With AWS re:Invent done and dusted for another year, naturally the majority of coverage has focused on the initiatives coming out of Amazon’s headquarters. There were plenty of them too – more than 20 announcements in Andy Jassy’s keynote alone, with topics ranging from machine learning, databases, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Yet plenty more news came from the event’s many partners. First up was something of a continuation, between Amazon Web Services and VMware. First announced last year and made available in August, the two companies’ collaboration, VMware Cloud on AWS, has been extended and expanded. More VMware capabilities have been plugged in, more AWS services are being supported, and availability will be expanded from the US West region, in Oregon, to now include US East in Virginia.
“The momentum for VMware Cloud on AWS is growing rapidly, and VMware and AWS are delivering major new capabilities after only three months of availability while enhancing our strategic relationship with new integrations across our platforms,” said Mark Lohmeyer, VMware vice president and cloud platform business unit general manager. “Customers of VMware Cloud on AWS will be able to migrate application portfolios to the cloud even more rapidly with Hybrid Cloud Extension and AWS Direct Connect, while maintaining the optimal levels of performance, scale, and availability required for mission-critical apps.”
Elsewhere, digital performance and app monitoring provider Dynatrace announced that organisations can monitor performance at the code level across a wider variety of AWS Lambda services. In what is described as an industry first, Alois Reitbauer, vice president at Dynatrace, explained: “Today, people buy and transact business via voice, not just on their laptop or mobile device. Monitoring these transactions at a user level is critical, as without it, you have an increasingly big blind spot.
“It’s similar with IoT; you now have millions of devices that are driving the code that’s being executed in AWS Lambda, so organisations need automated real-time discovery and continuous visibility to deliver proactive performance management and avoid IoT failures,” Reitbauer added.
Stratoscale, on the other hand, is looking more at running and scaling cloud-native applications on-premises. In what was again seen as a first for the industry, the company’s latest product, Chorus, enables app development teams to build cloud-native applications without being limited to the public cloud. The product supports Kubernetes, load balancers, and object storage.
Outside of product announcements, much of the partner news at re:Invent focused around companies getting on board with AWS’ metrics. A new program for AWS’ partner network announced at the event was the AWS Networking Competency, aimed at advanced partners who already provide specialised solutions to help customers adopt, develop and deploy on Amazon’s cloud. Among the 18 partners first announced were Colt, Equinix, and Dome9 Security. Colt said that to achieve recognition partners needed to demonstrate ‘deep AWS expertise’ and be able to ‘deliver solutions seamlessly.’
Read more: AWS takes a musical approach at re:Invent with machine learning, serverless and IoT key