Another year at AWS re:Invent has come and gone. As usual it was a jam packed show full of exciting announcements, great keynotes, sessions, and interesting conversations. In case you couldn’t make it to Vegas this year or could use a summary of what you missed while you were running between sessions, here are some of the highlights from our week in the desert.
IoT, Machine Learning, and HybridThe week started off with a heavy focus on AWS’ increasing support for IoT, including announcements of new features like AWS IoT SiteWise , AWS IoT Device Tester , and AWS IoT Events , among others. From there the focus shifted to machine learning with a lot of discussions around AWS SageMaker, Amazon Elastic Inference, and the new AWS Inferentia processor which is designed to lower the cost of machine learning processes. Many at the show were buzzing about the announcement of AWS DeepRacer , a 1/18th scale “race car” that is meant to help developers get started with reinforcement learning and the accompanying time trials at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.
One of the announcements that will surely have a lasting impact was the introduction of AWS Outposts . A clear indication that AWS is ramping up its focus on the enterprise and fully embracing hybrid cloud, AWS Outposts brings AWS infrastructure on-prem with VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts or an AWS native variant that lets users leverage the same APIs and control planes used in AWS cloud, on-prem.
Security and DevOpsFinally we get to the areas we’re most excited about at Threat Stack ― DevOps and security! In the first of many new features and services that will help DevOps and security teams, AWS Firecracker was announced on Monday. Firecracker is an open source virtualization tool written in the Rust programming language that will help AWS users create, manage, and secure multi-tenant containers. The open source community will also benefit from this contribution and be confident of success given that Firecracker has been in production as the virtualization backbone for AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda services.
Later in the week AWS also announced the addition of container products in AWS Marketplace , the much anticipated AWS Security Hub , a user governance baselining tool in AWS Control Tower , and many other features and services that will be a boon for SecOps teams. All of these announcements show an understanding that organizations are struggling to secure and manage their cloud infrastructure, partly because of the sheer number of services and features available. We are looking forward to continuing our work with AWS as we help our customers achieve complete security observability within their cloud infrastructure.
Speaking of security observability, Threat Stack customer, Chris Murdock, Security Architect at Conga , gave a great talk on “Security Observability: Democratizing Security in the Cloud.” In this session, Chris discussed how Conga extends visibility into next-gen infrastructure by building measurement directly into systems, factoring in security-related KPIs and OKRs. The outcome for customers of any size is that they are able to securely scale their infrastructure while continuing to enable innovation at the speed of business. Make sure you check back for the recording so you can learn how Conga does this.
Next UpWhile many of us are still recovering from re:Invent (another great re:Play after-party featuring the return of Skrillex may have something to do with it), we wanted to close with one last exciting announcement coming out of this year’s show: AWS re:Inforce 2019 , an entire show dedicated to AWS security is taking place in Boston on June 25 and 26, 2019. Make sure to mark your calendars, and we’ll see everyone in Boston in a few short months!
Book a DemoIf you missed out on the show this year or didn’t get a chance to stop by our booth, book a demo today to learn how you can achieve complete security observability within your AWS infrastructure.