Get Ready for SaaS Immersion at re:Invent 2024

A big focus will be on the SaaS Builder Toolkit (SBT), a new toolkit aimed at accelerating development of SaaS control planes. After years of seeing customers build these bespoke control plane components, the SBT provides a reference architecture with pluggable components for tenant onboarding, identity management, billing integration, DevOps workflows, and more. Don't miss the hands-on workshop that will guide you through using the SBT.

One of the hottest topics will be adapting generative AI services like Amazon Bedrock for multi-tenant SaaS environments. A breakout session will cover architectural considerations like tenant isolation, noisy neighbor prevention, and cost management when incorporating Bedrock's knowledge bases and foundation models into a SaaS solution. There will also be a workshop diving deep into metering, billing, and capturing tenant usage metrics for generative AI.

As SaaS providers scale, many are adopting cell-based architectures to reduce blast radius, accommodate cloud account limits, and improve resiliency. This emerging pattern involves deploying tenants in isolated "cells" that can scale independently. Expect a hands-on workshop and chalk talk covering the concepts, benefits, tradeoffs, and implementation details of cell-based SaaS.

Once a SaaS solution is built, operating it efficiently is critical. Based on strong customer interest, there will be multiple sessions exploring SaaS operations - from automating provisioning and onboarding to implementing throttling for noisy neighbors. A chalk talk will dive into DevOps strategies like GitOps tailored for SaaS environments.

While past re:Invents have focused on the control plane, this year brings new sessions on application plane considerations like data models, partitioning strategies, and cost optimization for databases in a multi-tenant context. There will be a breakout covering fundamental patterns with Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora, and a workshop dedicated to implementing cost metering and visibility per tenant.

Many enterprises expect to authenticate against their existing identity providers when using SaaS solutions. This session will cover integration patterns to set up seamless federated authentication using Amazon Cognito, enabling end users to sign in with existing credentials from providers like Okta or Active Directory.

For teams looking to migrate existing applications to a multi-tenant SaaS model on AWS, there will be a chalk talk on key strategies and considerations for this modernization journey. Another chalk talk will explore emerging patterns for stronger tenant isolation at scale beyond just separate accounts and VPCs.

As SaaS increasingly runs on Kubernetes, there will be multiple sessions covering architectural patterns, scaling strategies like Kubernetes cluster autoscaler Carpenter, observability with Prometheus and Grafana, plus a workshop on implementing GitOps for SaaS environments on Amazon EKS.

Expecting high attendance, several sessions will explore foundational SaaS architecture patterns and strategies. A "pitfalls" talk will highlight common anti-patterns to avoid based on real-world examples. There will be a chalk talk format session on evaluating the tradeoffs of different high-level architecture approaches and tooling choices when building SaaS. The microservices workshop has been fully revamped to include strategies for fine-grained authorization across microservices using Amazon Verified Permissions.

Scaling efficiently is paramount for SaaS providers, so there will be sessions focused on scaling strategies, autoscaling patterns, and cost optimization considerations. Scheduled to join this session (if all goes according to plan) is Jon Topper, CEO of last year's SaaS Competency Partner of the year award winner The Scale Factory to lend his experience and insights.

Often overlooked, testing multi-tenant SaaS applications requires specialized strategies. New this year will be a builder session and chalk talk covering key areas like integration testing across tenants, automated test approaches, and performance testing patterns specific to SaaS environments.

With over 60,000 expected attendees, re:Invent 2024 is shaping up to be one of the biggest ever. The SaaS Factory team recommends getting started on the session catalog as soon as it's released to reserve your spot for the most popular SaaS workshops, which are likely to fill up quickly. Download the mobile app to stay on top of any schedule changes and map out your SaaS immersion experience.

Whether you're an experienced SaaS provider or just getting started with multi-tenancy on AWS, re:Invent 2024 will be an unparalleled opportunity to level up your skills and knowledge directly from the AWS SaaS Factory experts. See you in Las Vegas!

To learn more about these offerings at re:Invent take a look at our latest episode of Building SaaS on AWS where Anthony McClure, Bill Tarr, Anubhav Sharma and Ranjith Raman dive into them all with a preview of whats to come! To see this and over 60 other SaaS episodes head over to our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/BSlTWVRz4AI