AWS Week in Review – August 29, 2022

I’ve just returned from data and machine learning (ML) conferences in Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. It’s been great to chat with customers and developers about the latest technology trends and use cases. This past week has also been packed with launches at AWS.

Last Week’s Launches
Here are some launches that got my attention during the previous week:

Amazon QuickSight announces fine-grained visual embedding. You can now embed individual visuals from QuickSight dashboards in applications and portals to provide key insights to users where they’re needed most. Check out Donnie’s blog post to learn more, and tune into this week’s The Official AWS Podcast episode.

Sample Web App with a Visual

Amazon SageMaker Automatic Model Tuning is now available in the Europe (Milan), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Osaka), and Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Regions. In addition, SageMaker Automatic Model Tuning now reuses SageMaker Training instances to reduce start-up overheads by 20x. In scenarios where you have a large number of hyperparameter evaluations, the reuse of training instances can cumulatively save 2 hours for every 50 sequential evaluations.

Amazon RDS now supports setting up connectivity between your RDS database and EC2 compute instance in one click. Amazon RDS automatically sets up your VPC and related network settings during database creation to enable a secure connection between the EC2 instance and the RDS database.

In addition, Amazon RDS for Oracle now supports managed Oracle Data Guard Switchover and Automated Backups for replicas. With the Oracle Data Guard Switchover feature, you can reverse the roles between the primary database and one of its standby databases (replicas) with no data loss and a brief outage. You can also now create Automated Backups and manual DB snapshots of an RDS for Oracle replica, which reduces the time spent taking backups following a role transition.

Amazon Forecast now supports what-if analyses. Amazon Forecast is a fully managed service that uses ML algorithms to deliver highly accurate time series forecasts.  You can now use what-if analyses to quantify the potential impact of business scenarios on your demand forecasts.

AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region now supports additional AWS services and EC2 instance types – Amazon SageMaker, AWS Application Migration Service, AWS Glue, Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA), and Amazon EC2 X2idn and X2iedn instances are now available in the Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region.

Other AWS News
Here are some additional news, blog posts, and fun code competitions you may find interesting:

Scaling AI and Machine Learning Workloads with Ray on AWS – This past week, I attended Ray Summit in San Francisco, California, and had great conversations with the community. Check out this blog post to learn more about AWS contributions to the scalability and operational efficiency of Ray on AWS.

New AWS Heroes – It’s great to see both new and familiar faces joining the AWS Heroes program, a worldwide initiative that acknowledges individuals who have truly gone above and beyond to share knowledge in technical communities. Get to know them in the blog post!

DFL Bundesliga Data Shootout – DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga launched a code competition, powered by AWS: the Bundesliga Data Shootout. The task: Develop a computer vision model to classify events on the pitch. Join the competition as an individual or in a team and win prizes.

Become an AWS GameDay World Champion – AWS GameDay is an interactive, team-based learning experience designed to put your AWS skills to the test by solving real-world problems in a gamified, risk-free environment. Developers of all skill levels can get in on the action, to compete for worldwide glory, as well as a chance to claim the top prize: an all-expenses-paid trip to AWS re:Invent Las Vegas 2022!

Learn more about the AWS Impact Accelerator for Black Founders from one of the inaugural members of the program in this blog post. The AWS Impact Accelerator is a series of programs designed to help high-potential, pre-seed start-ups led by underrepresented founders succeed.

Upcoming AWS Events
Check your calendars and sign up for these AWS events:

AWS Global Summits – AWS Global Summits are free events that bring the cloud computing community together to connect, collaborate, and learn about AWS.

Registration is open for the following in-person AWS Summits that might be close to you in August and September: Canberra (August 31), Ottawa (September 8), New Delhi (September 9), and Mexico City (September 21–22), Bogotá (October 4), and Singapore (October 6).

AWS Community Days – AWS Community Day events are community-led conferences that deliver a peer-to-peer learning experience, providing developers with a venue for them to acquire AWS knowledge in their preferred way: from one another.

In September, the AWS community will host events in the Bay Area, California (September 9) and in Arlington, Virginia (September 30). In October, you can join Community Days in Amersfoort, Netherlands (October 3), in Warsaw, Poland (October 14), and in Dresden, Germany (October 19).

That’s all for this week. Check back next Monday for another Week in Review! And maybe I’ll see you at the AWS Community Day here in the Bay Area!

– Antje