A gameified environment
Last September, we competed against partner organisations from all over Asia Pacific in implementing AWS solutions to solve real-world problems. Although the competition took place in a gamified environment, we took the technical challenges very seriously, from scaling infrastructure to decoupling operational systems to encryption and security.
“AWS GameDay was a wonderful opportunity to bring disparate technical teams together in a collaborative way. It was nice to work with the team to geek out and do something really collaborative, deeply technical and outside our core area of expertise. I enjoyed the challenge of stretching problem-solving muscles in a different way to day-to-day life, and to work with different people “, Lucas Smith, Solutions Architect Manager, Interactive.
“Being able to test my knowledge against real-world AWS environments was my favourite part of the experience. The environment was constantly changing and kept us on our toes to adapt and overcome each change to challenge.” - Anthony Edwards, DevOps Architect, Interactive.
AWS GameDay was unconventional compared to other learning formats. Non-prescriptive guidance allowed teams the flexibility to think creatively as they navigated an array of technical challenges. Our team was tasked with working together to break down challenges and ensure they weren’t duplicating effort in a very short timeframe.
This gave some of our most talented people an opportunity to continue enhancing their skills, which is important as we aim to always provide exceptional service delivery.
“We learnt a lot about how to address security challenges as a team, which means that we’re well-placed to win the next one,” said Smith. “In terms of new skills, it was great to find alternative ways to exfiltrate data using various methods,” said Edwards.
The victory is especially exciting for us given AWS is one of our longstanding, key industry partners, as well as Microsoft. These partnerships are what make our services what they are today.
A big thank you and congratulations to our very humble team who took part in the process – Anthony Edwards, Lucas Smith, Rowan Hoy, Manish Karki, Nici Sindhav and Pranavi Marcharla.
The team didn’t spread the news of their win until the trophy arrived in our Sydney office in February!
Our victory happened around the same time as our team secured its new Microsoft Cloud Partner Program designations – Infrastructure, Data & AI, Digital & App Innovation, Security.
Learn more about that here.
