With 65000 participants, and more than 2400 sessions spanning over 6 venues and 5 days, “AWS ReInvent” is one of the biggest technology conferences in the industry.
As a first-time attendee, I was a bit overwhelmed by the scale of the event. It was challenging to select sessions from a large array of options as well as getting into those sessions. My goal was to get a feel of what is going in the space and get as much hands-on experience as possible through workshops. Most of the sessions are recorded and available on youtube for later viewing.
The Conference mainly consists of sessions, hands-on labs, keynotes, expo, and several networking/fun events. Most of the sessions are led by engineers/solutions architects from AWS or customers who use the AWS platform.
When I was introduced to AWS in 2007, it was mostly about infrastructure as a service to provision virtual machines, network, and storage. In the last few years, there has been a Cambrian explosion of services and ReInvent provided a quick opportunity to get updated. Here are some key but not an exhaustive list of ideas that I gathered from the conference.
VMware Cloud on AWS: This allows VMware workloads on AWS, making it easy to migrate current applications already hosted on VMWare.
AWS outposts: An on-premise solution where infrastructure is managed by AWS but co-located in the datacenter of customers. With Outposts, customers can take advantage of all AWS features and not worry about transferring their data to the AWS data centers.
The Serverless approach is not entirely new but AWS has invigorated the movement with ease-of-use, scalability and deeper integrations with their services. There were several sessions by customers who use Serverless and Lambda to build pipelines for automation, machine learning, and data ingestion. Serverless and event-driven programming could become the preferred way to build a new generation of applications for two reasons. First, it is easier to get started. Second, billing is based on the exact usage of resources and not on dedicated fleets of VMs or containers.
Providing superior developer experience is a key marketing strategy, and an important takeaway from ReInvent is that a new generation of developers is being exposed to the scale and advanced tooling of cloud platforms. Only a few tech companies can build something comparable, and enterprises need to consider the best option to increase speed and developer productivity. The options can include full adoption of the public cloud, a hybrid cloud or a proprietary solution.
As a first-time attendee, I was a bit overwhelmed by the scale of the event. It was challenging to select sessions from a large array of options as well as getting into those sessions. My goal was to get a feel of what is going in the space and get as much hands-on experience as possible through workshops. Most of the sessions are recorded and available on youtube for later viewing.
The Conference mainly consists of sessions, hands-on labs, keynotes, expo, and several networking/fun events. Most of the sessions are led by engineers/solutions architects from AWS or customers who use the AWS platform.
When I was introduced to AWS in 2007, it was mostly about infrastructure as a service to provision virtual machines, network, and storage. In the last few years, there has been a Cambrian explosion of services and ReInvent provided a quick opportunity to get updated. Here are some key but not an exhaustive list of ideas that I gathered from the conference.
Wooing enterprise
Even though startups were the early adopters of AWS, enterprise customers have become a big focus in recent years. Migrating IT operations of traditional enterprise companies to the cloud is quite challenging at several levels and a couple of initiatives from AWS are particularly interesting.VMware Cloud on AWS: This allows VMware workloads on AWS, making it easy to migrate current applications already hosted on VMWare.
AWS outposts: An on-premise solution where infrastructure is managed by AWS but co-located in the datacenter of customers. With Outposts, customers can take advantage of all AWS features and not worry about transferring their data to the AWS data centers.
Edge cloud
During the keynote, Andy Jassy (CEO of AWS) announced “AWS Wavelength”, which is a partnership with Verizon. The 5G network is known for its higher speed, up to 20 times faster than 4G, but latency is a potential problem for many applications such as multi-party gaming, and AR/VR since they often require latency below 10 ms. (Incidentally, I had written a blog about this 4 years back). The Wavelength makes edge computing possible by installing AWS hardware in Verizon's data centers that are located at the edge of the 5G network. This allows applications to be closer to their customers, thereby facilitating low-latency experiences. AWS wavelength along with 5G can enable a new class of applications in the areas of Industrial IoT and smart city.New programming models
We have seen big changes in programming paradigms almost every decade like the emergence of high-level programming languages, and web programming frameworks that dramatically improved developer productivity. Serverless is the new kid on the block, which not only improves developer productivity but lowers the skillsets required to build software applications.The Serverless approach is not entirely new but AWS has invigorated the movement with ease-of-use, scalability and deeper integrations with their services. There were several sessions by customers who use Serverless and Lambda to build pipelines for automation, machine learning, and data ingestion. Serverless and event-driven programming could become the preferred way to build a new generation of applications for two reasons. First, it is easier to get started. Second, billing is based on the exact usage of resources and not on dedicated fleets of VMs or containers.
Machine learning
Machine learning/AI is another area where AWS wants to be the "infrastructure provider" for enterprise as well as individuals. The other cloud providers such as GCE and Azure also have a very strong presence in this domain. AWS platforms like Sagemaker follow a familiar pattern, that involves collecting and cleaning data, training models, and running inference. It was interesting to see that AWS has an offering called Groundtruth which provides technology and manpower to label a large amount of training data. The power of their ML platform comes from the availability of elastic infrastructure of GPUs and storage.Infrastructure improvements
AWS announced the “Nitro system” that is a bigger architectural change to improve the virtualization layer that powers the EC2 instances. The key change is separating different functions like a hypervisor, security, and networking into dedicated hardware components. The goal is to offload the peripheral functions from the server and provide VM performance nearly at the bare-metal level. There were several new EC2 types announced and consumers can only hope that these innovations in hardware space will bring considerable cost savings.New areas
Some of the new “hot technologies” like blockchain and AR/VR are “cloud-first” and AWS has a natural role to play. The main theme is providing tools, programming abstractions to make it easy to develop applications in these areas. The AWS Sumerian is one such platform for building 3D, AR/VR applications for web and mobile, without requiring any special skills in graphics. Developing Alexa skills have also been improved with the addition of deep-learning techniques. The seamless integration with other services and ease-of-use is really commendable, whether it is building AR/VR applications or conversational interfaces.Conclusion
AWS has a very rich platform for any organization or developer to build IT infrastructure and compelling applications. Even with the rapid adoption of cloud, only 3% of workloads are still on cloud and rest are on-premise. In the last quarter, AWS revenue was close to $7.7 billion, underlying the enormous potential to grow the cloud business.Providing superior developer experience is a key marketing strategy, and an important takeaway from ReInvent is that a new generation of developers is being exposed to the scale and advanced tooling of cloud platforms. Only a few tech companies can build something comparable, and enterprises need to consider the best option to increase speed and developer productivity. The options can include full adoption of the public cloud, a hybrid cloud or a proprietary solution.
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