Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) has rolled out several enhancements to its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing offering that are designed to enhance its utility to a wide range of customers. In particular, AWS is focused in 2022 on enabling many organizations—including startups, large enterprises, and government agencies—to become more agile and innovate more rapidly at lower cost.
During the AWS Summit in San Francisco on April 21, 2022, Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of data, analytics, and machine learning services at AWS, offered details on several new product offerings. The innovations that he described range across several service categories, including databases, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), and application development.
Key Takeaways
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced six major enhancements on April 21, 2022.
- Two increase flexibility and lower costs for AWS users.
- One makes creating digital twins easier.
- One facilitates the creation of applications with minimal coding.
- One uses machine learning to extract text, handwriting, or data from documents and images.
- One facilitates the creation and sharing of interactive analytics with thousands of end users.
The Need for Innovation
In his address, Sivasubramanian cited estimates from analysts that 5% to 15% of information technology (IT) spending has moved to the cloud and that many more workloads will migrate to the cloud. He also noted that, in 2021 alone, AWS added 3,084 services and significant features. In this vein, he said, “Since the challenges for a customer today are often different from the ones of tomorrow, it makes it all the more important to pick the cloud provider that will be the best technology partner now but also in the future.”
Data-Driven Decision Making
Sivasubramanian cited a Forrester finding that organizations taking a data-driven approach to decision making grow more than 30% annually. However, he added, an Accenture study finds that 68% of companies are unable to realize tangible and valuable benefits from their data.
He commented that modern data strategy must be scalable and flexible, able to address various use cases, and support the projects of tomorrow. It also must consider issues such as governance, ensuring that the right people have access to the right data, in a timely and cost-effective manner.
Finally, Sivasubramanian said that a typical modern data strategy rests on three pillars: modernization, unification, and innovation. In his view, modernization starts with migrating to the cloud. The next step is unifying the data storage and access control infrastructure. The final step is putting the data to work by leveraging analytics and machine learning to the data.
The New AWS Product Offerings
Six new AWS product offerings were announced at the summit. These are:
- Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 is a more cost-effective way to meet peak demand.
- Amazon SageMaker Serverless is a more cost-effective way to run applications with intermittent or unpredictable traffic.
- AWS IoT TwinMaker is designed to make it easier for businesses to create digital twins of real-world systems like buildings, factories, industrial equipment, and production lines.
- AWS Amplify Studio allows developers to create fully customizable web applications on AWS with minimal coding.
- Amazon Textract is a machine learning service that automatically extracts text, handwriting, and data from any document or image.
- Amazon QuickSight Embedded Analytics Partner Program is designed to help customers create and share interactive analytics with thousands of end users.
John Walker, head of architecture at digital consulting firm CirrusHQ, said that AWS Amplify Studio allows his firm to: “create rapid application prototypes, test our hypotheses, iterate on the design, and quickly build and deploy web and mobile applications for our customers … with even greater efficiency, while empowering our developers to quickly create pixel-perfect UIs [user interfaces] … without the need for deep design expertise … in a fraction of the time.”