Top AWS re:Invent 2020 Updates That Will Rule The IT World

Quick Summary: AWS re:Invent is a popular event attended by developers, business decision-makers, IT decision makers, and others who want to stay abreast of the latest advancements in AWS technology. Here in this article, you can find key highlights of AWS re:Invent 2020 and the announcements.

Businesses have embraced digital transformation since the onset of the global pandemic. Countless organizations went digital to thrive despite adverse circumstances. Cloud-based applications are high in demand. As such, there is a mad rush to build new apps. While there are several options to develop standards server-less cloud-based apps, not all platforms may be suitable for project requirements.

However, this shift has tremendous effects on AWS (Amazon Web Services). The AWS platform opens up a new world of possibilities to build next-gen apps. Today, the most critical question is not how to migrate business functions to the cloud. It is how you could manage the business when it is fully functional in the cloud?

Year after year, AWS ReInvent introduced various tools and announced strategies to help the business move to cloud technology. Cloud is no longer the focus of innovation; it's become the necessity for the digital revolution. Considering the current situation, AWS emphasized various innovative measures; across different computing platforms at the annual AWS reInvent 2020 conference. Here, we will discuss AWS reInvent keynotes in further detail.

What is AWS reinvent 2020?

New to the concept? You may have a tough time understanding the multiple phases of updates AWS releases from time to time. Before getting into that, here's what you should know.

AWS reInvent is an annual event where chief speakers from various technical backgrounds discuss their knowledge, share information related to the new updates, explain how it is better than the former version, etc. They conduct thousands of sessions on new functionalities and technical updates spread across three different levels:

i. Introductory

ii. Advanced

iii. Expert

2020 was the ninth edition of this annual event that started on November 30. Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS, during the AWS reInvent keynote, announced that despite a dip in the rate of YoY to 29% in 2020, AWS maintained a credible run rate through performance, making a revenue worth $46 billion. He also expressed his expectation in terms of growth of $10 billion over the next year, further boosting the income to $50 billion.

He also expressed that AWS expects to maintain a trend of $10 billion growth per year. He clearly stated, "The rate of growth in AWS continues to accelerate," and mentioned, "AWS is now the fifth-largest IT enterprise in the world." He further added that adopting a persistent, innovative approach helped them build an entirely new universe with endless possibilities regarding these statements.

What is AWS Lambda?

AWS Lambda, a new concept, uses serverless cloud computing to run programmed codes. These codes are designed for serverless application events, which increase scalability and flexibility. You have to send daily requests to extend the application's capacity. You can send more than thousands of such requests every second, catering to the application requirements.

Lambda also has other remarkable attributes – it runs codes on high-performance computing set-up with no administration requirements. This capability was one of the highlights at the reInvent announcement.

Uses of AWS Lambda

• Build micro-services to communicate seamlessly through web apps and mobiles
• Create scalable cloud computing containers having consistent configurations
• Handle bulk data combining NoSQL and SQL database architectures
• Host AWS RDS and DynamoDB through AWS Lambda to store non-relational data conveniently and pull-back
• Deliver rich content having low latency with AWS CloudFront Lambda and create speedy communication between the origin server and viewer
• Develop automated systems requiring zero maintenance for related functions such as code monitoring, deployment of a security patch, code logging, server maintenance, and provisioning storage capacity

New AWS Lambda Announcements 2020: Announcement

• Increased limit of memory 3X times, or up to 10GB for Lambda function
• Better 6vCPUs accessibility for execution ambiance by assigning CPU resources based on memory configuration limits
• Lesser turnaround time for executing multi-processing and multi-threading

• Better Advanced Vector Instruction support set like Advanced Vector Extension 2
• Insignificant price rise for 5GB memory and 1GB memory with a million invocations
• Better performance of memory function by up to 5 to 7.6 times
• The use of PyTorch with AVX2 allows Lambda to create simultaneous ETL job processes, modeling, media processing, genomics, high-performance computing (HPC), gaming, machine learning, and much more

What is Amazon DynamoDB?

Amazon DynamoDB is another AWS database system. It supports key-value cloud functions and data structure influx. Technically, it is a database platform based on NoSQL, which manages data performance without administrative overload.

