Dean Samuels is the Chief Technologist for ASEAN at Amazon Web Services. As the Chief Technologist he is responsible for working with customers who are at a critical decision point in their cloud journey. His role involves working with strategic decision makers by being the trusted technical advisor to provide guidance on how customers can achieve their long-term business objectives with cloud platforms and emerging technologies in AI/ML, IoT, and modern application architectures. Dean is also responsible for sharing his expertise at conferences and industry events, to help advance skills and education in the cloud market.
Dean has been with AWS for over ten years. Prior to his current role he was the Head of Solutions Architecture for Hong Kong and Taiwan at Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this role, he built, developed, and lead a team of Solutions Architects who provide architectural guidance and technical advice to AWS customers and partners on their journey to the cloud. When he started with AWS in 2012, he was an Enterprise Solutions Architect for AWS Australia and New Zealand, and one of the first staff members to join AWS’ APAC organization.
During his tenure, Dean has had the opportunity to work with a wide variety of customers across various industries, from startup to enterprise, focusing on business transformation, digital platform evolution, and IT infrastructure orchestration and automation. Dean brings a combination of a strong IT infrastructure background covering compute, storage, network, and security, with a focus on encouraging IT Operations and Software Development practices to work together in a more collaborative, secure and integrated manner.

With more than twenty years of experience in the IT industry, Dean has held a variety of senior technical roles during his career, and has worked extensively across the APAC region. Dean is committed to helping customers design, implement and optimize their application environments for the cloud to allow them to become more innovative, agile, and secure, and to meet their business objectives.

Mr. Portugal, Filipino, is currently the Head of the Technology Office of EDC. He was appointed as Vice President and Chief Digital Transformation Officer on May 15, 2017. He is a highly experienced executive with a strong track record in business development, product marketing, sales and channel management. Among the companies he worked for are IBM, DFNN, Intel, and VMware. Prior to EDC, Mr. Portugal was the Country Manager of VMware Philippines where he established the organization as a strategic cloud computing and mobility platform for large enterprises in the telecommunications, banking, manufacturing, and public sector industries.
Mr. Portugal graduated from the University of the Philippines, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering, in 1985.