The Versent blog - brain dumps and useful thoughts from our Versent family

Data insights

Growth strategy

Industry advice

Why cloud-based analytics make your business data more productive... Read More

Cybersecurity

Risk management

What is Zero Trust & why is it so important? (Part 1)... Read More

AWS

Cloud transformation

Database freedom: moving from Oracle to Aurora Serverless... Read More

Cloud transformation

Growth strategy

IAM

Optimising customer UX with cloud-based digital identity... Read More

Versent culture

Versent news

Proactive gender diversity enhances IT culture & productivity... Read More

Recent blog posts

AWS security webinars: learn new skills in a fun environment

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is hosting two free learning events in September to help AWS customers get ‘hands-on’ with their cloud security tools. The events will be split into educational workshops...

Versent

Database freedom: moving from Oracle to Aurora Serverless

A guide to database modernisation from Oracle to Aurora PostgreSQL Serverless. We’ll walk through the process of migrating a terabyte-scale database from on-premises to AWS.

Versent

Versent achieves AWS Level 1 Managed Security status

Achieving the AWS Level 1 MSSP Competency establishes Versent as an MSSP and AWS Partner with essential 24/7 managed cloud security skillsets. AWS launched the AWS Level 1 MSSP Competency to...

Dean Robinson

Optimising customer UX with cloud-based digital identity

Your digital identity system should deliver a streamlined, secure experience to avoid friction for your customers. Otherwise, you risk frustrating your customers and prompting them to look for another service...

Tim Hope

Build On ASEAN 2021: Versent mentors young IT achievers

Most of the young people had no prior exposure to AWS tools or architectures. It was so impressive seeing the way they learned. As mentors, we could just point them...

Versent

Versent’s AWS Certification initiatives foster continuous learning

Certapalooza is a twice-yearly initiative we developed in partnership with AWS. It’s all about motivating our team to keep their skills up to date and validate their knowledge by gaining...

Josh Lopez

Proactive gender diversity enhances IT culture & productivity

Concrete action in the form of mentorship and training for women is fundamental to closing the IT gender gap. Versent’s mentorship and training pathways for women help ensure that the...

Nicole Devine

DDD Perth 2021: Versent sponsoring inclusive tech conference

DDD Perth aims to create opportunities for underrepresented social groups to present their ideas. “This is a community that’s passionate about innovation and have a strong growth mindset. They get...

Versent

Rest upgrades its remote work capability with Versent & AWS

Rest engaged Versent to rapidly migrate their customer advice team to a cloud telephony system that would allow them to work remotely more efficiently and securely. Rest’s customer advice team...

Versent

Women in ICT Awards shortlist Versent’s Desiree Kelly

Versent Software Engineer Desiree Kelly has been chosen as a finalist in the 2021 Women in ICT Awards - WIICTA - the annual celebration of outstanding women in the Australian...

Versent

What is Zero Trust & why is it so important? (Part 1)

Zero Trust principles are a foundational plank of contemporary data security. In this series of blog posts, we’re going to talk about what Zero-Trust is and what it can teach...

Simon Morse

Why cloud-based analytics make your business data more productive

Speed and agility are at the top of many company’s priority lists. Cloud infrastructure allows organisations to set up sophisticated analytics systems swiftly, compared to the lengthy process involved with...

David Hanus

In 2021, AWS made cloud transformation more accessible than ever

AWS has selected Versent to be a Launch Partner in the new ISV marketplace. Find Versent right alongside AWS tools in the marketplace. Versent can be be engaged as your...

Tim Hope

Customer-focused digital strategy to transcend crisis thinking

Digital user experience is the marketplace battleground of the future. To be competitive, your business needs solutions that are flexible and scalable as well as robust. Short term money-savers can...

Victoria Bergin

Cloud Adoption: laying foundations for business agility

When a company has to scale up their operations quickly, it’s a simple, inexpensive process for cloud adopters; a process that can even be automated. Tasks that traditionally took weeks...

Versent

Involve your team in digital transformation, leverage data and grow your business

If you invest in a new digital platform, but your team isn’t trained on using it correctly, its value is severely diminished. For example, your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform...

Victoria Bergin

Digital transformation: first steps toward sustainable growth

Technologies like cloud computing, AI (Artificial Intelligence) personalisation and automation are the foundation of the world’s most successful companies. But these technologies are now essential to survival for any business...

Stu French

How do we manage cybersecurity in the COVID-19 remote work era?

Over the last twelve months, industry surveys consistently found that between 70% to 90% of companies have radically expanded their work-from-home programs. If your organisation is like the majority, some...

