2024 Perspective: The Ultimate re:Invent Recap

Danielle here! I was fortunate enough to fly in a couple of days early to explore and get acclimated before what I knew would be a fantastic but long week. Naturally, we couldn’t miss the spectacular Christmas display at the Bellagio, taking in the wonder that is the Sphere – and of course, it even had an AI focus.

But the most memorable moment came as soon as I stepped into baggage claim at Harry Reid International Airport – the T-symbol splashed on all the screens – a perfect welcoming! It goes without saying, neither of us could resist snapping photos of Trend’s bold ads. As marketers, seeing ads you worked on “in the wild” is a special moment.

Day 1

The energy on Day 1 of re:Invent is infectious…in a good way. In a post-pandemic world, I feel that needs to be clarified. There’s a buzz of excitement in the air and a sense of anticipation that seems to have all 60k+ attendees captivated. As seasoned re:Invent pros, we knew to pick up our badges in advance so we could hit the ground running Monday morning.

In true tradeshow fashion, I ate breakfast on my walk to the Expo Hall. Danielle and I met at the corner of Restaurant Row and the infamous hallway to the Expo – even in the overwhelming crowds we found some of our friends along the way. We glided through the immersive walkway experience, grabbed our swag, and popped in the sponsor entrance with ease, expertly navigating the show floor to see the booth’s progress and catch up with our fellow Trenders before starting on-site training.

After our check-in with the team, we zipped over to the Sponsor Lounge and pulled out our schedules, ready to officially get started. Yes, Danielle and I make very detailed schedules featuring everything from dates and times to outfits and locations. But at an event with this much to do, there was no time to waste. You’ve got to have a plan to tackle all your “must-do” activities. It was time to divide and conquer. I went to check out the Certification Lounge – as a certified cloud practitioner – and Danielle went to a video shoot.

Danielle again! Customers are at the heart of everything we do at Trend, and there is nothing more energizing than hearing their stories firsthand. And, of course, we always appreciate the opportunity to capture those stories on video – which is exactly what we did with audience measurement customer Numeris. Now, we don’t want to spoil the video, which we expect to come out in Q1 2025, but you won’t want to miss Muhammad Gagan, Manager Information Security, from Numeris explain how partnering with Trend and AWS has helped them reduce response time up to 50% and achieve 99.9% uptime, allowing them to focus more time on strategic initiatives.

While Danielle finished up at the shoot with Numeris, I wrapped up at the Certification Lounge and made my way over to the Wynn for our first breakout session. This session, AI in the Cloud: Heroes, “villains,” and security strategies, was fully reserved, so I had to secure – pun intended – a spot in the walk-up line. There was already a queue that started more than 30 minutes before the session. After an incredible presentation (linked above) from Fernando Cardoso, Director of Product Management, Danielle and I made our way over to the AWS Women of the Cloud Networking Reception, conveniently located at the Wynn.

Did you know women represent only 26% of the STEM workforce? Although we are lucky enough to work with a diverse and talented group of women at Trend, not everyone has this experience. The AWS Women of the Cloud Networking Reception brings together women and allies from across the tech sector to learn, celebrate, and find community.

As women in tech, standing alongside our sisters in STEM for the inaugural Women Walk the Floor event was a truly special experience. We marched together from the Wynn to the Expo to “walk the floor” as a united group. Cheering and making our presence known!

We ended an incredible Day 1, dancing the night away at XS Nightclub for the AWS Partner Appreciation Reception. Given that Trend took home two AWS Partner of the Year awards (Technology Partner of the Year – Nordics & Germany), we had a lot to celebrate with our European teammates.

Day 2

My oh my! That was a jam-packed Day 1. Danielle and I met bright and early at Black Tap to experience the Trend buyout. Seeing the restaurant decked out in Trend branding was a marketer’s dream. The team did an incredible job integrating our brand into the look and feel of the restaurant, which had a funky old-school vibe. I even got a Trend-branded cup for my latte from the espresso cart.

After checking out the space, we popped up to my suite to watch Matt Garman’s, CEO at AWS, keynote. It was fun to watch on the couch together because we could react and chat about all the latest announcements. We also proudly watched as Trend’s logo appeared on the main stage – see if you can spot it in the recording (linked above)!

Following a round of the Expo, a visit to the Trend booth, and another visit to Black Tap, we met up with the team to walk over to our partner marketing meeting with our friends Chris and KB from AWS. Their meeting suite was absolutely stunning, and it had an epic view of the golf course at the Wynn. We enjoyed some divine snacks (yes…I am talking about food again) as we looked back on another successful year and talked strategy for 2025. These touch-points with our peers at AWS are so critical, and we love talking about new ways to grow our partnership.

Late afternoon I popped back to my room to freshen up for the evening – one of my favorite perks of staying onsite for the event.  I then synced up with my fellow product managers at Black Tap before the evening reception began. We discussed how our meetings were progressing, exchanged feedback from customers, and explored AWS training opportunities. After refilling our candy and popcorn, we talked about Trend’s recent cloud security and AI announcements.  We launched several new capabilities for AWS re:Invent 2024, including an Amazon EC2 Image Builder Integration and local currency transactions in AWS Marketplace, both of which we are a proud launch partner for, as well as pay-as-you-go pricing for Trend Vision One.

Check out our announcements here.

Check out our listing here.

