that used AWS' services. For AWS’s customer, ‘Woowa Brothers(Baemin)’ the company found it difficult to operate a fixed number of servers individually, as the number of delivery orders varies depending on time and promotions. As a result, ‘Woowa Brothers’ used AWS cloud services and enabled stable traffic management.

The second case was the Korean mobile shopping mall ZIGZAG. ZIGZAG wanted to develop a function to recommend clothes according to the color chosen by the customer. Therefore, AI and Machine Learning service that can distinguish color of clothes were used in pictures, and as a result, they were able to develop programs that can automatically distinguish color of clothes. Besides this, many other companies, including game companies, use AWS features in Korea, and Netflix, a global company, is also a customer of AWS, Kang said.

Regarding AWS, which offers a variety of functions including servers, storage, databases and machine learning, Kang said it is like a mart. As for which material to choose from among many materials to produce, it is described as "like a mart" that depends on the needs of the customer.

Also, Kang emphasized the cloud market, which is growing bigger every year. Cloud computing is available without initial investment and long-term contracts, and can be used over the Internet whenever IT resources and applications are desired. In particular, it can be used efficiently depending on how the fee is managed because it is a service that pays only as much as it is used.

Finally, Kang said, "Cloud computing topped the list of technologies with the highest demand for companies in 2011" released by the recruitment and job-based social networking service LinkedIn, and added, "Business Analytics," a new major at KUBS in 2020, is likely to be the most necessary subject in modern society."

After the lecture, a question and answer session ensued. Kim Bae-ho, Associate Dean who organized the lecture, asked about the final goal of the AWS service. "The ultimate goal of AWS is to play a role in helping Amazon realize its customers’ value through cloud services and infrastructure," Kang said. Another professor of KUBS, asked, "How do we prepare for security or stability problems that may arise when we use AWS?" In response, Kang said, "Employees working at AWS only access infrastructure servers and have no access to customer information." Regarding the stability issue, he said, "As we are basically backing up to two locations other than the main server, we will be able to make up for any accidents that threaten stability such as natural disasters."

In addition, there was a question about the ‘AWS Certificate’ from a student attending the lecture. "AWS certificates are designed to judge the skills of those who work in the cloud industry and those who support them," Kang said. "If you receive an AWS certificate, you will have many opportunities to use it in research and employment."

Finally, the special lecture was concluded with Associate Dean Kim’s thanks to AWS director Kang Dong-wan for another round of applause, along with the announcement that he will conduct an AWS seminar or workshop that will deepen and be beneficial in the future.