AWS Step Functions is a low-code, visual workflow service that developers use to build distributed applications, automate IT and business processes, and build data and machine learning pipelines using AWS services. Workflows manage failures, retries, parallelization, service integrations, and observability so developers can focus on higher-value business logic.
Build workflows with 200+ AWS services and 9,000 API actions
Benefits
Build and deploy rapidly
Get started quickly with Workflow Studio, a simple drag-and-drop interface. With Step Functions, you can express complex business logic as low-code, event-driven workflows that connect services, systems or people within minutes.
Write less integration code
Compose AWS resources from over 200 services including Lambda, ECS, Fargate, Batch, DynamoDB, SNS, SQS, SageMaker, EventBridge, or EMR into resilient business workflows, data pipelines, or applications.
Build fault-tolerant and stateful workflows
Step Functions manages state, checkpoints, and restarts for you to make sure that your workflows run in order and as expected. Built-in try/catch, retry, and rollback capabilities deal with errors and exceptions automatically based on your defined business logic.
Designed for reliability and scale
Step Functions offers two workflow types - Standard or Express - that can be used depending on your specific use case. Standard Workflows are used to manage long-running workloads. Express Workflows support high-volume event processing workloads.
How it works
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Step Functions Workflow Studio
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Overview
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Error-Handing Pattern
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Branching & Human Interaction Patterns
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Saga Pattern
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Step Functions Workflow Studio
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Overview
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Error-Handing Pattern
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Branching & Human Interaction Patterns
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Saga Pattern
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Use cases
Automate Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process
Ensure that long-running, multiple ETL jobs run in order and complete successfully, instead of manually orchestrating those jobs or maintaining a separate application.
Prepare Data for Machine Learning (ML)
To enable machine learning, source data must be collected, processed, and normalized so that ML modelling systems like Amazon SageMaker can train on that data. Step Functions makes it easier to sequence the steps it takes to automate your ML pipeline.
Orchestrate microservices
Use Step Functions to combine multiple AWS Lambda functions into responsive serverless applications and microservices. You can also orchestrate data and services that run on Amazon EC2 instances, containers, or on-premises servers
Liberty Mutual
Liberty Mutual created an event-driven workflow with Step Functions in which the data feeds from each line of business are transformed into a series of events, or financial transactions. Learn how they are processed one million transactions monthly for just $60.00.
Freebird
Use Step Functions to combine multiple AWS Lambda functions into responsive serverless applications and microservices, without having to write code for workflow logic, parallel processes, error handling, timeouts, or retries. You can also orchestrate data and services that run on Amazon EC2 instances, containers, or on-premises servers.
The Guardian
The Guardian orchestrated data flow between multiple systems saving technical teams 4 hours a week in manual account deletion. Learn how the team was able to maintain accurate and automated records with Step Functions resulting in on-time newspaper delivery for thousands of subscribers.
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Customers
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Customer videos
Coinbase
Serverless Deployment Pipeline
Hear how Coinbase uses AWS Step Functions and AWS Lambda to perform hundreds of deployments a day, and how Step Functions and Lambda have enabled the team to achieve a 97% success rate for deployments.
Paessler AG
VPC mass creation
Greg Campion, Systems Admin at Paessler AG, shares how they use AWS Lambda and AWS Step Functions to conduct and monitor VPC mass creation for their PRTG Network Monitoring product.
Zalora
Refreshing SAP S/4HANA
Sunil Kumar from Zalora explains how their serverless automation with AWS Step Functions, AWS System Manager, and AWS Lambda has reduced their SAP system refresh time from 5 days to 2 days.
Trulia Rentals
Serverless lead management
Hear how Trulia Rentals adopted a serverless approach to accepting, processing, and analyzing customer leads as they migrate from their legacy customer leads system.
Recruit Lifestyle
Elastic machine learning
Yu Yamada, Big Data Architect, explains how they built automated, scalable and robust machine learning pipelines with AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions, AWS Batch and Amazon DynamoDB.
Fox Network
Media supply chains
Fox Network shared media processing workloads across their existing facility and AWS to dynamically provision and scale resources and automate the flow of their entire media supply chain.
ClearDATA
Security event processing
ClearDATA built a solution that provides their customers additional AWS security controls to check that changes made on the customer's account are in accordance with their security policy.
MirrorWeb
Serverless website archival
MirrorWeb addressed the challenges on long running tasks during a website archival process by leveraging Step Functions and Lambda to launch and delegate a task to an EC2 instance or Docker container via ECS.
nib health funds
Auditable access pipelines
Regulated workloads need more than rock solid security to be compliant. Adam from CMD Solutions and Mat from nib health funds share a clever way to use Step Functions to automatically spin up as well tear down security posture.
Zapproved
Automated data processing
Zapproved helps customers in the legal industry streamline e-discovery. Lee from Zapproved demonstrates how they use Step Functions, Lambda, and SQS to automate data processing. To learn more, read the case study.
DuPont Pioneer
Agronomy on the cloud
Encirca Services by DuPont Pioneer partners with farmers in the field to help them deliver optimal crop yields. They built a cloud based collaborative platform for farmers to simulate crop growth and manage soil nitrogen levels.
What's new
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Introducing AWS Step Functions Express Workflows
Express Workflows are a new type of AWS Step Functions workflow type that cost-effectively orchestrate AWS compute, database, and messaging services at event rates greater than 100,000 events per second.
AWS Step Functions Adds Support for Dynamic Parallelism in Workflows
AWS Step Functions now supports dynamic parallelism, so you can optimize the performance and efficiency of application workflows.
AWS Step Functions Adds Support for Nested Workflows
AWS Step Functions now allows you to orchestrate more complex processes by composing modular, reusable workflows.
See all announcements »
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