Simon Morse

Women and Leadership at Versent: Nicole Devine

This blog post forms part of our series, ‘Women and Leadership at Versent’. Nicole Devine is currently the Chief Operating Officer at Versent. Though her career spans over 20 years working with technology, Nicole began...

Vivien Dao

Managed cloud services should be more than just reactive

Managed cloud services continue to be a major growth industry, and it’s not surprising when you consider the rate of cloud adoption. Not all cloud service providers are created equal,...

David Sharpe

Women and Leadership at Versent: Andrea Milner

We sat down with Andrea Milner, GM Finance, to chat about her work, leadership values, a career-defining moment, and some advice she would leave for anyone also wanting to make...

Vivien Dao

Women and Leadership at Versent: Isha Marwah

Isha Marwah is a Principal Engineer at Versent Australia. We sat down with her to chat about a typical day in her life, her leadership philosophy and some great initiatives...

Vivien Dao

Harnessing AWS best practices with the Well Architected Framework – Cost Optimisation Pillar

At Versent, the AWS Well-Architected Framework is used to help our customers build the most secure, high-performing, resilient, and cost efficient infrastructure possible for all types of applications. The framework...

Josh Lopez

Re:Invent 2020 keynote recap – our view of all the top announcements

Re:invent has well and truly started and we’ve had plenty of awesome announcements come out of Andy Jassy’s keynote today. The two announcements that resonated with me were: Babelfish for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL –...

Josh Lopez

Cloud-based Identity & Access Management: build or buy?

Which approach is better value long-term? Identity and Access Management – IAM – is an essential part of every organisation’s efficient online operations. The question is, should you build your...

Hamish Ridland

5 ways to reduce your data platform costs.

The team at Versent have compiled 5 easy ways - leveraging existing AWS Redshift features - to significantly reduce your run costs.

Simeon Lobo

What is Enterprise Data Management?

Why is it important? How do I go about implementing it? If you’ve asked yourself any of these questions, or even if you’ve never come across the term “enterprise data...

David Hanus

Modernising Legacy Platforms to expand growth opportunities

Businesses of all sizes and types are constantly looking to create new or optimize existing revenue streams by evolving their systems and processes to increase efficiency, decrease cost and improve...

Rhys Evans

Should you consider Well-Architected and what does it mean?

Wherever you are in your cloud journey, it is important to always ensure that your workloads are running optimally. There are many factors that contribute to a well architected environment....

Ryan Rafferty

AWS Account Structure Strategies

This post was originally published on the Stax blog. Organisations typically need a multi-account strategy to support the requirements of running their AWS ecosystem. It’s important to set up the accounts in a...

Beth Massey

Your business ecosystem will never be the same again

Whether we like it or not, we are all connected. COVID-19 has demonstrated with ruthless efficiency the fact that what happens in one corner of the globe can impose a...

Michael Sribney

Ping Identity names Versent APAC partner of the year

Ping has named Versent, a Melbourne-headquartered technology, managed services and PaaS provider, “Partner of the Year” for the Asia Pacific market.

James Coxon

Versent delivers John Holland out of the data centre and into Amazon Web Services (AWS) in record time

Infrastructure and property company John Holland made a strategic decision in 2017 to move onto Amazon Web Services (AWS), in order to make its ICT spend more efficient and move...

James Coxon

VERSENT NAMED LAUNCH PARTNER FOR AWS OUTPOSTS IN AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

AWS OUTPOSTS AWS Outposts is a new fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any customer datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility for...

Sarah Elleray

How to harness AWS best practices with the Well Architected Framework

Versent is now an AWS approved Well Architected Partner, and we have built a dedicated practice to offer our customers AWS Well-Architected Reviews, that is completely complimentary. At Versent, the...

Josh Lopez

Let’s talk about Sex(ism)

Last night Versent hosted the Men Championing Change (MCC) oversubscribed meetup where “Everyday Sexism” was discussed. Everyday sexism occurs in both formal and casual settings and can be something that’s...

Riley Smith

Was it that bad? Tales from a Versent Iteration Manager…

If you’ve had any experience working in technology, this scenario probably rings true and I know there’s some of you out there who drag your feet into that meeting room...

Robert Megna

How to get your data project right when you go cloud native

Understand your data When doing ETL/Data projects, it is really important that you figure out what your data is. How it is structured, how it gets modified, how frequently it...

Ravindra Mijar

Why I will get on my mountain bike and ride 650kms for mental health and TourXOz

This Saturday, 1 June 2019, I will join 10 of my Versent teammates, and 50 others to ride 650kms from Hann River Road House (outside of Cairns) to the top...

