re:Invent 2021 releases and launches for M&E workloads

With more than 50 launches and announcements of new services and major features during AWS re:Invent 2021, the following is a tailored list of those most relevant for media and entertainment (M&E) workloads. Watch the full Adam Selipsky Keynote here for even more announcements and information.

AWS Private 5G for on-set connectivity
AWS Private 5G is a managed service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale your own private cellular network, with all required hardware and software provided by AWS. Provide high-quality, reliable connectivity at event venues, college campuses, and enterprise facilities. Support data and video communications, security, logistics, and more. Learn more.

Outposts Servers for on-location compute
AWS Outposts servers, a part of the AWS Outposts family, provide local compute and networking services for sites with space and capacity constraints. For M&E customers, this means you can provide on-location/at-venue compute with low-latency, local data processing for sports stats, content production, and live production workloads. Learn more.

Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval for quick retrieval of infrequently accessed media files
Amazon S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is a new Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) Glacier storage class that provides cloud archival storage with milliseconds retrieval for media workloads. It is a cost-effective storage option for rarely accessed media files that can be instantly retrieved when needed. Learn more.

Amazon Personalize Media & Entertainment features
Amazon Personalize has new recommenders that are optimized to deliver personalized experiences for common use cases in Media & Entertainment, including “because you watched”, “more like this”, “top picks for you”, and more. Learn more.

Amazon Personalize launches user segmentation capabilities
Amazon Personalize now offers intelligent user segmentation based on user preferences for and interaction with different products, categories, brands, and more. This can help you drive higher engagement, increase retention through targeted messaging, and improve return on investment. Learn more.

Amazon launches Amazon CloudWatch Evidently for feature experimentation
Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Evidently for feature experimentation and safer launches. CloudWatch Evidently helps remove the guesswork when deciding which features are best for your business, whether a new user experience, machine learning recommendations model, or server-side implementation. Experimental results are presented in a clear way so you don’t need advanced statistical knowledge to interpret them. Learn more.

Amazon launches SageMaker Canvas, a visual, no-code interface to build accurate machine learning models
Amazon SageMaker Canvas provides an intuitive user interface to quickly connect to and access data from disparate sources, and prepare data for building ML models. SageMaker Canvas leverages powerful AutoML technology from Amazon SageMaker, which automatically trains and build models based on your dataset. This allows M&E customers to scale out the number of people that can build models by enabling business analysts to create accurate machine learning (ML) models and generate predictions using a visual, point-and-click interface, no coding required. Learn more.

Introducing Amazon CloudWatch RUM for monitoring applications’ client-side performance
Using CloudWatch RUM, you can view application performance in near real-time across different geolocations, browsers, and devices, allowing for improved performance optimization. You can use CloudWatch RUM’s curated dashboards to view anomalies in an application’s performance including page load steps, core web vitals, and JavaScript and HTTP errors. You can also understand how many user sessions are impacted by an issue and prioritize issues to fix. Learn more.

AWS Local Zones expansion
AWS plans to launch more than 30 new AWS Local Zones in major cities around the world. New AWS Local Zones will be available starting in 2022 in over 21 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, India, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, and South Africa, and join 16 Local Zones across the US, helping you to serve end-users around the world with even lower latency. Learn more.

Site-to-Site Connectivity with AWS Direct Connect SiteLink
AWS Direct Connect SiteLink allows you to connect your sites through Direct Connect locations, without sending your traffic through an AWS Region. There are 108 Direct Connect locations available in 32 countries, located across Africa, Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. Traffic flows from one Direct Connect location to another following the shortest possible path. You no longer need to connect through the closest AWS Region and manage and configure an AWS Transit Gateway for site-to-site network connectivity. Learn more.

Sustainability Pillar for AWS Well-Architected Framework
AWS introduced a new Sustainability Pillar to help organizations measure and improve their workloads using environmental best practices for cloud computing. Similar to the other pillars, the Sustainability Pillar contains questions aimed at evaluating the design, architecture, and implementation of your workloads to reduce their energy consumption and improve their efficiency. The pillar is designed as a tool to track your progress toward policies and best practices that support a more sustainable future, not just a simple checklist. Learn more.

AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) 3.0 is Now Available
Version 3.0 of the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (AWS CAF) is now available. This version represents what we have learned since we released version 2.0, with a focus on digital transformation and an emphasis on the use of data and analytics. The framework starts by identifying six groups of foundational perspectives (Business, People, Governance, Platform, Security, and Operations), totaling 47 discrete capabilities, up from 31 in the previous version. From there it identifies four transformation domains (Technology, Process, Organization, and Product) that must participate in a successful digital transformation. Learn more.