AWS re:Invent 2020 – Top Announcements

Below are the major 2020 re:Invent launch and preview announcements covered by our dedicated team of AWS News bloggers / developer advocates from around the globe. For a complete overview of all re:Invent 2020 launches, see the full list here.

Plus, don’t miss our liveblog recaps of all the re:Invent 2020 keynotes:

(This post was last updated: 12:14 p.m., PST, Dec. 18.)

Analytics

New – Amazon QuickSight Q Answers Natural-Language Questions About Business Data
Today, we are happy to announce the preview of Amazon QuickSight Q, a Natural Language Query (NLQ) feature powered by machine learning (ML). With Q, business users can now use QuickSight to ask questions about their data using everyday language and receive accurate answers in seconds.

AWS Marketplace

Managed Entitlements in AWS License Manager Streamlines License Tracking and Distribution
Starting today, you can use managed entitlements, a new feature of AWS License Manager that lets you distribute licenses, automate software deployments quickly, and track licenses – all from a single, central account.

AWS Marketplace Now Offers Professional Services
Now with AWS Marketplace, customers can not only find and buy third-party software but also the professional services needed to support the full lifecycle of those products, including planning, deployment and support.

AWS Well-Architected

New – SaaS Lens in AWS Well-Architected Tool
The AWS Well-Architected Framework started in 2015 as a single whitepaper but has expanded to include domain-specific lenses, hands-on labs, and the AWS Well-Architected Tool. Now, to help accelerate building Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, the AWS SaaS Factory team has led an effort to build a new AWS Well-Architected SaaS Lens.

Compute

New – AWS Systems Manager Fleet Manager
Fleet Manager is a new console-based experience that enables systems administrators to view and administer their fleets of managed instances from a single location, in an operating-system-agnostic manner, without needing to resort to remote connections with SSH or RDP.

New – Use Amazon EC2 Mac Instances to Build and Test macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS Apps
Over the last couple of years, AWS users have told us that they want to be able to run macOS on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). We’ve asked a lot of questions to learn more about their needs, and today we introduce you to the new Mac instance!

re:Invent 2020 Pre-announcements for Tuesday, December 1
Here’s a sneak peek at some good things to come, including: AWS Outpost Servers, Amazon ECS Anywhere and Amazon EKS Anywhere.

Coming Soon – Amazon EC2 G4ad Instances Featuring AMD GPUs for Graphics Workloads
Customers with high performance graphic workloads, such as those in game streaming, animation, and video rendering, are always looking for higher performance at less cost. Today, we announce that new Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances in the G4 instance family will be available soon to improve performance and reduce cost for graphics-intensive workloads.

Coming Soon: EC2 C6gn Instances – 100 Gbps Networking with AWS Graviton2 Processors
Today, we’re announcing an addition to our Arm-based Graviton2 portfolio with C6gn instances that deliver up to 100 Gbps network bandwidth, up to 38 Gbps Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) bandwidth, up to 40% higher packet processing performance, and up to 40% better price/performance versus comparable current generation x86-based network optimized instances.

EC2 Update – D3 / D3en Dense Storage Instances
We have launched several generations of EC2 instances with dense storage including the HS1 in 2012 and the D2 in 2015. Today we are launching the D3 and D3en instances. Like their predecessors, they give you access to massive amounts of low-cost on-instance HDD storage.

New – Amazon EC2 R5b Instances Provide 3x Higher EBS Performance
R5 instances are designed for memory-intensive applications such as high-performance databases, distributed web scale in-memory caches, in-memory databases, real time big data analytics, and other enterprise applications. Today, we announce the new R5b instance, which provides the best network-attached storage performance available on EC2.

New for AWS Lambda – 1ms Billing Granularity Adds Cost Savings
Since Lambda was launched in 2014, pricing has been based on the number of times code is triggered (requests) and the number of times code executes, rounded up to the nearest 100ms (duration). Starting today, we are rounding up duration to the nearest millisecond with no minimum execution time.

In the Works – 3 More AWS Local Zones in 2020, and 12 More in 2021
We launched the first AWS Local Zone in Los Angeles last December, and added a second one (also in Los Angeles) in August of 2020. With 3 more available today and 12 planned next year, we are choosing the target cities with the goal of allowing you to provide access with single-digit millisecond latency to the vast majority of users in the Continental United States.

New for AWS Lambda – Container Image Support
With Lambda, you upload your code and run it without thinking about servers. Many customers enjoy the way this works, but if you’ve invested in container tooling for your development workflows, it’s not easy to use the same approach to build applications using Lambda. To help you with that, you can now package and deploy Lambda functions as container images of up to 10 GB in size.

How to Use Amazon CloudWatch Lambda Insights to Improve Operational Visibility
We announced CloudWatch Lambda Insights as a public preview this past October for customers looking to gain deeper operational oversight and visibility into the behavior of their Lambda functions. Today, we’re happy to announce that CloudWatch Lambda Insights is now generally available.

New – Fully Serverless Batch Computing with AWS Batch Support for AWS Fargate
We launched AWS Batch on December 2016 as a fully managed batch computing service that enables developers, scientists, and engineers to easily and efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS.

