AWS re:Invent 2022: Important Highlights That You Should Know

AWS re:Invent attracts tens of thousands of developers, system architects, system administrators, engineers, IT executives, and technical decision-makers. The virtual-only 2020 re:Invent event had over half a million sign-ups, and the 2021 and 2022 re:Invent events had over 60,000 in-person attendees and hundreds of thousands of remote attendees.

Although AWS re:Invent events have different announcements, speakers, workshops, sessions, after-hour events, etc., they offer the same opportunity for attendees to learn, network, and gain insights into the latest AWS technologies.

The 2022 AWS re:Invent, held from November 28 through December 2 in the Neon Capital of the World, had some valuable and interesting keynotes, insights, developments, and announcements. This guide highlights all you need to know about the event.

What Was the Focus of AWS re:Invent 2022?

All AWS re:Invent events aim to present learning and networking opportunities and announce new products, services, and feature updates. Organizations need this information and knowledge to achieve objectives like refining cloud strategies, reducing costs, and improving productivity.

However, each re:Invent has a different focus. The 2022 event focused on opportunities and innovations in the following areas:

• Data: Data was in the spotlight this year, partly because of its exponential growth. Several announcements related to data management, analytics, databases, and data engineering focused on making it easier for all companies to unlock the full potential of their data and improve decision-making.
• Security: Security was a focus of re:Invent 2022 because of the increased data that organizations generate and the increasing capabilities of cybercriminals due to exponentially increasing technological capability.
• Supply chain: Several global factors, such as labor shortages and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, accelerate the supply chain crisis. re:Invent 2022 explored solutions.
• Computing performance/power: Increased data generation increases the workload for many organizations’ legacy systems, slowing them down and lowering productivity. AWS re:Invent 2022 focused on cost-effective solutions to improve speed and efficiency and save costs.
• Machine learning and artificial intelligence: ML and AI are developing at a rapid pace, bringing with them several possibilities. In the AWS re:Invent, AWS announced several ML and AI tools that increase ML and AI applications and capabilities.

The 2022 AWS re:Invent presented the latest news, innovations, and developments, primarily in the above areas.

What Were the Major Announcements Made?

Below are the major announcements made in AWS re:Invent 2022 that impact data, security, supply chain, computing performance/power, ML, and AI.

Data

• Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments: Make database updates faster, simpler, and safer
• RDS Optimized Reads and Optimized Writes: Increases the speed of Amazon RDS for MySQL workloads by improving write throughput and query performance.
• Trusted Language Extensions for PostgreSQL: Gives control over who can install which extensions and allows users to install extensions without accessing the filesystem.
• Streaming ingestion for Kinesis Data Streams and managed streaming for Apache Kafka: Increases the speed of ingesting and querying data.
• Amazon Redshift Integration with Apache Spark: Customers can access AWS analytics and ML solutions by opening the data warehouse.
• Zero-ETL integration with Redshift: Makes the data in Aurora available to Redshift immediately, allowing almost real-time analytics and machine learning.
• Amazon DocumentDB Elastic Clusters: Simplifies how customers interact with Amazon DocumentDB.
• Omics: Designed to help life science and healthcare organizations enhance scientific research and patient care by helping with storing, querying, and analyzing genomic and biological data.
• Amazon OpenSearch Serverless: Increases the speed of query responses and data ingestion.
• Amazon DataZone: An ML-based data management service that allows various stakeholders to access on-premises and cloud data and data stored by third parties. The data access can be governed by setting privileges.

