Re:Invent 2019 – We *really* should have gone back to the room – Episode 51

Your co-hosts celebrate the one-year anniversary of the podcast by returning to the place where it all started – AWS Re:Invent. Joining us once again is Ryan Lucas (@ryron01) as we recap the largest week in Cloud.

A big thanks to this week’s sponsors:

• Foghorn Consulting, which provides full stack cloud solutions with a focus on strategy, planning, and execution for enterprises seeking to take advantage of the transformative capabilities of AWS, Google Cloud and Azure.
• Blue Medora, which offers pioneering IT monitoring integration as a service to address today’s IT challenges by easily connecting system health and performance data–no matter its source–with the world’s leading monitoring and analytics platforms. 

This week’s highlights

• Machine Learning took center stage as the engine behind many of the new machines introduced over the week, and we expect to see it implemented more and more.

• Quantum Computing can be simulated using Amazon Bracket for anyone coding for the razor’s edge in computer science.
• Check out The Amazon Builder’s Library for insight into how Amazon operates.

AWS Draft — and the Winner is… 

On episode 49, we drafted each of our top three picks for what we thought would be announced at Re:Invent. It’s a three-way tie for first! Each one of us correctly guessed one of our three picks, and nobody guessed that Anderson .Paak would make a musical appearance, leaving the tie unbroken. (Peter predicted that Formula 1 racing would be included, but it was a runner-up choice and goes uncounted.)

Moving on to Re:Invent, we cover the announcements day-by-day:

Sunday

Toys and Security

AWS launched DeepComposer, the world’s first machine learning enabled keyboard. The 32-key, 2-octave keyboard is designed to help developers to get hands-on with AI. You can train the program to generate compositions based on musical genres, but don’t expect any compelling vocals from it yet, though. Check out the announcement for sample selections. For only $99 you will be able to buy a MIDI keyboard (worth about $50) with the AWS logo on 

DeepRacer, a machine-learning based toy from yesteryear has received its own upgrades (a stereo camera and LIDAR sensor) which allow the cars to be trained to race each other physically in addition to virtually.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) Access Analyzer launches for free as a way to get an overview on your access control policies — it mathematically analyzes access control policies attached to resources and determines which resources can be accessed publicly or from other accounts. 

A preview version of EC2 Image Builder has also launched to help you maintain secure OS images for Windows Server and Amazon Linux 2. This is especially good for anyone just starting their cloud journey. We’re glad to see this available now, but where was it four or five years ago when it should have first been built?!