We also reflected on an exciting year of cloud security success, including being ranked #1 for worldwide cloud-native application protection platform market share according to IDC, and the launch of several new capabilities in Trend Vision One. I’m talking AI-DR, AI-SPM, DSPM, CIEM, and runtime malware scanning for containers! I know, that’s a mouthful of acronyms. We spell them out in this press release.

Danielle jumping in. At an event like re:Invent, you know Trend will create experiences and connections to make it a memorable week for our customers and partners. During the day, it was amazing to see the buzz at Black Tap, with so many meetings, new connections, and notebook and luggage tag engraving.

Then, in just a couple hours, the space transformed into the place to be on Tuesday night at re:Invent – an experience that we coined Trend After Dark in partnership with NVIDIA.

With light-up glasses, duelling saxophones, a digital graffiti wall, and a refreshing Vegas outdoor patio, the venue was shining red, the energy was electric, and the amazing conversations continued. This was our first time taking over Black Tap and the location, staff, and experience did not disappoint.

Day 3

Two days down, two to go. Ashley here. Popping in to give you the scoop on Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian’s thought-provoking keynote. He explored how you can use a strong data foundation to create innovative and differentiated solutions and invited customers to share real-world examples of how they’ve used data and AI to support a variety of use cases. This presentation left me feeling educated and inspired. I highly recommend watching the recording!

After enjoying my morning coffee and keynote, I swung by the booth to watch with a crowd of onlookers as threat hunters went head-to-head in our Trend Vision One booth challenge. It’s always so fun watching attendees engage in our platform live. Seeing them navigate through the single console experience within seconds of logging in and learning how to implement proactive security in their cloud environments in minutes is so powerful. #ProudTrender moment.

Danielle here again.

While Ashley was in a meeting, I learned from previous mistakes and got into the queue for Dr. Ruba Borno’s partner keynote extra early, scoring a front-row seat for the session. Ruba spoke passionately about the importance of partners and AWS working together in perfect symphony, drawing parallels between themes like resonance, amplitude, tempo, orchestration, and harmony and how we collaborate to innovate and support customers on their security journey. The AWS Partner Network brings everything securely in tune. That tune was amplified by IDC’s projection that total revenue in security products will reach $200 billion by 2028.

Ruba also noted that AWS now has more than 100 Security Competency ISVs and announced four new competencies for these partners to be part of including: AI Security, Digital Sovereignty, Amazon Security Lake Service Ready, and AWS Security Incident Response. The latter two, Trend is a launch partner.

While AWS launches many new programs and services with partners throughout the year, a few others noted were the Buy with AWS, an accelerator to buy AWS from partner’s websites (another Trend inclusion), the Generative AI Innovation Centre (who our product team is working with), and Partner Connections, a platform to help partners meet to enhance opportunities and make valuable connections in the ecosystem.

At these types of shows it can be a challenge to fully capture the audience’s attention, but this session hit all the right notes.

On the subject of recognizing its launch partners, AWS knows how to throw a reception. After announcing earlier the launch partners for AWS Security Incident Response, partners were invited to the Marquee Nightclub at the Cosmopolitan to celebrate the achievement. On hand to accept the award for the competency were Marcia Sequeira, VP Global Alliances, and Hernan Armbruster, SVP Global Cybersecurity Services.

Day 4

Congratulations! You made it to Day 4 of our re:Invent recap. We appreciate you!

I put on my comfy shoes to head out to the show floor one last time – by this point, I had already completed over 60K steps. There I met up with our marketplace expert, and my good friend Elizabeth. We wandered the Expo encountering GenAI robots, interactive booths, and countless cool innovations. It was an experience for all the senses!

Next was our second breakout session. Collaborating with Mike and Zach to develop this presentation was a pleasure, and it was truly wonderful to see the Xsolis story come to life on stage. Check out the recording to see how this fast-growing healthcare technology leader is achieving stringent HIPAA and HITRUST compliance, swiftly addressing vulnerabilities, and securely transitioning to a microservices architecture with a “prescription” from Trend.

No re:Invent experience is complete without ending the week at re:Play. I thought I had said my final goodbyes to Danielle earlier in the evening, but I ran into her one last time as I loaded onto a party bus with a group of Trenders ready to take on re:Play 2024. We rolled up to the celebration in style and danced the night away at Weezer and Zedd. There’s no better way to close out an intense week!

I bid farewell to my colleagues at the end of the night and headed back to my room to rest for a couple of hours (literally 2 hours) before leaving for the airport. Living in Ottawa means I typically have to leave very early in the morning to get anywhere in North America. I even had two layovers on my journey home – yuck! Thankful for lounge access and unlimited snacks to help the time go by.

As Ashley noted, I opted to extend my evening in a different way and hopped on a red eye to get home. I generally book well-deserved PTO following re:Invent so needed to get home, do laundry, and head back out again. I highly recommend taking some downtime right after re:Invent, it helps to recover, decompress, and truly appreciate the amazing week that just happened.  

Making it to the end of the week is always surreal. AWS re:Invent is an event like no other. It’s a whirlwind. Typically, you end the week with extremely sore feet, no voice, and zero-bandwidth. But it’s all worth it. Because you also end the week with new connections, a wealth of new knowledge, and a ton of priceless memories.

Until next year!

Get the latest resources and be the first to find out what we have planned for AWS re:Invent 2025. Visit www.trendmicro.com/reinvent.