AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS BuilderCards at re:Invent 2024, AWS Community Day, Amazon Bedrock, vector databases, and more (Nov 18, 2024)

This week, we wrapped up the final 2024 Latin America Amazon Web Services (AWS) Community Days of the year in Brazil, with multiple parallel events taking place. In Goiânia, we had Marcelo Palladino, senior developer advocate, and Marcelo Paiva, AWS Community Builder, as keynote speakers. Florianópolis feature Ana Cunha, senior developer advocate, and in Santiago de Chile, I had the honor to share the stage with Rossana Suarez, AWS Container Hero, as keynote speakers. These events, organized by communities for communities, provide opportunities to network, learn something new, and immerse yourself in the community. In a community, everyone grows together, and no one is left behind.

AWS Lambda celebrates its 10th anniversary, the service that introduced me to AWS and remains my favorite. Born from customer needs, it revolutionized cloud computing by allowing code execution without server management. Since its inception, documented in this LinkedIn post by Dr. Werner Vogels, Chief Technology Officer at Amazon.com, through the original PR/FAQ document, the service has grown significantly, introducing features such as 1ms billing precision and support for 10GB memory. Thank you AWS Lambda, here’s to many more anniversaries.

Amazon invests $110 million to support AI research at universities using Trainium chips. The initiative provides computing resources using AWS Trainium chips, enabling researchers to develop new AI architectures and machine learning innovations that will be open-sourced for broader advancement. Check out the Linkedin post by Matt Garman, CEO at AWS.

Last week’s launches
AWS BuilderCards second edition at re:Invent 2024 – Jeff Barr announced the launch of the second edition of AWS BuilderCards at re:Invent 2024. It includes improvements to the design and game mechanics, plus a new add-on pack on generative AI. Over 15,000 sets have been distributed at previous events, with excellent user feedback. They’ll be available for online purchase after re:Invent.

Amazon EventBridge announces up to 94% improvement in end-to-end latency for Event Buses – Amazon EventBridge has improved end-to-end latency for Event Buses by up to 94%, reducing average latency from 2235.23ms (measured in January 2023) to 129.33ms (measured in August 2024 at P99). This enhancement enables faster processing for time-sensitive applications such as fraud detection, industrial automation, and gaming across all AWS Regions where Amazon EventBridge is available, including the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, at no additional cost to you.

Introducing resource control policies (RCPs), a new type of authorization policy in AWS Organizations – Resource control policies (RCPs), a new authorization policy in AWS Organizations. RCPs allow centralized control over maximum permissions granted to resources, complementing service control policies (SCPs) that control permissions for principals. RCPs can restrict external access to resources like Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets, enforcing a data perimeter across the organization.

Replicate changes from databases to Apache Iceberg tables using Amazon Data Firehose (in preview) – A new preview capability in Amazon Data Firehose that captures and replicates database changes to Apache Iceberg tables on Amazon S3. This feature supports PostgreSQL and MySQL databases, providing a simple solution to stream database updates without impacting performance. It automatically handles data partitioning and schema evolution, eliminating the need for complex ETL processes.

Amazon S3 now supports up to 1 million buckets per AWS account– Amazon S3 has increased its default bucket quota from 100 to 10,000 per AWS account. Customers can now request increases up to 1 million buckets. The first 2,000 buckets are free, with a small monthly fee applying thereafter for additional buckets.

Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) reduces prices by up to 75% – Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra) announces significant price reductions of up to 75%. The service reduces on-demand mode pricing by up to 56% for single-region and 65% for multi-region usage. Time-to-live (TTL) delete prices are also reduced by 75%.

Centrally managing root access for customers using AWS Organizations – AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) launches a new capability for centrally managing root access in AWS Organizations. This feature allows security teams to remove long-term root credentials from member accounts and use temporary, task-scoped root sessions for specific actions. The solution enhances security by eliminating permanent root credentials while maintaining the ability to perform necessary privileged operations.

Amazon DynamoDB reduces prices for on-demand throughput and global tables – Amazon DynamoDB announces significant price reductions, cutting on-demand mode throughput costs by 50% and global tables by up to 67%. Multi-region replicated writes now match single-region pricing. These changes make on-demand mode the recommended choice for most DynamoDB workloads.

Amazon Q Developer plugins for Datadog and Wiz now generally available – Amazon Q Developer now offers plugins for Datadog and Wiz services, allowing users to access these partners features directly through the AWS Console. Users can query information using natural language commands like @datadog or @wiz to get real-time updates and security insights.

Other AWS blog posts
Here are some additional projects and blog posts that you might find interesting:

Introducing Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large in Amazon SageMaker JumpStart – This powerful 8.1 billion parameter model enables high-quality, photorealistic image generation from text prompts. Customers can seamlessly deploy and use the model in Amazon SageMaker JumpStart, benefiting from Amazon SageMaker security and machine learning operations (MLOps) capabilities.

Transcribe, translate, and summarize live streams in your browser with AWS AI and generative AI services – This blog post explains how we developed a Chrome extension that uses AI services to enhance live streaming experiences. The extension use Amazon Transcribe, Amazon Translate, and Amazon Bedrock to provide real-time transcription, translation, and summarization of live streams directly in the browser. It supports over 50 languages for transcription and 75 for translation, making content globally accessible.

Simplify automotive damage processing with Amazon Bedrock and vector databases –This blog post presents a solution combining Amazon Bedrock and vector databases to streamline automotive damage assessment. The system uses AI to analyze vehicle damage images, provide cost estimates, and match with similar cases from existing datasets. It use Anthropic’s Claude 3 and Amazon Titan Multimodal Embeddings, for efficient, accurate processing.

Revolutionize trip planning with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Location Service – Amazon Bedrock and Amazon OpenSearch Service vector databases combine to automate automotive damage assessment, using AI to analyze images and match them with historical data for accurate repair estimates.

Upcoming AWS events
Check your calendars and sign up for upcoming AWS events:

AWS Community Days – Join community-led conferences featuring technical discussions, workshops, and hands-on labs driven by expert AWS users and industry leaders from around the world. Upcoming AWS Community Days are scheduled for November 23 in Indonesia, and on December 14 in Kochi, India.

Browse all upcoming AWS led in-person and virtual events and developer-focused events.

Create your AWS Builder ID and reserve your alias. Builder ID is a universal login credential that gives users access to AWS tools and resources, including over 600 free training courses, community features, and developer tools such as Amazon Q Developer beyond the AWS Management Console.

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

Thanks to Odina Jacobs for the AWS Community Chile photo.

— Eli

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!