The event expo hosted 400+ AWS Partners and sponsors, including Connectria. Vendors at the expo provided many opportunities to learn about services, software, and solutions with exhibiting companies across the public cloud spectrum including app integrations, cost optimizations, hybrid cloud support, and more. Almost 40K event attendees were able to connect with vendors at the expo.

AWS re:Invent keynote highlights

The 5-day event included keynote presentations from Peter DeSantis, AWS Senior VP; Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS; Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS Vice President of Data and AI; as well as Ruba Borno, Vice President of AWS Worldwide Channels and Alliances, and Dr. Werner Vogels, Vice President and CTO of AWS. Below are summary highlights from each keynote.

Generative AI was a central theme in almost every keynote, and its potential for AWS customers was one of the main takeaways from this year’s event.

Peter DeSantis, AWS Senior VP

The majority of his keynote revolved around the strategy of bringing the benefits of serverless computing to the existing “serverful” software in use today. During his keynote, DeSantis touched on several service announcements including:

• Amazon Aurora Limitless Database – new support for automated horizontal scaling to process millions of write transactions per second and manage petabytes of data in a single Aurora database.
• Amazon ElastiCache Serverless – new serverless offering allowing customers to create a cache in under a minute and instantly scale capacity based on application traffic patterns.
• Next generation of Amazon Redshift Serverless with AI-driven scaling and optimizations.

At the end of his keynote, he traded annual updates on AWS chip innovations to focus on a different chip used to run a quantum computer instead. He emphasized the current era of hardware-enabled quantum error correction. He showcased a prototype device that can achieve quantum error correction more efficiently than previous standard approaches. He promised to share more details soon as AWS ventures into this new area of innovation.

Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS

Selipsky kickstarted the second day of AWS re:Invent with his keynote where he covered cloud transformation. He referenced generative AI as the “next step in artificial intelligence” and explained how AWS is investing in AI across three levels referred to as the Generative AI Stack. Some of the announcements covered in his keynote included:

• Amazon Q – a new generative AI-powered assistant for work, that provides quick, accurate, and relevant answers to pressing business questions tailored to each employee’s role and permissions.
• Amazon S3 Express One Zone – a new Amazon S3 storage class offering high-performance and low-latency object storage.
• Zero-ETL Integrations with Amazon Redshift which extends to include Aurora MySQL, Aurora PostgreSQL, RDS for MySQL, and DynamoDB.

Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS VP of Data and AI

There was an unmissable emphasis on generative AI this year. In his keynote, Sivasubramanian illustrated the symbiotic relationship between data, generative AI, and the role of people in the management of that data and oversight of generative AI. He covered several new product and service announcements some of which included:

• Amazon Titan (Multimodal Embeddings, Text Lite, Text Express, and Image Generator) now available in Amazon Bedrock – a new range of high-performing image, multimodal, and text model options through a fully managed API.
• Amazon SageMaker HyperPod – train FMs for weeks or months while SageMaker actively monitors the cluster health and provides automated node and job resiliency.
• Vector Engine for Amazon OpenSearch Serverless – build modern machine learning-augmented search experiences and generative AI applications without needing to manage the underlying vector database infrastructure.
• Vector Search for Amazon DocumentDB – new built-in capability lets you store, index, and search millions of vectors with millisecond response times within your document database.
• New AI capabilities in Amazon Redshift – Redshift now scales capacity proactively and automatically to deliver tailored performance optimizations.

Generative AI was underscored in almost every keynote and was certainly one of the main takeaways from this year’s event. Connectria is excited at the opportunity to help customers, as a consulting partner, better understand the potential impact that Generative AI can have on their business. Generative AI will further define customers’ data strategies, allowing them to use the model with their confidential data to differentiate themselves from competitors.

Dr. Ruba Borno, VP of Worldwide Channels and Alliances

Ruba Borno’s keynote focused on identifying and accomplishing “the impossible” while underscoring the power of working with the right partner. She discussed the power of possibilities while highlighting the relationship between AWS and AWS Partners and how they can deliver shared value to their mutual customers.

“We love it when we come together with partners to accelerate customer success.” – Ruba Borno, VP of Worldwide Channels and Alliances at AWS

AWS works with over 150,000 partners to “push the boundaries of what’s possible and overcome the impossible for customers”. As technology continues advancing rapidly, these partnerships are a crucial component for customer success. This was exemplified throughout her presentation by AWS Partner and customer guest speakers from Accenture, The U.S. Air Force, and ServiceNow.

Borno also announced the AWS Generative AI Center of Excellence for AWS Partners. AWS hopes this will make it easier for partners to keep up with the generative AI space to serve customer needs better. The Center of Excellence provides both technical and non-technical enablement content and training, customer use cases, forums for knowledge sharing, and best practices. 

Dr. Werner Vogels, Vice President and CTO of AWS

Dr. Vogels’s keynote focused on how the cloud removed previous constraints businesses had when working predominantly with hardware. He highlighted how the cloud continues to enable businesses to move quickly. Furthermore, he emphasized how the cloud enables businesses to get new products out faster and enables innovation.

However, as the speed of execution becomes more important, Dr. Vogels said, “The art of architecting for cost and keeping cost in mind was lost”. He then referenced one of the original tenants from AWS re:Invent 2012, which was to architect with cost in mind. He cited the current macroeconomic climate and how it has changed in the last few years and with that how companies are now more laser-focused on managing costs.

Read our related article: Cost Optimization Tips to Reduce Cloud Spend

Takeaways from the expo floor

Connectria was proud to be among this year’s 400+ expo exhibitors and event sponsors. Our team took the opportunity to connect with expo attendees looking to transform their IBM i and AIX workloads with AWS. Our experts explained how integrating the IBM Power Systems cloud with the AWS cloud creates a seamless hybrid experience. Connectria’s low-latency, direct connection enables the workloads on our award-winning IBM Power Systems cloud to access AWS services and resources with high speed and secure connectivity.

The Connectria team was ready for a busy day on the show floor.

For expo attendees without IBM Power Systems, our experts were able to showcase our cloud capabilities as a Premier Tier Services Partner and Level 1 MSSP. Connectria excels in ensuring security and compliance for AWS workloads, keeping AWS resources up-to-date, and accelerating cloud adoption with strategy consulting and professional services. Learn more here.

Connectria was also proud to recognize our partner Escala 24×7 Inc. as our 2023 Partner of the Year. The Escala team was honored for their outstanding results in bringing Connectria’s IBM on-net with AWS solution to LATAM. This partnership is accelerating the modernization journey to AWS for customers throughout the region.

Escala 24×7 was also named the AWS LATAM SI Partner of the Year.

Get more out of your AWS investment with Connectria

AWS re:Invent is an annual reminder of the number of ways AWS is helping global customers drive business transformation whether that’s by increasing access to the right partners, enabling more powerful data storage and analytics, or helping businesses better control their data compliance and security posture. With so many possibilities, it helps to have an AWS partner who can provide the strategic guidance you need to navigate your business transformation journey.

Want to learn how Connectria can help you do more with AWS in 2024?