Student Services IT Wins Amazon GameDay Award

On December 3rd 2019, Eric Grysko (Sr. Software Engineer) and Tad Merchant (DevOps Engineer) from Student Services Information Technologies (SSIT), along with two other teammates, won the prestigious Amazon Web Services(AWS) GameDay award! Their team competed with approximately 80 teams at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The winning team was chosen by securing the greatest number of points to complete a project using AWS Best Practices, AWS Services, AWS architecture and group problem solving.

Eric and Tad worked diligently in the 4-hour time allotment to create a new start-up company, Unicorn Rentals. Using their knowledge of AWS best practices, services and technologies, they created the infrastructure to rent colored unicorns. Among the tasks to complete for the winning team was to create the digital environment to provide order forecasting, order fulfillment, inventory management, infrastructure security and product advertising on social media.

Aside from the esteemed honor of winning the AWS GameDay event, they also received VIP seats to the AWS Keynote Address, an infamous “AWS Unicorn” trophy and an opportunity to meet Dr. Werner Vogels, the Chief Technology Officer from AWS.  Congratulations to both Eric and Tad for winning a very competitive AWS event!