AWS Summit in Singapore set to go ahead, despite coronavirus concerns

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit is expected to go ahead as planned in Singapore despite ongoing coronavirus concerns in Southeast Asia.

Set for Wednesday 15 April, the two-day conference will be held at the Singapore Expo Convention and Exhibition Centre, hosting more than 14,000 attendees from across ASEAN, including AWS experts, partners and customers.

“The safety and health of our AWS Summit participants, partners, and employees is our highest priority,” a spokesperson for AWS told Channel Asia. “We are closely monitoring developments related to the COVID-19 coronavirus and are aligning with guidance from local authorities regarding precautionary measures during the AWS Singapore Summit event.”

Day one of the conference will feature Swami Sivasubramanian – vice president of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at AWS – as opening keynote, backed up by customer stories, breakout sessions, hands-on demos and a solutions expo experience. Meanwhile, day two will feature AWS TechFest, an event dedicated to technical professionals such as technical leaders, developers, data scientists, engineers and solution architects.

Key sponsors include Cisco, VMware, Datadog, Intel and Veeam, in addition to specialist partners Sourced Group, Cloudflare and Cloud Comrade among others.

The decision to go ahead follows the cancellation of a host of large-scale conferences in Singapore during the first few months of 2020, including ITShow 2020 and a range of technology, sporting and music events.

Furthermore, Cisco recently cancelled its flagship Cisco Live conference in Melbourne due to “ongoing concerns” about the coronavirus outbreak. Set for 3-6 March, the vendor’s annual event in Asia Pacific plays host to around 8500 attendees from across the region, spanning channel partners, customers, distributors and alliance vendors.

“Our customers, partners and employees are our top priority and we strongly believe this is the right decision given the current circumstances,” a Cisco statement read at the time of the cancellation. “Our thoughts are with those directly impacted by this situation.”

The news also follows the cancellation of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which annually pulls in crowds of more than 100,000.

“With due regard to the safe and healthy environment in Barcelona and the host country today, the GSMA has cancelled MWC Barcelona 2020 because the global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concern and other circumstances, make it impossible for the GSMA to hold the event,” a statement read.