Containers

Amazon EKS Distro: The Kubernetes Distribution Used by Amazon EKS
We have learned a lot while providing Amazon EKS at AWS and have developed a deep understanding of how to deliver Kubernetes with operational security, stability, and reliability. Today we are sharing Amazon EKS Distro, which we built using that knowledge. EKS Distro is a distribution of the same version of Kubernetes deployed by Amazon EKS, which you can use to manually create your own Kubernetes clusters anywhere you choose.

Amazon ECR Public: A New Public Container Registry
You have long been able to host private container images on AWS with Amazon Elastic Container Registry (Amazon ECR), and now with the release of Amazon Elastic Container Registry Public, you can host public ones too, enabling anyone (with or without an AWS account) to browse and pull your published containers.

Preview of AWS Proton – Automated Management for Container and Serverless Deployments
Maintaining hundreds – or sometimes thousands – of microservices with constantly changing infrastructure resources and configurations is a challenging task for even the most capable teams. AWS Proton enables infrastructure teams to define standard templates centrally and make them available for developers in their organization. This allows infrastructure teams to manage and update infrastructure without impacting developer productivity.

Customer Engagement

Amazon Connect – Now Smarter and More Integrated With Third-Party Tools
We launched Amazon Connect in 2017 and, since then, thousands of customers have created their own contact centers in the cloud. Connect makes it easy for non-technical customers to design interaction flows, manage agents, and track performance metrics. Today, we announce a new set of capabilities to make Connect smarter and more integrated with third-party tools.

Developer Tools

AWS CloudShell – Command-Line Access to AWS Resources
Today we are launching AWS CloudShell, with the goal of making the process of getting to an AWS-enabled shell prompt simple and secure, with as little friction as possible.

Front-End Web & Mobile

Amazon Location – Add Maps and Location Awareness to Your Applications
Priced at a fraction of common alternatives, Amazon Location Service gives you access to maps and location-based services from multiple providers on an economical, pay-as-you-go basis.

New AWS Amplify Admin UI Helps You Develop App Backends, No Cloud Experience Required
With Amplify Admin UI, developers can build complex and feature-rich apps by focusing on their domain-specific data model instead of spending hours deploying and stitching together cloud infrastructure.

Internet of Things

Announcing AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 – With an Open Source Edge Runtime and New Developer Capabilities
AWS IoT Greengrass 2.0 is a new version of AWS IoT Greengrass that makes it easy for edge device builders to build, deploy, and manage intelligent device software.

New – FreeRTOS Long Term Support to Provide Years of Feature Stability
FreeRTOS is an open source, real-time operating system for microcontrollers that makes small, low-power edge devices easy to program, deploy, secure, connect, and manage.

New – AWS IoT Core for LoRaWAN to Connect, Manage, and Secure LoRaWAN Devices at Scale
This new, fully-managed feature allows AWS IoT Core customers to connect and manage wireless devices that use low-power long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN) connectivity with the AWS Cloud.

Machine Learning

New Amazon SageMaker Clarify Detects Bias and Increases the Transparency of Machine Learning Models
SageMaker Clarify is a new capability of Amazon SageMaker that helps customers detect bias in machine learning models, and increase transparency by helping explain model behavior to stakeholders and customers.

Amazon HealthLake Stores, Transforms, and Analyzes Health Data in the Cloud
Amazon HealthLake uses machine learning models to normalize health data from different silos so healthcare and life sciences customers can extract meaningful medical information from a central, secure data lake in the AWS Cloud.

Amazon SageMaker JumpStart Simplifies Access to Pre-Built Models and Machine Learning Solutions
SageMaker JumpStart accelerates your machine learning workflows with one-click access to popular model collections and end-to-end solutions that solve common use cases. This new capability of Amazon SageMaker makes it easy for experienced practitioners and beginners alike to quickly deploy and evaluate models and solutions, saving days or even weeks of work.

AWS Audit Manager Simplifies Audit Preparation
Audit Manager is a fully managed service that provides prebuilt frameworks for common industry standards and regulations, and automates the continual collection of evidence to help you in preparing for an audit.

Managed Data Parallelism in Amazon SageMaker Simplifies Training on Large Datasets
Amazon SageMaker now supports a new data parallelism library that makes it easier to train models on datasets that may be as large as hundreds or thousands of gigabytes. Up to 90% of GPU resources can now be used for training, rather than for data transfer.

Introducing Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler, a Visual Interface to Prepare Data for Machine Learning
SageMaker Data Wrangler is a new capability of Amazon SageMaker that makes it faster for data scientists and engineers to prepare data for machine learning applications by using a visual interface.

New- Amazon DevOps Guru Helps Identify Application Errors and Fixes
Today, we are announcing Amazon DevOps Guru, a fully managed operations service that makes it easy for developers and operators to improve application availability by automatically detecting operational issues and recommending fixes.

Store, Discover, and Share Machine Learning Features with Amazon SageMaker Feature Store
SageMaker Feature Store is a new capability of Amazon SageMaker that makes it easy for data scientists and machine learning engineers to securely store, discover and share curated data used in training and prediction workflows.

