SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Aug. 14, 2019– Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that The Globe and Mail, Canada’s most read print/digital newspaper, has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider and as its standard for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads. Rapid adoption and experimentation with a range of AWS ML services including Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Rekognition, and Amazon Textract have helped reporters and editors at The Globe to more effectively find, tell, and promote stories that matter to their audience without the need for manual review, custom code, or machine learning experience. The Globe also uses Amazon Polly, turning readers into listeners by converting text articles to audio in English, French, and Mandarin, including the newly unveiled Amazon Polly Newscaster voices.
The Globe runs applications like its popular recommendation engine and its proprietary Sophi predictive analytics platform on AWS. The Sophi platform uses AWS services, including Amazon SageMaker, to unlock value by learning how readers respond to and engage with content. Using machine learning systems trained by news editors, it can predict how valuable a story is likely to be prior to publication. This helps the team identify which stories should go behind a paywall, as well as which content should be promoted, when, where, and for how long. ML is touching every piece of the newspaper from improving staff efficiency, to creating new experiences for customers, to building new lines of business. The Globe is using Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service that provides every developer and data scientist with the ability to build, train, and deploy machine learning models quickly, to build models to retain existing customers and acquire new ones.
“The Globe and Mail is investing heavily in data science and artificial intelligence. From our new audio feature running on Amazon Polly, to the Sophi predictive analytics platform, we are seeing great value in using AWS’s AI and ML services,” said Greg Doufas, Chief Technology and Digital Officer, The Globe and Mail. “The Globe originally built Sophi for its own use, but has since begun offering Sophi as a service to other news organizations. With AWS, we are able to bring our tech experts and editorial leadership together to innovate and bring new ideas to the newsroom to provide great experiences for our readers.”
“The Globe has been delivering Canada’s news since 1844, and is known for its focus on being a customer-focused organization that puts the needs of its readers first. As a leader in the industry, it is driven by an understanding that it needs to continue to innovate on behalf of their readers and is setting the tone for what’s possible with the world’s leading cloud,” said Eric Gales, Director of Commercial Sales, Amazon Web Services Canada, Inc. “The Globe is an avid user of many of our AI and ML services, as it continues to provide new experiences for their readers to enjoy the award-winning content produced by their editorial staff.”
About Amazon Web Services
For 13 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 165 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 69 Availability Zones (AZs) within 22 geographic regions, spanning the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Middle East, Singapore, Sweden, and the UK. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.
About The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is Canada’s foremost news media company, leading the national discussion and causing policy change through brave and independent journalism since 1844. With our award-winning coverage of business, politics and national affairs, we reach 6.8 million readers through our print and digital formats, including Report on Business magazine reaching 1.6 million readers in print and digital every issue. Our investment in innovative data science means that as the world continues to change, so does The Globe. The Globe and Mail is owned by Woodbridge, the investment arm of the Thomson family.