Security

• CloudWatch Internet Monitor: Helps you understand how an internet problem might impact your applications so you can reduce its impact and improve your response.
• CloudWatch Cross-Account Observability: Allows you to search, correlate, and analyze telemetry data scattered across several accounts, such as logs, traces, and metrics.
• Amazon CloudWatch Logs: Protects sensitive log data being transferred between locations.
• KMS External Key Store: Manages AWS KMS customer-managed keys using a hardware security module (HSM). It is a great announcement to organizations required to store their encryption keys outside their data centers.
• Clean Rooms: Allows organizations to share data with their employees and outside partners without putting personal data at risk. Multiple parties can analyze data without exposing its raw form.
• Amazon Inspector’s Lamba functions support: Instead of using third-party tools, you can use Amazon Inspector to check for software vulnerabilities.
• Verified Access: Instead of using a point-to-site VPN when dealing with workflows that need remote private access, Verified Access allows employees to connect easily and in real-time using device management and corporate identity for data security.
• Amazon Security Lake: Consists of several third-party tool integrations to help clients centralize security-related data. It aggregates data from on-premises and cloud infrastructure sources into one data lake to improve security risk insights.

Supply Chain

Amazon announced AWS Supply Chain, a new ML-powered solution to the accelerating supply chain crisis. It can benefit you by:

• improving supply chain visibility;
• offering a centralized view of logistics, inventory, suppliers, etc.;
• delivering valuable ML-powered insights that you can use to lower costs and supply chain risks;
• providing a unified view of your supply chain data; and
• recommending actions before and when issues arise to help you react faster.

The AWS Supply Chain solution enhances efficiency and removes the complexity of managing supply chain data.

Computing Performance/Power

Increasing computing performance and power will deliver results faster and cost less. Some of the computing performance/power announcements include:

• C7gn and Hpc7g: These new instance types support high-performance computing workloads and improve the performance of network-intensive workloads.
• Inf2 Instance: Designed to support large deep-learning model inference applications. They help improve performance at a low cost.
• Hpc61d instance: Focused on inter-node communications and performance.
• Amazon SimSpace Weaver: Allows you to create sophisticated dynamic simulations for immersive training, better decision-making, less time to deployment, etc. You can simulate more than a million independent and dynamic entities.
• Elastic Network Adapter (ENA) Express: Improves network latency and per-flow performance on EC2. It targets workloads sensitive to changes in network latency and achieves multi-path transmissions through AWS Scalable Reliable Datagram. It then sprays data packs through the network, eliminating latency and per-flow performance.
• Lambda SnapStart: Accelerates cold starts for Java functions in Lambda, AWS’s serverless platform. Using the Firecracker snapshot feature, it can reduce a slow 6-second startup to up to 200 milliseconds.

ML and AI

AWS announced the following at the conference to maximize the potential of AI and ML:

• SageMaker updates: Some of the new SageMaker features and capabilities include:
• • Role Manager: Simplifies user permissions and access controls for administrators.
  • Model Cards: Simplifies record keeping and digital documentation
  • Model Dashboard: Optimizes tracking
  • Updates to Studio Notebook: Improves data preparation and automates model validation
  • New SageMaker workspace: Facilitates collaboration

• Glue for Ray: Helps process large data sets with Python and popular Python libraries.
• Amazon Connect: New features and capabilities of Amazon Connect allow it to use machine learning-driven voice analytics, performance review forms, and other details to review job performance. It can give insights into agents who might need further coaching or training. The new features also allow ML to guide the agent through customer interactions to resolve issues faster.
• CodeWhisperer updates: The CodeWhisperer update added enterprise administrative controls and simplified sign-up. It also supports TypeScript and C# languages on top of the already-supported Java, Python, and JavaScript. It also makes code recommendations for faster code development.
• Updates to Amazon Kendra: This intelligent enterprise search service now supports tabular search in HTML. It uses natural language to find answers and extract answers from HTML tables.
• New QuickSight capabilities: AWS added automated data preparation capabilities to reduce the time spent preparing data to support other functions. It also has enhanced reporting and API capabilities.

AWS also announced updates to Amazon Transcribe that allow it to provide real-time call analytics and added a new API to Amazon Textract to help process documents faster and minimize costly errors.

