A Learning Conference for the Global Cloud Computing Community

AWS re:Invent is a learning conference hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) for the global cloud computing community. The event features keynote announcements, training and certification opportunities, access to 1,500+ technical sessions, the Expo, after-hours events, and much more. This year’s re:Invent took place in Las Vegas, with tens of thousands attending in-person and hundreds of thousands attending virtually. The event is ideal for developers and engineers, system administrators, systems architects, IT executives, and technical decision-makers. At this year’s re:Invent, it was a big change to see Adam Selipsky, the new AWS CEO lead the keynote, replacing Andy Jassy at the helm.

Adam discussed many innovations and commented that “It’s still early days” and there is much more to be done in technology and the cloud. AWS is still considered to be a Cloud leader by Gartner for the 11th consecutive year, with the theme of this year’s re:Invent is “Pathfinders”: those that dare to innovate into spaces that have yet to be unearthed.

Top Announcements

Below are some of the top announcements from this year’s reInvent.

AWS Private 5G

AWS Private 5G gives users the ability to configure private 5G mobile networks rapidly. Customers are able to use this service to scale automatically based on network traffic and have dedicated network spaces to address limitations.  All required hardware and software for AWS Private 5G is provided by AWS.

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams On-Demand

Previously, data streaming service, Kinesis, had to be provisioned by specifying shards in advance. This new feature allows users to remove the need to specify capacity configurations and allow Kinesis capacity to be managed on-demand depending on usage. This new capacity mode eliminates the need for provisioning and managing the capacity for streaming data. Using Kinesis Data Streams On-demand automatically scales the capacity in response to varying data traffic. Customers are charged per gigabyte of data written, read, and stored in the stream, in a pay-per-throughput fashion.

Sustainability Pillar – AWS Well-Architected Framework

Sustainability is a new pillar within the Well-Architected framework to allow organisations to understand and allow for reduction of energy consumption. It allows for sustainability targets to be supported and measurement against targets. 2021 is the year Version 1 makes our climate commitments, 2022 & onwards will be the years that we hold ourselves accountable. We are in a moment of exciting optimism, where the connection between political awareness, corporate responsibility, public opinion and technical innovation is lining up and we have the capacity, expertise and passion to truly set the standard in sustainability.

AWS Well-Architected Custom Lens

AWS announced the ability to include lens for the AWS Well Architected Framework that are specifically applicable to the customer’s organisation. This can include personalised questions, guidance and plans. These lenses can support the organisation and ensure that workloads are operating in accordance to the organisation’s expected policies.

AWS Control Tower – Region Deny

Using Control Tower allows for an easy way to set up and govern a multi-AWS account structure to ensure that there is operational segregation of services. The new Region Deny feature will ensure that there is no way of deploying resources to regions that are not permitted and also ensuring the control of data residency.

Amazon IP Address Manager (IPAM)

A much needed, centralised service to be able to monitor and govern the IP address usage across multiple VPCs and AWS accounts from a single dashboard.

AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere

AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywheres provides the ability to automatically deploy third-party applications to Kubernetes via the AWS Marketplace. It is a single pane of glass for billing, upgrade and security options. With AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere, you can find, subscribe to, and deploy third-party Kubernetes applications from AWS Marketplace on any Kubernetes cluster in any environment, extending AWS Marketplace container capabilities.

EBS Snapshots Archive

EBS Snapshots Archive allows for the configuration of disk snapshot storage to be archived if required for longer than 90 days and can lower storage costs up to 75%.

AWS Migration Hub Refactor Spaces

AWS Migration Hub provides the tools to refactor applications into microservices using the Strangler Fig Pattern. This service can reduce time and costs when undergoing critical refactoring of monolithic applications.

Keynotes from AWS re:Invent 2021 can be rewatched from their website as well as the AWS YouTube channel here.

AWS Premier Partner
Version 1 is a leader in Cloud Services and was one of the first AWS Consulting Partners in Europe. We are an AWS Premier Partner and help customers deliver integrated solutions that help enable digital transformation for the future. We specialise in migrating and running complex enterprise workloads in Public Cloud, Well-Architected Reviews and Cloud Economics, DevOps Framework, Alexa Skill and Microservices solutions, as well as the integration of Amazon Alexa, Amazon Lex, Amazon Connect and APIs. Our team works closely with AWS to help our customers navigate the rapidly changing world of IT. Whether you are beginning your Cloud journey and need some support to get things started or already have an existing AWS environment that needs optimising for enhanced performance, we can accelerate your Cloud journey and overall business transformation.