AWS Re:Invent 2019 announcements caught my attention. Part 2

In the second part, I will focus on the general direction of AWS and various announcements.

Among other updates to services, SageMaker got a significant update. It`s a managed service for data analysis and deployment of machine learning models. From now on it is a fully integrated solution with a web IDE, diagnostic, troubleshooting and visualization tools, as well as automation of testing and deployment of every used model. Excellent progress of an excellent service that can facilitate work by integrating all the major frameworks available on the market and presenting those as a ready-made solution.

Another promising AI-based service is CodeGuru. This service analyzes the source code for compliance with the best practices of Amazon and at the same time checks the speed of execution (thanks to the built-in profiler). It’s not entirely clear to me if AI, mentioned during the announcement, is rather a hype or it is a real benefit.

NoSQL databases have certainly a big niche in the DB market. A year ago, a service compatible with MongoDB API was introduced, and now it`s the turn of Cassandra. The advantage of managed databases, of course, is the lack of extra load on administrators and the speed of deployment. And unlike last year’s announcement, the new release is a fully serverless solution.

For the last several years a quiet revolution is ongoing with networks. Previously, a set of services related to ease VPC network management and connectivity across regions has been introduced. On Re:Invent, it was announced that AWS Transit Gateway would support VPC peering between regions and, more important, multicast. It is worth noting that previously AWS service teams were fighting against multicast traffic, and the official position was that this would never be maintained. Unlike Flash vs Apple in this battle, multicast won.

All network traffic inside the VPC can now be sent to a special ENI connected to an instance with an IDS/IPS solution. Now there is no need to forward all traffic outside of AWS, which should significantly reduce traffic costs.

Also in the security area, two new services were introduced — Detective and Fraud Detector. The second is designed to solve the fraud problem. The retail part of Amazon fights with fraud for many years, and now ready to help its customers to solve this problem. Detective analyzes logs and network activity for suspicious or abnormal activity and allows you to find the root cause of security concerns. As such AWS now has a whole vertical stack of security solutions, where you can get what you need from a set of services.

The number of services and lack of management and control tools force AWS to develop optimization and budget control tools for the past three years. At the same time, new services allow upselling of existing ones. For example, Compute Optimizer uses metrics and data from CloudWatch to help you select the right instance types and the proper size. Amazon Builders Library is useful for architects and engineers — a collection of best practices and standardized solutions used by customers in different markets.

Werner Vogels, CTO AWS, who presented on Wednesday, didn`t make any special announcements neither shared some thoughts or ideas. Generally, he repeated previous keynotes. However, it should be noted that Mr. Vogels, remains an excellent speaker who knows how to keep an audience.

Among the customers’ success stories, I would like to highlight Volkswagen’s industrial cloud. This corporation chose AWS over Microsoft as its cloud provider, and the group’s CIO presented an ambitious global vision to transform all the company’s processes with modern approaches and technologies, including IoT, machine learning, etc. Volkswagen can become the same showcase as Netflix used to be.

The fanciest announcement of the event, of course, is quantum computing. The announce, gained a lot of attention from the press, while with little technical coverage. At the moment, three types of computing devices are available: superconducting devices based on Rigetti valves, superconducting devices using D-Wave quantum annealing technology, and IonQ ion trap devices. For all types of devices, a single API is provided abstracting the difference in each solution. For debugging and testing, you can simulate a cluster on EC2 instances.

Since quantum computing is new and many things to be learned, Amazon launched Quantum Solutions Lab to share research data and development of new application areas.

And, finally, an odd, personally to me, service to attract attention and entertain. Presented last year DeepRacer and DeepLense allow self-driving toy machines and analyze videos. While DeepComposer allows creating music from a small set of samples using generative AI algorithms. Although, the short and long-term goals of such services are clear.

In general, in my opinion, ReInvent slowly turns from a purely technological event with many announcements into a kind of entertainment show that attracts the attention of a wide audience. Each keynote designed in its style: first it was a commentator from a match and Peter DeSantis was dressed as a football player; an anchor before Andy Jassy’s keynote; Werner Vogels, who always appears in T-shirts, struggled with some designers who made a pitch of their “fancy” T-shirts. The number of services and types of instances reached a critical limit, it is impossible and difficult to maintain innovation at the same level, so AWS has to look for new options. Again, we have to give an analogy with Apple events, which are considered to be cooler and more innovative previously.