AWS Hyderabad User Group 10th Anniversary Meetup

It’s quite unfathomable to us that it’s actually been 10 years since this User Group was started in Hyderabad! In fact, this puts the group as one of the earliest ones across the globe! This just means that the Hyderabad cloud community has been at the forefront all along imparting cloud knowledge and building opportunities for its members. What started as just a bunch of cloud enthusiasts coming together to learn about AWS is now today a vibrant and diverse community with approximately 5000 members across varied cloud domains with a dedicated set of members that are driving Women In Tech initiatives as well.

While we took this opportunity to celebrate this milestone, with cake of course, the primary focus of the event was learning! We had speakers covering different topics like GenAI, Security, and Networking on AWS.

Of course we had a Quiz at the end of the meetup based on the topics covered during the session and the top 10 managed to win some goodies as well! Congratulations to the winners!

VPC Lattice: Simplify Application Networking

Speaker: Nagababu Medicharla, Sr. Cloud Architect @ Intuitive.cloud

This session Introduced VPC lattice as service that combines network connectivity and the application proxy which helps implement zero-trust principals and provides a consistent experience across servers, containers & serverless. The speaker explained the key components of VPC lattice and showcased some use-cases.

The session also had a demo with a service each on EC2 and Lambda in which a VPC Lattice Service network and service was created and the associated the service and the VPC to service network. Demoed accessing the service from an EC2 and Lambda in the VPC. 

Generative AI on AWS

Speaker: Prashanth Singh, Solutions Architect Manager @ Amazon Web Services

The session provided an overview of Generative AI, delving into aspects such as training, finetuning, and the application of Large Language Models. Additionally, it explored AWS offerings in the realm of Generative AI, highlighting purpose-built chips for both training and inference, the Amazon Bedrock service, and applications like Amazon Q and CodeWhisperer. Furthermore, participants engaged in a hands-on demonstration illustrating the process of building a Code Generator utilizing AWS Lambda, Amazon Bedrock, and API Gateway.

Threat Modeling and remediation in AWS

Speaker: Raghavendra Bijjula, Lead DevOps Engineer @ Thomson Reuters

The session has started with a brief background and importance of Security in the public cloud, followed by introduction to Threat Modelling and various methodologies like STRIDE, PASTA, DREAD etc. in practice. The speaker also explained components of Threat Modeling & mitigation strategies. An overview of tools like ThreatDragon from OWASP, threat-composer from AWS Labs, IriusRisk (Community Edition) was demonstrated with a 3 tier web application as an example.

In essence, threat modeling is a proactive approach that significantly contributes to building secure and resilient systems, reducing the likelihood of security breaches, and ensuring that security measures align with business objectives.

The Future

As I’m writing this, I’m listening to Dr. Werner Vogels re:invent talk “The Frugal Architect” about how being Frugal is the basis for being “sustainable”. This reminds me that this community would not have survived had it not being for the organizers being Frugal in running the community. Without this, we would not be sustainable over the longer term and I believe we being active 10 years down the road confirms this thesis!

As organizers, we always want our community members to have a fulfilling experience from all of the meetups and events we run and that means we have to be extremely diligent in where we can be Frugal. What this has led to is a necessity for innovation at a sustainable cost. Many of you who attended our Community Day in March might remember some of the announcements we made in terms of engaging with you better and providing a more cohesive and worthy experience for future events. You will see these announcements coming into practice starting 2024 and we can’t wait for you to be part of these initiatives!

A big thank you to all the User Group Leaders over the years for helping us be where we are today – Runeet, Raj, Leela, Sudhir, Kapil, Sanchit, and Faizal. But more importantly, Thank you to you! Yes, you the audience who give us your attention and time to attend these events and motivate us to keep doing what we do!

Tell us how your experience has been with this meetup or with all the events you have attended or any other feedback by using the comment section below! We would love to hear from you!

Happy 10th Anniversary Hyderabad User Group!