Sam Dammers

This My Architecture Live Series @ AWS Sydney Summit : Versent’s Migration Factory

Versent was asked to take part in the “This Is My Architecture” series at the 2019 AWS Sydney Summit. The series focuses on unique architectures that solve real-world customer problems....

Josh Lopez

My first ever AWS Summit Sydney 2019

I’d heard the hype around AWS Summit, and now I can understand the hype to be true. This week, I joined 14,000 other humans in fast-moving cues and with an...

Jiggy Rathour

HOW AN AUTOMATION FIRST ETHOS CREATED ‘ALARM BOT’

Every monitoring improvement, however small, that the Versent Managed Services (VMS) team learn along the way now gets fed into these recipes, further developing Alarm Bot. As some of you...

Jarrad Starr

Being a woman in tech on International Women’s Day

Purple and white balloons, home-made scones, pav and hot cross buns set the scene for our morning tea fundraiser to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD). Before we ravished the amazing...

Margaret Tona

BALANCE FOR BETTER

Balance is not solely a women’s responsibility, nor is it only faced by women. Laura Brandon, Senior API /Microservices Engineer, Versent ‍ Today marks International Women’s Day, a global celebration...

Laura Brandon

GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR SPRINT WITH THE 3 AMIGOS

Have you started a planned sprint only to realise hidden dependencies? Thought your stories were adequately analysed, and realised mid-sprint that they were not really sprint ready? Relax, you are...

Savitha Krishnamurthy

Why and how to do DevSecOps

Security and DevOps terminology arguments, and how they relate to IT Transformation. I have a long running dispute over terminology with my boss. He is a purist and is trying...

Simon Morse

TOP 25 “BEST OF THE BEST” SESSIONS FROM AWS RE:INVENT

My 2018 was rounded out by recapping some of the highlights from AWS re:Invent for some of our customers. Now we’re in 2019 (happy new year everyone), and I’m sharing...

Rowan Udell

The subtle theme you might have missed from Vogels’ keynote at AWS re:Invent and other key learnings

As an engineer neck deep into AWS thanks to my role at Versent, I could not have been happier to head to AWS re:Invent – one of the largest tech...

Peter McIntyre

Your “sur-thrival” guide to AWS re:Invent

On the long dusty road to any new event, several things always cross my mind. ‍ 1. Who is going to be there? 2. What type of new people will I meet?...

Justyn Green

How to negotiate like a four year old girl

It’s 4pm on a school day. A little girl is meandering about her dad’s general store and she asks for a chocolate snack and the response she gets is a...

Nadine Jabbour

DevSecOps – the what, why and how

I have worked in the security caper since the early 2000s in various capacities inside enterprises and vendors, and in other IT fields for 10 years or so prior to...

Simon Morse

Keep your head in the clouds with your feet on the ground

Australian organisations are forecast to spend $5.6 billion on public cloud services in 2019. By 2020, local public cloud spend will reach $6.6 billion, and hit $7.7 billion by 2021,...

Mahesh Aswani

Lessons learnt from going serverless

Versent recently started working with a large telco to help build and deploy APIs and microservices. Our customer was very clear about what they needed the new microservices to deliver:...

Xavier Caron

Three talks, three security conferences on three continents in ten days!

Notwithstanding the excessive time spent on a plane and having to adjust to several different time zones; I definitely had my work cut out for me during this time as...

Sarah Young

How we became #7 in Australia’s LinkedIn Top Startups

Deciding to join Versent was all about timing. When I met the founders of Versent for the first time, the business was just a year old. Their passion for starting...

Paul Jenkins

Women Who Code

I recently presented a talk on serverless to the Women Who Code community held at the Versent Sydney office. Women Who Code is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to inspiring...

Laura Brandon

Never be too big to ‘sweep the sheds’

Three years ago, I left my cushy corporate job and took a chance on a one year old start up. Why? Maybe I was a little crazy, but mostly, I...

Hamish Ridland

How you can benefit from the AWS Well-Architected Framework

AWS is great at giving you the building blocks for your cloud implementation. In fact, we often use the metaphor of building a house to explain how you can –...

Rowan Udell

We live and breathe a culture of learning – here’s why

As an AWS premier partner, Versent is always upskilling our team in the ways of AWS. We most recently achieved 100 AWS certifications via the Amazon Web Services Partner Network....

Paul Jenkins

Don’t be a fail whale – secure your containers!

