Amanote Optimizes Note-Taking App for Learners, Handling Millions of Queries on AWS

Amanote is helping transform learning in both higher-education and staff training scenarios. Its app makes it easy to add notes and comments to coursework. This includes slide-, PDF- and video-based educational content that is created for learning management systems (LMS). Amanote helps educators and instructors to deliver more interactive lessons, add oral explanations, and gain feedback to help improve course content. For learners, the app boosts learning productivity by making note taking more effective. The app helps to generate color-coded note summaries, and supports note sharing with other learners—both of which help students to enhance their study and revision practice.

The inspiration for Amanote came from the direct experience of founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Adrien Fery, while he was studying for a master’s degree in computer science. He saw a need to digitize note taking to make the learning process more efficient and started to develop a solution. Because of the complex technology requirements of many universities’ legacy IT systems, Fery decided to offer Amanote as a software plugin, so it could be installed easily to avoid the need for lengthy software implementations. The company was launched in 2016, with the new app built entirely on AWS. “We chose AWS because of its superior technology and its broad set of serverless services,” he says. “This gave us all the components we needed to develop a fully serverless environment—with zero compromise.”

When it first launched, Amanote offered a note-taking app that students could download and use independently. In 2020, the company began to work on developing its app so it could be integrated with LMS providers’ software, and the company could offer a comprehensive note-taking solution directly to universities and higher-education institutions—to further enhance the student learning experience and offer more advanced features. For example, by supporting continuous syncing of course content with a student’s notes, even if the course content is updated.

To support this move and aid app development, Amanote applied for AWS Activate funding, which provides AWS credits at no cost to help provide startups with the resources they need to build, launch, and scale on AWS. The program also provided access to education events to help the company find potential new customers and network with peers. Amanote also received support from AWS solution architects to assist with architecture design. “We had access to AWS support, which we didn’t expect as a startup,” says Fery. “With the help of AWS, we’ve developed an affordable solution that’s versatile and easy for students to use.”

Amanote can now scale automatically to accommodate the 20,000 new users it adds each month. It can also set the system to automatically power down during university and college vacations, when usage is low. AWS Lambda sits at the core of the app, handling the 1–3 million queries per customer, per month, that are generated. These queries support several app features. They include setting up user accounts, saving individual notes, and collaborating with fellow students by exchanging information about coursework. “We needed to focus on developing new product features, not managing infrastructure,” says Fery. “Using AWS serverless services means we can free up time to focus on what matters—developing and growing the business.”

All API requests are sent first to Amazon API Gateway, which the company can use to create, maintain, and secure APIs at any scale. This helps ensure that all communications are connected to the right AWS Lambda function. From the start, Amanote has used a cost-effective AWS database solution to store document metadata and manage licensing using Amazon DynamoDB, a serverless, NoSQL, fully managed database with single-digit millisecond performance at any scale.Amanote benefits from high levels of infrastructure security by building on AWS. Machine learning (ML) is employed to quickly expose any threats or unusual user activity, using Amazon GuardDuty, which protects AWS accounts with intelligent threat detection. This assures its customers that the app is secure. The company has achieved low latency connections globally by using AWS Global Infrastructure, which provides a secure, extensive, and reliable global cloud infrastructure for all applications. This means that it can deliver its product to customers worldwide quickly and securely, without making any system changes.

Many of the company’s customers report noticeable results in using the Amanote app, including a key university client in Modena, Italy. “Because of Amanote’s ease of implementation, we’ve been able to get almost immediate results,” says Valeria Folloni, Instructional Designer at the University of Modena. “The dedicated budget was minimal and we got tangible results in a very short time, and we’re continuing to see improvements.”
The next stage of development for Amanote is to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for its app. For internal development work, the company is currently beta testing Amazon Q, a generative AI–powered assistant designed for work that can be tailored to its business. To allow teachers to use their preferred AI large language model, it is also evaluating Amazon Bedrock, to help build and scale generative AI applications with foundation models. It is also starting to test ML enriched data streams, using Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, to load near-real-time streams into analytics services. This will help to automatically detect when students are struggling with coursework—and provide academic and training staff with insights on where improvements can be made.

Amanote now has over 500,000 users in 50 countries across four continents, including Asia, Europe, and the US. With a solid app platform, the company is now launching on AWS Marketplace. “We’ve discovered great benefits using AWS,” says Fery. “The documentation is excellent, AWS services are straightforward to use, and we can always find a solution. Everything we need to do, we can do on AWS.”