Filinvest Group and Amazon Web Services Launch Second Annual Hackathon

The Filinvest Group and Amazon Web Services are launching their second annual hackathon. Increasing the digital transformation efforts to better service its core market

25 diverse teams across Filinvest Group join and accept the Hackathon challenge to be the next batch of digital leaders.

The Filinvest Group, one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines with diverse businesses in banking, property, infrastructure, utilities, and agriculture, recently collaborated with Amazon Web Service’s (AWS) Asia Pacific Innovation team to launch its second annual Hackathon program. Twenty-five diverse teams across the conglomerate and from a variety of industry sectors joined and accepted the challenge to create new digital services with the goal of addressing real customer challenges.

AWS launches Amazon Interactive Video Service Points of Presence in Indonesia and the Philippines

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched their Amazon Interactive Video Service (IVS) Points of Presence (PoPs) in two new countries, Indonesia and the Philippines. The new service is aimed at helping customers meet the demand for rich and engaging interactive live video content streaming. Amazon IVS will provide a lower latency experience for viewers, making video content more seamless and engaging.

Growing demand for online video

Video consumption has changed radically over the last two years as people found comfort by connecting through online video during the pandemic. While pandemic restrictions are easing for parts of Asia Pacific, the popularity of video streaming continues to grow with more than 400 million people now using over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services in the region.

At the same time, consumer demand for personalization is driving organizations such as broadcast, pay TV, and OTT providers to look for new ways to deliver even richer interactive video experiences. Interactive live video encourages a two-way exchange with viewers and is being adopted across a range of industries – from finance, travel and hospitality, to e-commerce – as enterprises look for new ways to engage their customers.

Today’s consumers-- sports fans, entertainment buffs, shoppers, and gamers – want more out of their live streaming experiences, demanding outstanding performances on any device, quick start times, and no buffering. To provide an optimal user experience, live-streamed interactive video requires minimal latency, which is the time video takes to go from the camera to the viewer.

Seamless and on-demand video streaming

Traditional video streaming required latencies of 20 to 30 seconds to accommodate for content preparation needed for high-quality viewing across multiple kinds of devices, getting the content uploaded to multiple content delivery networks, and finally making the “last-mile” connections to end users’ devices on their preferred networks.

“To help our customers in Indonesia and Philippines meet the demand for rich and engaging interactive live video content streaming at a lower latency, we are pleased to announce the launch of Amazon IVS Points of Presence (PoPs) in Manila and Jakarta,” said Shweta Jain, Head of Media and Entertainment Business Development at AWS in Asia Pacific. “Built on the same live streaming technology that powers Twitch, Amazon IVS is a fully managed service that makes it easy to set up live, interactive video streams for a web or mobile application in just a few minutes.”

By receiving and delivering video streams over local edge infrastructure that is optimized for live video ingest, processing, and delivery, the new Amazon IVS PoPs in Jakarta and Manila will enable end users to benefit from low latency – making video content seamless and more engaging for viewers.

With the Amazon IVS Software Development Kit (SDK) and APIs, customers can also build interactive features into their live streams such as virtual chat spaces, votes and polls, moderated question and answer sessions, and synchronized promotional elements without impacting live video download times.

Not just for media and entertainment

It’s not just traditional media and entertainment companies that are set to benefit from the new Amazon IVS PoPs. Traveloka is Southeast Asia’s lifestyle superapp with the mission to fulfill their customers’ lifestyle aspirations in a single platform, spanning across travel, local services, and financial services.

Founded in 2012, Traveloka was initially established to solve a central problem: to simplify travel from Indonesia to the world. A decade later, Traveloka now offers more than 20 products and services, featuring more than 200 airlines, 1.8 million accommodation partners, and 111,000 inventories in over 100 countries. The Traveloka app has also been downloaded more than 100 million times by customers in the region.

"Traveloka uses Amazon IVS to accommodate our broadcasting needs for live streaming content related to our Flights, Hotels, Xperience, and Eats products. By using Amazon IVS Player SDK, we are able to significantly reduce the latency on our video content to 5 seconds, meanwhile Amazon IVS Broadcaster SDK allows our content creator partners to directly broadcast on our app,” said Adi Alimin, Vice President of Platform Product at Traveloka.

Since its inception, Traveloka has been leveraging AWS to scale its travel platform and recently adopted Amazon IVS to improve engagement with its customers by adding live streamed product promotions on its platform, including the recent Traveloka Salebrat10n birthday campaign.

Continuing infrastructure investments in APAC

Over the past 15 years, AWS has built out a global infrastructure that spans 84 Availability Zones (AZs) within 26 geographic regions across the globe. In Asia Pacific, this includes AWS Regions in Singapore, Sydney, Mumbai, Osaka, Tokyo, Seoul, and Jakarta and further investments planned in Auckland and Hyderabad, and Melbourne.

The Amazon IVS PoPs in Jakarta and Manila follow its recent announcement to launch 10 new AWS Local Zones – a type of infrastructure deployment that places AWS compute, storage, database, and other services closer to customers – across Asia Pacific over the next two years.

“We are committed to bringing cloud technologies closer to more customers with further infrastructure investments across Asia Pacific and we look forward to supporting more customers in Jakarta and Manila to build engaging live streaming experiences,” said Jain.

Korean Air Goes All-In on AWS

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that Korean Air Lines Co., Ltd., named among the top 10 airlines in the world, is moving its infrastructure to AWS, going all-in on the world’s leading cloud and selecting AWS as its standard for machine learning workloads.

Amazon Web Services launches AWS Hackdays to drive innovation among builders in Southeast Asia

Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, is helping to empower a community of ASEAN builders with skills in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services on AWS, with the launch of its annual education and hackathon event, AWS Hackdays 2018.

AWS Siklab Pilipinas 2018 ignites a drive for cloud competency among students and educators

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has recently concluded AWS Siklab Pilipinas 2018, its large-scale technology skills training event geared towards empowering the next generation of the IT workforce in cloud computing skills, part of its commitment to boost IT innovation and competency in the country. The four-day event gathered hundreds of graduating tertiary students, recent graduates, and educators at the SMX Aura Convention Centre in Bonifacio Global City, from June 4 to June 7.