Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) hybrid conference for the cloud computing community kicked off yesterday, with a host of announcements.
The company is known for the breadth of its cloud offering, and the event is no different, touching on computing, storage, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, IoT, mobile, security, and virtual and augmented reality – as well as its Amazon Connect contact centre solution. Here, we take a look at some of the biggest announcements so far.
Quantum Computing
Amazon has updated its managed quantum computing service Amazon Braket, which it first introduced at re:Invent 2019, with “Hybrid Jobs”, which helps users set up, monitor and execute algorithms that take advantage of both classical and quantum computing.
“Instead of relying on theoretical studies, you can start to use quantum computers as the primary tool to understand and improve hybrid algorithms and test their applicability for industry and research use cases,” said AWS’ Chief Evangelist (EMEA) Danilo Poccia. “In this way, you can focus on your research and not deal with setting up and coordinating these different compute resources for your experiments.”
AWS Data Exchange
The company also announced AWS Data Exchange, APIs allowing users to use third party data sets via Amazon Simple Storage Service.
AWS Data Exchange “lets you find, subscribe to, and use third-party APIs with a consistent access using AWS SDKs, as well as consistent AWS-native authentication and governance,” said Alex Casalboni, Developer Advocate, AWS. “This simplifies the lives of developers and IT administrators who have to integrate and secure the access to multiple third-party APIs.”
The solution has been made generally available, and integrates with third-party APIs including Infutor, Variety Business Intelligence, IMDb, PeopleDataLabs, Neustar, Experian, Foursquare, PredictHQ, and WeatherTrends International.
Real-User Monitoring
Finally, AWS unveiled new capabilities for its Amazon CloudWatch monitoring and observability service CloudWatch, allowing for the monitoring of web applications to better understand performance and customer experience.
“Because of the number of variables involved—browser type, browser configuration, user location, connectivity, and so forth—synthetic testing can only go so far,” said Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist for AWS. “Amazon CloudWatch RUM will help you to collect the metrics that give you the insights that will help you to identity, understand, and improve this experience.”
The week-long event continues today, and is taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada as well as online.
