AWS re: Invent, Amazon’s annual conference where the company rolls out new updates and features in the world’s largest public cloud platform, turned 10 this year. Hosted at its usual stage- The Venetian Resort & Casino in Las Vegas- the annual developer conference, kicking off on November 29, is also AWS’ first such “in person & virtual†conference, enabling developers worldwide to hear from AWS engineers, architects, partners, and customers. Let’s look at the top sessions from the 10th edition of AWS re: Invent that you just can’t miss.
This year’s AWS re:InventOpens a new window conference kicks off in the backdrop of a scintillating performance delivered by the public cloud goliath in a market defined by a rapid shift to the cloud by businesses worldwide. Beating analysts’ expectations, AWS recorded nearly 40% growth year-over-year, amassing a revenue of $16.11 billion in Q3 2021 and maintaining its sizable 41% share in the cloud infrastructure market. In contrast, parent company Amazon disappointed shareholders by clocking a revenue of $110.81 billion in Q3, lower than the expected $111.6 billion.
Another unique fact about this year’s conference is that it is the first to be hosted without Jeff Bezos leading the parent company and without Andy Jassy as AWS CEO. In effect, this would be the first real opportunity for AWS developers worldwide to size up Adam Selipsky, the new chief but in no terms a stranger to AWS, and hear about the way ahead for AWS from the horse’s mouth. In case you missed the news, Selipsky’s arrival heralded the exit of Charlie Bell, who spent over 23 years at Amazon, finished as the senior vice president at AWS, and jumped over to Microsoft in August.
Adam Selipsky is scheduled to deliver his keynote address at 8:30AM PST on November 30. As we wait for the hour to arrive, it’s safe to say many industry insiders may already know what he will focus on, and that is to look ahead. “The world around us is changing so much that we’re going to have to be different,†he told Bloomberg. “It doesn’t matter what we did yesterday.â€
Aside from Selipsky’s keynote, this year’s AWS re:Invent conference is set to host dozens of insightful sessions that developers wouldn’t want to miss out on. Here’s a look at top ten sessions you shouldn’t miss that’ll take place over the next few exciting days.
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Top AWS re:Invent Sessions to Watch Out For
AWS Marketplace updates
Channy Yun, principal developer advocate for AWS, unveiled AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere, saying that the new service would allow organizations to, for the first time, deploy third-party Kubernetes applications from AWS Marketplace on any Kubernetes cluster in any environment. This enables AWS customers to deploy third party Kubernetes applications to on-premises environments using Amazon EKS Anywhere or any customer self-managed Kubernetes cluster in on-premises environments or in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).Â
“With AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere, you can get the same benefits as any other products in AWS Marketplace, including consolidated billing, flexible payment options, and lower pricing for long-term contracts. You can find vetted, security-scanned, third-party Kubernetes applications, manage upgrades with a few clicks, and track all licenses and bills. You can migrate applications between any environment without purchasing duplicate licenses,†Yun said.Â
This is certainly among the most awaited features in AWS Marketplace organizations were looking for. However, that’s not all. On December 1, Chris Grusz, the director of business development, AWS Marketplace and Krish Chellakarai, CISO at Gilead Sciences, will talk about how AWS Marketplace streamlines and accelerates cloud modernization by making it easy to find, buy, deploy, and manage third-party software and data solutions that run on AWS.
The speakers will also talk about how AWS Marketplace accelerates innovation, simplifies procurement, improves governance controls, and optimizes costs to help organizations succeed in the long run. You can also check out a session hosted by Stephen Orban, general manager of Marketplace at AWS, on how AWS Marketplace is transforming the digital supply chain to provide organization leaders access to a wide selection of products at a cost-effective price.
What makes AWS tick?
Amazon Web Services is the oldest of the three top public cloud providers, and also covers more regions than any other provider. Being the first to the game, AWS prides itself for meeting the storage and computing needs of modern enterprises, including public sector customers. But how does the company do it? Peter DeSantis, the senior vice president for Utility Computing and Apps at AWS, will host an insightful session on December 2, detailing how the company has optimized its cloud infrastructure to run some of the world’s most demanding workloads.
To understand how the AWS universe operates and how organizations benefit as a result, you can also watch a session hosted by Jeff Carter, VP of Relational Databases at AWS, in which he explains how AWS helps modernize organizations’ data infrastructure at warp speed with automated migration tools, purpose-built databases, and integrations for analytics and ML. Â
Dave Brown, VP of Amazon EC2 Compute and Networking Services, will also host a session on the same day, detailing the progress AWS made in the last year across networking and content delivery solutions, which are designed to be the most secure, have the highest network availability, deliver consistent high performance, have the broadest global coverage, and help customers run any kind of workload in the cloud.Â
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Understanding AWS Analytics
Doing data analytics right has forever been a major challenge for most organizations. Sifting through billions of data sets using automated tools, arranging them, and deriving business intelligence out of them requires enormous computing resources, a large pool of experienced data scientists, and to ensure the first two, major financial investments. However, with organizations moving much of their data to the cloud, leading cloud services are offering advanced analytics tools to help their customers derive actionable insights with ease and continue to use these tools.
Being the top cloud services provider, AWS offers a suite of data analytics tools for businesses of all sizes. But do businesses really understand how to use these tools optimally? With AWS re:Invent already underway, now’s the time for business decision makers to hear from Rahul Pathak, VP of AWS Analytics, on how AWS Analytics helps with using data to make decisions quickly and gain faster and deeper insights. In his session on December 2, Pathak will talk about how organizations can put their data to work with the best of both data lakes and purpose-built data stores. He’ll also explain how AWS can help customers reimagine old processes with a modern data architecture on AWS.
Top sessions for developers
- Creating the best developer experience
In this session on December 3, Ken Exner, director of AWS Developer Tools, will walk developers through the state of the developer experience, productivity on AWS, and the future of development in the cloud. He will share how developers can make the most of AWS’s practices and patterns for releasing software to the cloud, and will discuss the future of DevOps, automation and release, resiliency, and observability.
- Strategies for continuous security improvements
In a session on December 3, Stephen Schmidt, the chief information security officer at AWS, will run developers through the best practices for security in the cloud, feature updates, and how AWS handles security internally. He will also discuss the potential future of tooling for security, identity, privacy, and compliance.
- Automating cross-account CI/CD pipelines
In this session on December 2, Matteo Rinaudo, senior developer advocate, AWS CloudFormation at AWS, will explain why using a multi-account approach is the best method for building a deployment strategy for your applications. Rinaudo will share with the developer community examples of multi-account deployment using infrastructure-as-code (IaC) services such as the AWS CDK, AWS CodePipeline, and AWS CloudFormation. He will also share a real-world customer use case that is deploying at scale across hundreds of AWS accounts.
- Securing the software delivery lifecycle
Curtis Risse, the principal solutions architect for Container, Hybrid & Modernization at AWS, will, in this session on December 3, describe ways developers can secure their AWS CI/CD pipelines. He will share the best practices to incorporate security checkpoints across various pipeline stages, security event management, and aggregation of vulnerability findings into a unified display. The session will also include instructions on how DevOps teams can combine best practices, processes, and tools to enhance their ability to deliver applications and services securely.Â
How to Attend the AWS re:Invent Conference?
Unlike last year’s conference which was conducted entirely virtually, this year’s edition of AWS re:Invent is being conducted for both physical attendees and those interested in checking out the sessions online. However, considering all tickets to in person events are already sold out, you can still enjoy all the sessions you wish to attend by registering for free on AWS’ websiteOpens a new window dedicated to the annual conference.Â
What were your top takeaways from this year’s annual AWS re:Invent conference? Tell us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!