AWS re:Invent - what’s next for the cloud, the data journey and how everything connects

The biggest cloud and technology conference is happening now and there are lots of announcements and use cases that can tackle the imagination of even the most conservative person.

The boundaries of the cloud are being pushed and despite that it seems there is a massive craziness around the cloud, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky said were actually just getting started.

Selipsky chose a few powerful stories about pathfinders to illustrate what AWS is aiming for in future.

Hank Luisetti was one of the great innovators in basketball. He was the founder of the one-handed running jump-shot.

Florence Nightingale  the nurse that stubbornly made statistics to prove the importance of hygiene in hospitals. She pioneered modern nursing and invented the polar area diagram, illustrating the importance of data.

The inspiration that these incredible people spread  the constant pursuit of better ways and enabling others to forge their own paths forward  has inspired AWS to do the same for everyone.

The inspiration that these incredible people spread  the constant pursuit of better ways and enabling others to forge their own paths forward  has inspired AWS to do the same for everyone.

Analytics

• Amazon Kinesis Data Streams On-Demand  stream data at scale without managing capacity
• AWS Lake Formation  build a secure data lake in days
• AWS Data Exchange for APIs  find, subscribe to, and use third-party APIs with consistent
  authentication

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning

• Amazon SageMaker Studio Lab  a free service to learn and experiment with ML
• Amazon SageMaker Canvas  a visual, no code machine learning capability for business analysts
• AWS Mainframe Modernization  a unique platform for mainframe migration and modernization

AWS Marketplace

• AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere  deploy your Kubernetes cluster in any environment

Compute

• Storage-Optimized Amazon EC2 Instances (Im4gn and Is4gen) powered by AWS Graviton2 processors
• AWS Outposts servers in two form factors
• Amazon EC2 C7g Instances powered by new AWS Graviton3 processors
• Amazon EC2 M6a Instances powered by 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processors
• Karpenter  an open-source high-performance Kubernetes cluster autoscaler Database
• DynamoDB Table Class  save up to 60% in your DynamoDB costs
• Amazon RDS custom for SQL server
• AWS Lake Formation  build a secure data lake in days internet of Things (IoT)
• Securely manage your AWS IoT Greengrass Edge devices using AWS Systems Manager

Management Tools

• AWS Control Tower Account Factory for Terraform
• Real-User Monitoring for Amazon CloudWatch
• Amazon CloudWatch Evidently  experiments and feature management

Messaging

• Machine Learning-Powered Amazon Connect  now with call summarization

Networking & Content Delivery

• Site-to-Site Connectivity with AWS Direct Connect SiteLink
• Amazon VPC Network Access Analyzer

Robotics

• AWS IoT RoboRunner for building robot fleet management applications

Storage

• Offline Tape Migration using AWS Snowball Edge
• Simplify Access Management for data stored in Amazon S3
• AWS Backup  support for VMware and VMware Cloud on AWS

Quantum Technologies

• Amazon Braket Hybrid Jobs  set up, monitor, and efficiently run hybrid quantum-classical
  workloads

Let's dive deeper into a few things that have the potential to become game changers in different sectors:

AWS IoT TwinMaker

TwinMaker is a service that makes it easier to build digital twins. Manufacturing in the old days required creation of many real-world models, that needed to go through hundreds of tests.

Today digital twins are used for the majority of tests. Digital twins are virtual representations of physical systems such as buildings, factories, production lines, and equipment that are regularly updated with real-world data to mimic the structure, state, and behavior of the systems they represent.

With AWS IoT TwinMaker, you can quickly get started with creating digital twins of equipment, processes, and facilities by connecting data from different data sources like equipment sensors, video feeds, and business applications, without having to move the data into a single repository.

AWS Private 5G

A new managed service that helps enterprises set up and scale private 5G mobile networks in their facilities in days instead of months.

AWS delivers and maintains the small cell radio units, servers, 5G core and radio access network (RAN) software, and subscriber identity modules (SIM cards) required to set up a private 5G network and connect devices.

AWS Private 5G automates the setup and deployment of the network and scales capacity on demand to support additional devices and increased network traffic.

Source: https://aws.amazon.com/private5g/

AWS Data Exchange for APIs

A new capability that lets you find, subscribe to, and use third-party APIs with a consistent access using AWS SDKs, as well as consistent AWS-native authentication and governance. This simplifies the lives of developers and IT administrators who have to integrate and secure the access to multiple third-party APIs.

With AWS Data Exchange you can make RESTful or GraphQL API calls directly to it and receive synchronous responses containing the information you need. This is done with the AWS SDK in the programming language that you prefer.

Amazon takes care of integration with the API provider and implementation of proper authentication They manage the API subscription for you and you can manage API access centrally with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). If you list your API in the AWS Data Exchange catalog, you will make it discoverable by millions of AWS customers.

Currently you can start integrating third-party APIs such as Infutor, Variety Business Intelligence, IMDb, PeopleDataLabs, Neustar, Experian, Foursquare, PredictHQ, WeatherTrends International, and many more.

Amazon SageMaker Canvas

A new visual, no-code capability that allows business analysts to build ML models and generate accurate predictions without writing code or requiring ML expertise.

Its intuitive user interface lets you browse and access disparate data sources in the cloud or on-premises, combine datasets with the click of a button, train accurate models, and then generate new predictions once new data is available.

Source: https://aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/canvas/

Student and scholarship programs

Amazon wants to help train 29 million new AI and ML developers by 2025 and hopes its new tools can help do just that.

There's a new AWS AI & ML scholarship program, offering $10m a year for students looking to undertake courses in these fields. This program also helps underrepresented and underserved students prep for careers in AI and ML.

AWS Marketplace For Containers Anywhere

A set of capabilities that allows AWS customers to find, subscribe to, and deploy third-party Kubernetes applications from AWS Marketplace on any Kubernetes cluster in any environment. This capability makes the AWS Marketplace more useful for customers who run containerized workloads.

Summary

AWS has the vision and the aptitude to change forever industries like automotive, banking and finances, manufacturing, construction, health and more.

As Adam Selipsky put it: There is no industry that has not been touched and no business that cannot be radically disrupted [by the cloud].

Selipsky spoke about the data journey. Data travels from sources, through databases, machine learning, analytics, data lakes until it gets to end users, apps and devices. Each of the steps in this journey is critical and needs security and governance.

Data is the basis of revolutionizing all these types of businesses. But at the same time, it is accumulating so fast that organizations simply cannot exist without automation. The complexity is increasing and automation is handled by an ever-growing number of applications.

This is why Selipsky explained that everything we talked about so far  databases, data lakes, analytics, machine learning  are required elements for every modern data strategy. And they become even better and even more powerful when you can combine them. And do things like easily query and move data between data stores, data lakes, analytics, and machine learning tools.

Data integration and application integration are crucial for the future of enterprises. The importance of data is determining every modern business, and the importance for all data to be united and integrated, so that it can become even more powerful.

Businesses that want to become the next true path finders need to pay attention now  data is everywhere, but you need to find the best ways to unify and integrate your data. Integrations help you make real-time analytics and fast decisions on the fly, which is the competitive advantage you need when businesses and whole industries are being disrupted and revolutionized. Ask us how we can help.