AWS Big Data Blog

Amazon Redshift at re:Invent 2019

The annual AWS re:Invent learning conference is an exciting time full of new product and program launches. At the first re:Invent conference in 2012, AWS announced Amazon Redshift. Since then, tens of thousands of customers have started using Amazon Redshift as their cloud data warehouse. In 2019, AWS shared several significant launches and dozens of sessions. This post presents highlights of what happened with Amazon Redshift at re:Invent 2019.

Andy Jassy’s AWS re:Invent 2019 keynote

When Andy Jassy takes the stage to talk about what’s new at AWS, he launches the new Amazon Redshift node type, RA3 with managed storage; the new Federated Query (preview) feature, Export to Data Lake; and Advanced Query Accelerator (AQUA) (preview) for Amazon Redshift. Watch AWS re:Invent 2019 – Keynote with Andy Jassy on YouTube, or jump ahead for the Amazon RedShift announcements.

Deep dive and best practices for Amazon Redshift

Every year the Amazon Redshift deep dive session rates highly, and people continue to watch and re-watch it after the event. This year was no different. Specialist Solution Architects Harshida Patel and Tony Gibbs take an in-depth look at best practices for data warehousing with Amazon Redshift. It’s a must-see for existing Amazon Redshift users. Watch AWS re:Invent 2019: Deep dive and best practices for Amazon Redshift (ANT418) on YouTube.

What’s new with Amazon Redshift, featuring Yelp and Workday

With over 200 new features and capabilities launched in the last 18 months, there’s a lot to cover in a session about what’s new with Amazon Redshift. Join one of the Product Managers driving RA3 and managed storage, Himanshu Raja, to catch up on the recent performance, concurrency, elasticity, and manageability enhancements behind Amazon Redshift’s record price-to-performance ratio. You also get more insight into the architectural evolution of Amazon Redshift with RA3 and managed storage, and how it uses machine learning to create a self-optimizing data warehouse. In the second half of the session, you hear from Steven Moy, a software engineer at Yelp, about how Amazon Redshift’s latest features have helped Yelp achieve optimization and scale for an organization with an enormous about of data and sophisticated analytics. Watch AWS re:Invent 2019: What’s new with Amazon Redshift, featuring Yelp (ANT320-R1) on YouTube.

The session repeated with Michalis Petropoulos, Director of Engineering, and Erol Guney of Workday. Watch the full session to get a slightly different take on what’s new, or jump to the customer presentation to hear from Erol Guney, Architect, Data Platform, at Workday about how Amazon Redshift empowers their Data as a Service product team to focus on architecture goals and business logic.

Migrate your data warehouse to the cloud in record time, featuring Nielsen and Fannie Mae

In this session, you learn about important concepts and tips for migrating your legacy on-premise data warehouse to the cloud. You hear from Tejas Desai, VP of Technology at Neilsen, about their migration journey and benefits. Watch AWS re:Invent 2019: Migrate your data warehouse to the cloud, featuring Nielsen (ANT334-R1) on YouTube.

The repeat of this session features Amy Tseng from Fannie Mae. If you don’t want to listen to Tony’s overview again, skip ahead to learn how Fannie Mae embraced a data lake architecture with Amazon Redshift for analytics to save costs, maximize performance, and scale. Amy’s presentation was a crowd favorite, with some of the most positive customer feedback and a wealth of great information about how Fannie Mae managed their migration.

How to scale data analytics with Amazon Redshift, featuring Duolingo and Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment

Data is growing fast, and so is the value that business users need to gain from business data. When AWS first announced Amazon Redshift in 2012, it could handle up to 640 TB of compressed data. It can now scale to 8 PB of compressed data. Learn more about Amazon Redshift’s unique ability to deliver top performance at the lowest and most predictable cost from Vinay Shukla, Principal Product Manager. This is an especially important session if you want to learn more about the newest Amazon Redshift node type RA3. You also hear from Jonathan Burket of Duolingo about their experience in the preview of RA3 nodes and how Duolingo uses Amazon Redshift. Duolingo is a wildly popular language-learning platform and the most downloaded education app in the world, with over 300 million users. Enabling data-driven decisions with A/B tests and ad hoc analysis has been a driver of their success. Watch AWS re:Invent 2019: How to scale data analytics with Amazon Redshift (ANT335-R2) on YouTube.

The repeat session features Redshift Product Manager Maor Kleider with an in-depth case study from Matt Howell, Executive Director, Analytics, and Kurt Larson, Technical Director, Analytics, at Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment. Watch the full session for another perspective about how to scale with the latest Amazon Redshift features, with unique insights about analytics across Amazon Redshift and your data lake. You can also jump to the customer presentation. Not only is this session packed with interesting insights about how data analytics drives the success of games like Batman and Mortal Kombat, it also has an action-packed trailer about all the awesome Warner Brothers games.

If you prefer to see a session without the announcements from the keynote and with demos, watch Debu Panda showcase the new Amazon Redshift console and share practical tips about using Amazon Redshift.

Amazon Redshift reimagined: RA3 and AQUA

This embargoed session is the first opportunity to learn more about AQUA for Amazon Redshift, and how it improves query performance to up to 10 times faster. Britt Johnston, Director of Product Management, kicks off with an intro into the next generation of Amazon Redshift, and Senior Principal Engineer Andy Caldwell jumps in to share the origin and vision of the exciting new technology. The enthusiasm Andy feels about sharing AQUA with customers for the first time is palpable. Watch AWS re:Invent 2019: [NEW LAUNCH!] Amazon Redshift reimagined: RA3 and AQUA (ANT230) on YouTube.

State-of-the-art cloud data warehousing, featuring Asurion and Comcast

This session serves as a great introduction to cloud data warehousing at AWS, with insightful presentations from a different customer in each delivery. You can hear from Asurion about how they use data analytics to serve over 300 million people with excellent customer satisfaction scores. You learn about how to use AWS services with Amazon Redshift and why Asurion believes in their data lake-based architecture. Watch AWS re:Invent 2019: State-of-the-art cloud data warehousing, featuring Asurion (ANT213-R1) on YouTube.

In the repeat session, Rajat Garg, Senior Principal Architect from Comcast, talks about moving to Amazon Redshift from a legacy on-premise Oracle Exadata environment. He shares their strategy, approach, and performance improvements.

What’s next and more information

In addition to these sessions at re:Invent, there are also hands-on workshops, intimate builder roundtables, and interactive chalk talks that weren’t recorded.

Keep exploring the following links for more information about new releases:

We hope to see you in Las Vegas for re:Invent 2020, or at one of the hundreds of other AWS virtual and in-person events running around the world. For more information, see AWS Events and Webinars.

About the authors

Corina Radovanovich leads product marketing for cloud data warehousing at AWS.