Discovering Tomorrow's Tech Today: Key Takeaways from AWS Reinvent 2023

It's been an eventful week with another re:Invent conference now in the books. Having attended my 8th re:Invent, it is one of the most exciting weeks of my year, where I get to learn about new technologies and meet talented people for future discussions.

Let me walk you through the highlights of the events:

Watch this official recap video from Amazon Web Services to preview what I'll describe.

Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services 2023, highlighted Bedrock's data protection, Pfizer's use of digital data and AI with AWS, and AWS's storage, processors, and partnerships innovations. Amazon introduced Amazon S3 Express One Zone, Graviton 4 processor, and AI-powered assistants for developers. AWS also announced collaborations with Anthropic, NVIDIA, and BMW, emphasizing their comprehensive data services and Project Kuiper for global internet coverage.

Here are some of the announcements

Amazon Bedrock has added support for private data, which can be extremely valuable for developing customized applications and ensuring that the model stays within the bounds of the provided data. This feature can help fine-tune the model and improve accuracy, resulting in better outcomes.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/customize-models-in-amazon-bedrock-with-your-own-data-using-fine-tuning-and-continued-pre-training/

The Gen AI assistant from Amazon has been launched with numerous native integrations to various services. This service aims to generate relevant context related to your promotions, reducing the time spent finding the correct answers. With Amazon Q, you can access 17 years of knowledge and best practices about AWS, and that's not all. You can also create your custom applications and use over 20 connectors like Jira, Slack, Documents, etc., to enhance the assistant's knowledge and ensure that the proper context is provided.

Here are a few blog posts about the integrations

Serverless computing represents the next frontier in cloud technology. While the prospect of building and running applications without managing physical servers is enticing for many businesses, it can also be intricate and challenging to achieve. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is at the forefront of this innovation, offering various semiconductor, networking, storage, and computing services solutions. These innovations, as Peter DeSantis, Senior Vice President of AWS Utility Computing, puts it, aim to alleviate the burden of server maintenance, paving the way for a more efficient and streamlined cloud computing experience.

During Peter DeSantis' keynote, the announcement of Aurora Limitless Database caught everyone's attention. It is a feature of Aurora that enables automatic horizontal scaling, allowing millions of write transactions per second. This is made possible by PostgreSQL DB instances called shards, which enable parallel processing and higher write throughput. Aurora Limitless Database is presently in private preview and supports only PostgreSQL.

It is the highest performance and lowest latency cloud object storage. Express One is 10x faster and has 50% lower access costs than standard S3.

Pinterest, for example, has seen 10x faster write speeds and 40% lower costs for AI workloads.

They are the fourth iteration of AWS’ own chipset, which has 30% more cores than the previous version and promises to be 40% faster for database applications.

The last keynote at the conference ended with Dr. Werner Vogels there's a lot there to unpack and it was one of my favorite keynotes overall. The keynote started with "THE FRUGAL ARCHITECT" which are the 7 laws that Werner described for building cost-aware, sustainable, and modern architectures.

The session mainly focused on cost and the importance of focusing on this element not just after the fact but during the early process of architecture and sustainability was a highlight of the session as well.

Here's a great recap article for the session that dives and describes the session in full detail.

Here are the links for all keynotes:

Also, here are the Top announcements of AWS re:Invent 2023.

While I love attending the sessions and chalk talks, I learn more with the activities that allow me to interact and learn by doing. I always attend at least one game day each re:invent, but this time, I could attend multiple ones. The content this time was more exciting, and really, kudos to both Game & Jam Day teams, who spent much time developing and supporting these games.

Jam Day is already accessible publicly and you can play and learn individually or with a team. Check out the new Jam Day website for more info.

Game Day usually requires more setup, but the good news is that you can bring the experience into your company and create different sessions across your team; ask your AWS team about it and try something new with your teammates.

I enjoyed many sessions and talks this time while I was focusing on Containers and Gen AI; here's my Curated list of the sessions that I watched or am going to watch (My Live Play Lists).

Also, I successfully delivered a talk with Kevin Coleman and Roland Barcia about "Platform Engineering on EKS."

Also, Here's the Link for the on-demand content for all the keynotes and recorded sessions as well. It's a gem so enjoy it.

This year was also different because I attended the conference as an AWS Community Builder. The program has already added much to my knowledge and allowed me to meet with different folks, but this year. Special was my ability to connect with many people in person and talk about different topics.

If you haven't heard about the program, here's the link. I would highly recommend you join if you have the time to spread your knowledge and be part of a fantastic community.

This past week has been a highlight of the year, filled with excitement and learning at the AWS re:Invent. The conference wasn't just about sessions and talks; interactive elements like Game Day and Jam Day provided hands-on learning experiences. I encourage anyone to watch the sessions and keynotes from 2023 and try to attend the next one in 2024 (See You there.