AWS re:Invent 2017 – re:Cap from Chris

AWS re:Invent 2017By Chris Williams

This was my very first AWS re:Invent conference and there are so many things to talk about!

I’m going to briefly talk about the new services that have were announced, but I’m not going to do a deep dive on any one of them… the reason being that (a) there is going to be MUCH more coming out on the services in the future & anything I say here will probably be incorrect and (b) you can go straight to the source... so I’ll link where appropriate, and (c) there were so many new services that I’m only going to hit on the big ones that I have better than passing knowledge of anyway 🙂

  • Amazon Sumerian 
    • Create and run VR, AR, and 3D applications without requiring specialized programming or 3D expertise.
  • Alexa for Business
    • Start meetings, shared devices, use for conference calls, create private skills for your business… the sky’s the limit with this & I’m excited to see where it goes.
  • Amazon ECS for Kubernetes (EKS)
    • This has been a long time coming.  Most of the Docker instances on EC2 were managed by K8s anyway.
  • New EC2 instances:
    • M5
    • H1
    • T2 Unlimited
  • Lambda
  • Amazon Time Sync Service (NTP)
  • AWS Serverless Application Repository
    • … Just signed up for the preview – can someone do WordPress please!?  😉
  • AWS Server Migration Service for Hyper-V
  • Aurora
    • Multi-Master – scale write nodes across multiple AZs increasing scalability and availability
    • Serverless – A new serverless mode that will save time and money by automatically adjusting database capacity to match application needs
  • DynamoDB
    • On-Demand Backup
    • Global Tables – Fully managed, multi-region, multi-master.
  • AWS Cloud9
    • It is a browser-based IDE where you can write/run/debug.  As long as you have a web browser… you have access to your code to work and share.  I haven’t tried it yet but it sounds very cool.
  • IoT
  • Machine Learning (or as I call it the Skynet initiative…)
    • DeepLens – Skynet eyeball, but I still WANT ONE
    • Comprehend – “analyzes text and tells you what it finds, starting with the language, from Afrikans to Yoruba, with 98 more in between. It can identify different types of entities (people, places, brands, products, and so forth), key phrases, sentiment (positive, negative, mixed, or neutral), and extract key phrases, all from text in English or Spanish. Finally, Comprehend‘s topic modeling service extracts topics from large sets of documents for analysis or topic-based grouping.” … not super creepy at all…
    • Rekognition Video – Rekognition, but for video now
    • SageMaker
    • Translate – a neural machine translation service that uses advanced machine learning technologies to provide fast language translation of text-based content
    • Transcribe – add speech to text capability to your apps!

There were many more announcements.  If you want the whole comprehensive list please go here: https://aws.amazon.com/new/reinvent/

Alternatively, if you are on the road I recommend listening to the AWS Podcast & the AWS Tech Chat, both are excellent.

Something else to keep in mind:

I suggest you go to as many hackathons, chalk talks, hands-on labs, and workshops that you can. Basically, anything that isn’t being recorded that you can watch later that you want to do, go do that. I met some really excellent people at the 1 hackathon that I attended. Next year I will try to hit at least 2. In terms of getting the most value out of my time, Hackathons, the Expo hall (here’s my interview with Linux Academy!), and simply walking up and talking to people were my top 3.

My hackathon team thanks to Calvin’s 360 camera… which I am now ordering 🙂 

 

Team Nakatomi in the house #reinvent #awsjamsessions – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

All in all, I had a great time. Sure the conference had some issues that needed tweaking, but I learned more, came away with more energy and excitement than I have from a conference in a long time. Now I need to rest up on the couch with #ITKitty, Kim, and a giant iced coffee 🙂

Thanks for checking out my AWS re:Invent re:Cap 2017!

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“As digital transformation intensifies, business possibilities have no limits and neither should an organisation’s IT infrastructure,” said Sara Baack, Equinix chief marketing officer in a statement. “Building a digital business requires the ability to reach strategic global destinations on demand, to access everyone that matters, and to bring people, clouds, data and things together.

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While demand from cloud computing service providers has driven overall market performance in the past, other areas of the server market are beginning to show growth. Worldwide server shipments increased 11.1 percent year over year to 2.67 million units in 3Q17.

Server systems market development

Volume server revenue increased by 19.3 percent to $14.2 billion, while midrange server revenue grew 26.9 percent to $1.4 billion.

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Dell maintained the second position in the worldwide server market with 18.1 percent of vendor revenue for the quarter and 37.9 percent year-over-year growth to $3.1 billion. IBM and Cisco were statistically tied for the third market position.

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Lenovo was ranked fifth with 5.1 percent share and revenue declining 12.6 percent to $861 million. The ODM Direct group of vendors grew revenue by 45.3 percent to $4.1 billion. HPE and Dell were in a statistical tie for first place in unit share, each with 18.8 percent.

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