Recap of Keynotes From AWS re:Invent

Below is a summary of the keynotes given by Adam Selisky, AWS experts, and other industry leaders.

• Adam Selipsky, the AWS CEO, spoke about data growth and how companies can make the most out of it. He highlighted the latest innovations in AWS cloud and interesting new data-related services such as SimSpace Weaver, Omics, and Supply Chain. He highlighted their commitment to protecting the environment and how AWS improves agility and flexibility in organizations.
• Peter Desantis, Senior Vice President of AWS Utility Computing, spoke on balancing security, performance, and cost when designing products, services, and solutions. He explained that AWS does not compromise on any when faced with a trade-off between security, cost, and performance.
• Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Data and Machine Learning at AWS, focused on how to use data to drive the next wave of modern invention. The three main themes of his keynote were: future-proofing the data foundation, connecting data silos, and democratizing data across the entire organization.
• Ruba Borno, Vice President of AWS Worldwide Channels and Alliances, delivered AWS Partner Keynote themed “Together. Unlimited.” She highlighted new launches, offerings, and how AWS Partners can succeed. She outlined her strategy for teaming with and supporting her partners in four critical areas: transformation, innovation, opportunity, and impact.
• Dr. Werner Vogel highlighted the asynchrony of life using a flock of birds as an example and said applications should be async, too, because it is natural. Asynchronous designs, he said, are better distributed and loosely coupled. He also announced several new services and improvements to the EventBridge Pipes.

Who Goes to AWS re:Invent? Why Is Attending AWS re:Invent Valuable?

Anyone interested in Amazon’s latest products and services can attend the AWS re:Invent to gain valuable insights. However, most attendees are part of the global cloud computing community because they have the most to gain. They include system administrators, architects, developers, technical decision-makers, IT executives, and engineers.

As one of the biggest learning conferences, it is the perfect place to learn new ways and ideas to create an efficient enterprise architecture, boost the growth of your organization, develop a digital transformation strategy, and solve IT problems from AWS experts. It also allows you to liaise with possible partners with similar interests.

Everyone, from AWS newbies to experts, can learn something new and make valuable connections. Some expected programs include boot camps, breakout sessions, expos, AWS Builder Labs, and partner experience.

What Is the Future of AWS?

AWS started offering cloud computing and cloud application development services in 2006. It started with losses to be a significant player in cloud computing. In the third quarter of 2022, it has a 34% market share, more than the combined market share of the next two largest competitors, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Cloud application development services and cloud engineering have revolutionized IT, and more organizations are undertaking a cloud migration, replacing on-premises IT with cloud-based IT. It is more reliable, flexible, and offers more data security. The move towards global virtualization presents a virtually infinite addressable market consisting of every organization with an IT department worldwide.

That shows the growth of AWS is not about to slow down. Its future is very promising. It will keep growing, surpassing Amazon’s retail and eCommerce business in several years. Competitors exist and will likely thrive, but AWS’s commitment to innovation, good business model, and current performance put it ahead of the rest.

Get Your Software Solutions From Practical Logix

The AWS re:Invent is a nice-to-attend for people interested in the latest AWS products and services and a must-attend for the global cloud computing community.

The announcements and keynotes shared by the speakers and their guests and the connections you can make are invaluable to all individuals and organizations, from startups to enterprises. You will learn about new product and service launches and updates, which can give you a significant advantage over your competitors. You can learn using virtual sessions if you can’t attend the conference.

But that’s not all. Once you learn about the innovations that benefit your organization, you must implement them. That is where we come in.

Practical Logix can help you stay competitive in the digital space by helping you with application design and development. We are a full-stack custom software development firm that creates cutting-edge products for all organizations in all industries. We operate on solid software development principles and methodologies, like Agile, DevOps, and DevSecOps. Lastly, we are committed to implementing the next-generation solutions and strategies you need in your enterprise digital transformation journey.

Contact us for a free consultation.