Furthermore, it encourages seamless scalability of a cluster, software patching, memory caching, and other restore events. DynamoDB key features include storing inconsistent schema items in the database tables, data streaming with live-update version, incremental backups, and timestamps creation for expired data.

Amazon DynamoDB ReInvent 2020: Announcements

• Use AWS Lambda to build Amazon DynamoDB analytical workloads without any additional costs
• Improved business consolidation, analytical logic, and streamlining by a combination of DynamoDB with Kinesis Data Analytics by Amazon or Apache Flink Kinesis Data Analytics
• No charges for choosing tumbling windows of any length

• Introducing checkpoint features to prioritize duplication of data as well as failures of data processing
• Creating several data stores using SQL for combined AWS Glue Elastics Views and DynamoDB

What is Amazon EC2?

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is an innovative cloud-computing platform, which provides virtual systems with rental opportunities to perform as a PC. It has reduced business hardware investment, thus saving a lot of money. Moreover, it gives absolute control over various computing resources using AWS.

EC2 is used to handle changes in the web requirements. It is also responsible for forecasting traffic and manage spikes in popularity. It also has features such as AMIs (Amazon Machine Images), EBS (Amazon Elastic Block Store), among various others, to give you freedom from CPU configuration, storage, and memory.

Amazon EC2 ReInvent 2020: Announcements

• Amazon EC2 C6gn instances are Arm-based AWS Graviation2 processors, offering up to 100 GBPS of bandwidth
• 40% rise in overall price-performance over earlier processors with improved bandwidth compared to Amazon EBS
• Low data ingestion with faster data transfer via Amazon S3
• C6gn processors to support Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) by Amazon

• AWS launched its wizard to reduce the overhead burden on SAP installation on the instances of EC2
• Amazon MSK (Amazon Kafka) to support direct communication between AWS IoT Core while running on EC2
• Easy access to instance-level high-resolution metrics for ENA (Elastic Network Adapter) and EC2

What is Amazon CloudFront?

Amazon CloudFront is a brilliant Content Delivery Network, also called CDN, which operates in AWS web service. CloudFront's concept is to speed up the distribution of static and dynamic web content through its global network data center, also called edge locations, that route user to server-location with the lowest latency for speedy content delivery. It accelerates live streaming of static videos, on-demand media, and various dynamic websites.

Amazon CloudFront ReInvent 2020: Announcements

• CloudFront presents a wide range of locations spreading to the Pacific geographic regions of Asia
• CDN supports public key management and provides possibilities for greater API flexibility access over content through signed URLs
• Launching Key Groups for public keys to ensure customized permission for IAM creation
• CloudFront features a centralized caching layer, the Origin Shield, to reduce 57% of traffic load
• TSL (Transport Layer Security) to support V1.3 that encrypts content while empowering secured connection between servers for sharing content at a reduced latency

Some More Notable AWS Products Announced

Besides these AWS technologies, some more fantastic products are there in AWS reInvent keynote 2020:

• Amazon DevOps Guru: A ML (Machine Learning) enabled AWS service focusing on improved automation based functions for businesses seeking better opportunities to customize specific functionalities of applications with distinct automated behavior.
• Amazon Monitron: An innovative machine learning service launched by AWS focuses on industrial uses through software development.
• AQUA (Advanced Query Accelerator): The latest AQUA is the right choice for a business looking for analytics. This AWS announcement is the right upgrade for an application.
• Amazon Proton: It allows you to automate containers required to develop next-generation servers, fewer application developments, and deployment. It emphasizes coordinating various AWS tools to monitor, deploy codes, updates, and provision.

There are more – Amazon Aurora Serverless, Amazon Elastic Container Service Anywhere, Babelfish for AuroraPostgresSQL, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, and Amazon Managed Service for Grafana. These were mentioned, explained, and elaborated in AWS reInvent keynote.

Final Word

With the latest AWS ReInvent announcements, it only seems that AWS services would reach a higher level with astonishing cloud-to-cloud integrations, networking, and data engineering. Before proceeding with AWS development – its recommended to opt for a renowned and experienced AWS DevOps consulting company as it increases overall business efficiency.