I was pretty stoked to be invited to talk about container security and participate in a panel discussion… I’m not going to lie, it is always a little daunting to...

Sarah Young

Has your digital transformation actually been a success?

Like me, you’ve likely sat through project status update meetings where month in, month out we’re told our program is ‘green’ until all of a sudden one day, it’s ‘red’…...

Joel Wermut

Patch Your S_it with Amazon Systems Manager

You can patch your EC2 systems and run SSM in a few easy steps. But first, why should you use SSM? ‍It’s a fully managed service ‍It’s integrated with IAM and Cloudtrail provides access...

Mark Wolfe

What is the best way to easily ingest data into a Data Lake?

Why you need a Data Lake is a topic that has been discussed at length. Today, I want to answer a commonly asked customer question – “What is the best...

Henry Lindsay Smith

The art of unlearning

The #1 skill to have in the 21st century is to “learn the art of learning” The team at Versent was slated to join a new client on a micro-services...

Ravindra Mijar

How DevSecOps meetups can help to uplift the technology industry

Last week, myself and the Versent security team attended the inaugural Sydney DevSecOps meetup. I was excited to see 70+ people in attendance, from a range of industries and a...

Sarah Young

AWS Re:invent 2017 Recap – The Security Version

I would like to share a recap from AWS re:invent 2017, focusing only on the security releases from the conference. Release 1: AWS Private Link Features: 1) AWS Private Link allows...

Ashish Rajan

My re:invent highlights

The first thing I noticed, and perhaps the most exciting, was how much of a focus there was on machine learning. From Werner Vogel’s keynote speech (for those of you...

Zuni Dierk

Evolution of “trust” in the world of cloud

Long before cloud and data centres, everyone had their personal servers to host their websites, applications etc. These servers used to be in a “server room” on a particular floor...

Ashish Rajan

Taking the ‘right’ risks and reaping the benefits

We are beyond the early days of the internet where everything security was viewed as in terms of firewalls and network appliances. Security solutions have extended beyond a binary outcome...

Jenny Yang

The Importance of Feedback

It hurts, right? We expect software to give us the right feedback, and at the right time. As developers, we do write good documentation or the correct log messages at...

Ravindra Mijar

The Life of a Versent Employee

Allow us to introduce ourselves. Founded in 2014, Versent began life as a small tech start-up with around 20 team members. Fast forward to today, and we’ve grown our team...

Paul Jenkins

The Psychology of Risk

I work in the professional arena and on a daily basis discover, analyse and make recommendations on risks that exist in organisations. But I am frequently dismayed by what I...

Simon Morse

Mental Health: IT is a big issue for the industry

The first step to helping prevent this is acknowledging that it is a problem in the first place, and reducing the social stigma surrounding mental illness. Encouraging people to open...

Zuni Dierk

Heroes and Villains and the time in-between

The Hero As a managed service engineer you are often rewarded with praise for successful implementation of a change or delivery of an improvement idea. On occasions, you “save the...

Dean Robinson

The Road towards a Secure User Experience

Working in security, at times I feel like I am living a double life – one as an “all-knowing” consultant, the other as a hypocritical human being who makes mistakes...

Jenny Yang

Curate, Not Inspect

The good news is, tools to detect, inform and report are getting better, so are the adoption of the processes. From Sonarqube to Selenium, from Agile Testing to DevOps. However,...

Bharat Sangekar

How Data Contributes to a Virtuous Growth Cycle

In fact, a recent survey cited in the Harvard Business Review found that 63% of firms plan to invest more than $10 million in 2017 (compared to 24% in 2012)....

David Hanus

Soft skills in a hard industry; the professional value of personal growth

It is often easy to identify our own technical inadequacies and what specifically is needed to remedy those inadequacies because they are readily apparent to us. If you can’t figure...

Zuni Dierk

Hackers Are People Too

For those who didn’t see it, the early section dealt with Steve at University and I think gave a glimpse of how the roots of the IT industry based in...

Simon Morse

Service NSW celebrates a win at The Identity Excellence Awards

The annual event held in Chicago and hosted by Ping, receives nominations from outstanding companies such as Netflix, Adidas, Cisco System and many more. A huge congratulations to all winners! This...

Sarah Elleray

AWS Account Strategies for Enterprises

After you have rushed out and created that first AWS account, to gain an understanding of AWS and play with Lambda! It’s important to take sometime and decide how many...

Tim Hope

Consumer Privacy

Around 10 years ago, a couple of mates and I had a bright idea that we could (perhaps singlehandedly) transform the face of electronic banking. We put together a prototype...

