AWS Cloud News Round-up: April 2020

April 2020 updates on Amazon AppFlow, AWS DeepComposer, AWS Torchserve, AWS Marketplace and more.

AWS Cloud Updates

New AWS Service: Amazon AppFlow

AWS has launched Amazon AppFlow. This new service seamlessly passes data from one SaaS application (Software as a Service) to another.

Currently, developers spend large amounts of time writing custom integrations to pass data between SaaS applications and AWS services. These Integrations are expensive and often take months to complete.

Amazon AppFlow replaces these integrations, freeing up your development team to work on other critical projects.

AWS DeepComposer Now Generally Available

AWS DeepComposer is now available to all AWS customers. It has also been expanded with the addition of new features.

DeepComposer is powered by Generative Adversarial Networks (aka GANs). This is a neural network architecture built specifically to generate new samples from an existing data set. With DeepComposer, you can train and optimize GAN models to create original music.

The service was launched at AWS re:Invent 2019 and is a creative way to get started with deep learning.

AWS Announces Torchserve

PyTorch is one of the most popular open source libraries for deep learning. With TorchServe, PyTorch users can move their models to production quicker, without having to write custom code.

In addition, Torchserve provides a low latency prediction API and implements default handlers for common applications. The program is a collaboration between AWS and Facebook. It is available as part of the PyTorch open source project.

Cloud and IT News

Jeff Bezos’ Letter to Shareholders

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, has addressed Amazon shareholders in a detailed letter. As well as outlining Amazon’s performance and trajectory during the current COVID-19 crises, the letter looks to the future. In particular, the role AWS is playing in helping to address climate change:

“Along with our use of renewable energy, these factors enable AWS to do the same tasks as traditional data centers with an 88% lower carbon footprint. And don’t think we’re not going to get those last 12 points—we’ll make AWS 100% carbon free through more investments in renewable energy projects” – Jeff Bezos

You can read the full letter to Amazon shareholders here.

AWS Announces More Support for Certification Candidates

With testing centres temporarily closed, AWS is offering additional support for students looking to update or obtain their AWS Certification. These measures include:

AWS Certification extensions
Certification voucher extensions
The provision of online proctoring so students can take exams remotely
Removal of exam cancellation fees

Learn more about how AWS is helping students obtain and retain certification.

AWS Marketplace Available for Vendors in Australia and New Zealand

AWS has opened up its marketplace to Australian and New Zealand independent software vendors. This gives these vendors access to a market of 260,000 users around the globe.

This local launch is the first time that independent software vendors in Australia and New Zealand have had access to the AWS Marketplace and AWS Data Exchange.

The move enables AWS to better support Australian and New Zealand sellers that don’t have overseas entities. Additionally, it expands the numbers of sellers AWS Marketplace can support and opens up a broader range of services for Marketplace customers.

Useful Cloud Resources

Increase your Return on Investment in Cloud

Cloud ROI is about more than just getting value for money on your cloud spend. Cloud is becoming the new normal. Consequently, it’s critical organisations accelerate their adoption to remain competitive in their markets.

Read our article to discover how you can increase your organisation’s ROI on cloud.

Learn the Essentials to Security in the AWS Cloud

Just as cloud changes the way organisations run workloads, it also changes how they need to approach security. This also impacts how they think about AWS Security Training.

But how can you ensure your team has the skills to keep your data and workloads secure?

What sort of training is available?

And, when it comes to security, what is your team’s responsibility and what responsibility belongs to AWS?

Watch our video on AWS Security.

Read our guide to AWS Security.

AWS Summit Online

Tune in to AWS Summit Online on Wednesday, May 13. You’ll discover how cloud technology can help your business to lower costs, improve efficiency, and innovate at scale.

This virtual event is designed to educate you about the skills needed to design, deploy, and operate infrastructure and applications. Sessions are delivered by AWS subject matter experts and customers who have successfully built solutions on AWS.