Profile Your Machine Learning Training Jobs With Amazon SageMaker Debugger
Amazon SageMaker Debugger can now profile machine learning models, making it much easier to identify and fix training issues caused by hardware resource usage.

Amazon SageMaker Pipelines Brings DevOps Capabilities to your Machine Learning Projects
Amazon SageMaker Pipelines brings in best-in-class DevOps practices to your machine learning projects. This new capability makes it easy for data scientists and ML developers to create automated and reliable end-to-end ML pipelines. As usual with SageMaker, all infrastructure is fully managed, and doesn’t require any work on your side.

Amazon SageMaker Edge Manager Simplifies Operating Machine Learning Models on Edge Devices
SageMaker Edge Manager makes it easy for machine learning edge developers to use the same familiar tools in the cloud or on edge devices. It reduces the time and effort required to get models to production, while continuously monitoring and improving model quality across your device fleet.

Preview: Amazon Lookout for Metrics, an Anomaly Detection Service for Monitoring the Health of Your Business
Amazon Lookout for Metrics is a new service that uses machine learning to detect anomalies in your metrics, helping you proactively monitor the health of your business, diagnose issues, and find opportunities quickly – with no machine learning experience required.

Amazon Lookout for Equipment Analyzes Historical Sensor Data to Help Detect Equipment Failure
Companies that operate industrial equipment are constantly working to improve operational efficiency and avoid unplanned downtime due to component failure. Amazon Lookout for Equipment is an API-based machine learning (ML) service that detects abnormal equipment behavior and helps companies monitor the health of their assets.

Amazon Lookout for Vision Simplifies Defect Detection for Manufacturing
Lookout for Vision is a new machine learning service that helps increase industrial product quality and reduce operational costs by automating visual inspection of product defects across production processes. Using Lookout for Vision, you can detect damages to manufactured parts, identify missing components or parts, and uncover underlying process-related issues in your manufacturing lines.

AWS Panorama Appliance – Bringing Computer Vision Applications to the Edge
Today we preview the AWS Panorama Appliance and its associated console. You can now develop a computer vision model using Amazon SageMaker and then deploy it to a AWS Panorama Appliance that can then run the model on video feeds from multiple network and IP cameras.

Amazon Monitron is a Simple and Cost-Effective Service Enabling Predictive Maintenance
Monitron is an easy and cost-effective condition monitoring service that allows you to monitor the condition of equipment in your facilities, enabling the implementation of a predictive maintenance program.

New for Amazon CodeGuru – Python Support, Security Detectors, and Memory Profiling
Amazon CodeGuru is a developer tool that helps you improve your code quality. Today we’re announcing three new features, including support for Python; a new set of detectors for CodeGuru Reviewer to identify security vulnerabilities in your Java code; and a new visualization of memory retention that makes it easier to find memory leaks in your application.

Management & Governance

Announcing Amazon Managed Service for Grafana (in Preview)
Amazon Managed Service for Grafana is a fully managed service that makes it easy to create on-demand, scalable, and secure Grafana workspaces to visualize and analyze your data from multiple sources.

Networking & Content Delivery

New – VPC Reachability Analyzer
As customers expand their footprint on the cloud and deploy increasingly complex network architectures, it can take longer to resolve network connectivity issues caused by misconfiguration. Today, we are happy to announce a network diagnostics tool that troubleshoots reachability between two endpoints in a VPC, or within multiple VPCs.

Storage

New – Amazon S3 Replication Adds Support for Multiple Destination Buckets
S3 Replication (multi-destination) removes the need for you to develop your own solutions to replicate the data across multiple destinations. You can use the flexibility of S3 Replication (multi-destination) to store multiple copies of your data in different storage classes, with different encryption types, or across different accounts depending on its intended use.

Amazon S3 Update – Strong Read-After-Write Consistency
With this S3 update, all S3 GET, PUT, and LIST operations, as well as operations that change object tags, ACLs, or metadata, are now strongly consistent. What you write is what you will read, and the results of a LIST will be an accurate reflection of what’s in the bucket.

Now in Preview – Larger and Faster io2 Block Express EBS Volumes with Higher Throughput
Earlier this year we launched io2 volumes with 100x higher durability and 10x more IOPS/GiB than the earlier io1 volumes. Today we are opening up a preview of io2 Block Express volumes that are designed to deliver even higher performance!

New – Amazon EBS gp3 Volume Lets You Provision Performance Apart From Capacity
When using general purpose SSD gp2 volumes with EBS, performance is associated with storage capacity. Today we announce the new gp3 volume that lets customers increase IOPS and throughput without having to provision additional block storage capacity, paying only for the resources they need.

Quantum Technologies

PennyLane on Braket + Progress Toward Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing + Tensor Network Simulator
We first wrote about Amazon Braket last year and invited you to Get Started with Quantum Computing. Since that launch we have continued to push forward, and today we want to share the latest updates about what we’re doing at both the practical and the theoretical level.

AWS News Blog