Simon Morse

Versent on The Meteoric Rise From 0 to 130 in Under 3 Years

On asking if they could have predicted such rapid success James offered: “I don’t think we could have tipped that we would win BRW Fast 50 and lodge number 7 in that”...

Stephanie O'Brien

The AWS Security Landscape Evolution

These are questions which were easier to answer five or so years ago, when organisations typically owned one cloud (AWS) account. The AWS account only had one kind of server...

Ashish Rajan

Insights

Featured Blog Post

Why cloud-based analytics make your business data more productive... Read More

What is Zero Trust & why is it so important? (Part 1)... Read More

Database freedom: moving from Oracle to Aurora Serverless... Read More

Optimising customer UX with cloud-based digital identity... Read More

Proactive gender diversity enhances IT culture & productivity... Read More

Recent blog posts

AWS security webinars: learn new skills in a fun environment

Database freedom: moving from Oracle to Aurora Serverless

Versent achieves AWS Level 1 Managed Security status

Optimising customer UX with cloud-based digital identity

Build On ASEAN 2021: Versent mentors young IT achievers

Versent’s AWS Certification initiatives foster continuous learning

Proactive gender diversity enhances IT culture & productivity

DDD Perth 2021: Versent sponsoring inclusive tech conference

Rest upgrades its remote work capability with Versent & AWS

Women in ICT Awards shortlist Versent’s Desiree Kelly

What is Zero Trust & why is it so important? (Part 1)

Why cloud-based analytics make your business data more productive

In 2021, AWS made cloud transformation more accessible than ever

Customer-focused digital strategy to transcend crisis thinking

Cloud Adoption: laying foundations for business agility

Involve your team in digital transformation, leverage data and grow your business

Digital transformation: first steps toward sustainable growth

How do we manage cybersecurity in the COVID-19 remote work era?

Women and Leadership at Versent: Nicole Devine

Managed cloud services should be more than just reactive

Women and Leadership at Versent: Andrea Milner

Women and Leadership at Versent: Isha Marwah

Harnessing AWS best practices with the Well Architected Framework – Cost Optimisation Pillar

Re:Invent 2020 keynote recap – our view of all the top announcements

Cloud-based Identity & Access Management: build or buy?

5 ways to reduce your data platform costs.

What is Enterprise Data Management?

Modernising Legacy Platforms to expand growth opportunities

Should you consider Well-Architected and what does it mean?

AWS Account Structure Strategies

Your business ecosystem will never be the same again

Ping Identity names Versent APAC partner of the year

Versent delivers John Holland out of the data centre and into Amazon Web Services (AWS) in record time

VERSENT NAMED LAUNCH PARTNER FOR AWS OUTPOSTS IN AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND

How to harness AWS best practices with the Well Architected Framework

Let’s talk about Sex(ism)

Was it that bad? Tales from a Versent Iteration Manager…

How to get your data project right when you go cloud native

Why I will get on my mountain bike and ride 650kms for mental health and TourXOz

This My Architecture Live Series @ AWS Sydney Summit : Versent’s Migration Factory

My first ever AWS Summit Sydney 2019

HOW AN AUTOMATION FIRST ETHOS CREATED ‘ALARM BOT’

Being a woman in tech on International Women’s Day

BALANCE FOR BETTER

GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR SPRINT WITH THE 3 AMIGOS

Why and how to do DevSecOps

TOP 25 “BEST OF THE BEST” SESSIONS FROM AWS RE:INVENT

The subtle theme you might have missed from Vogels’ keynote at AWS re:Invent and other key learnings

Your “sur-thrival” guide to AWS re:Invent

How to negotiate like a four year old girl

DevSecOps – the what, why and how

Keep your head in the clouds with your feet on the ground

Lessons learnt from going serverless

Three talks, three security conferences on three continents in ten days!

How we became #7 in Australia’s LinkedIn Top Startups

Women Who Code

Never be too big to ‘sweep the sheds’

How you can benefit from the AWS Well-Architected Framework

We live and breathe a culture of learning – here’s why

Don’t be a fail whale – secure your containers!

Has your digital transformation actually been a success?

Patch Your S_it with Amazon Systems Manager

What is the best way to easily ingest data into a Data Lake?

The art of unlearning

How DevSecOps meetups can help to uplift the technology industry

AWS Re:invent 2017 Recap – The Security Version

My re:invent highlights

Evolution of “trust” in the world of cloud

Taking the ‘right’ risks and reaping the benefits

The Importance of Feedback

The Life of a Versent Employee

The Psychology of Risk