AWS re:Invent 2023 takeaways: What you need to know to win the cloud game

“The most dangerous phrase in the English language is: ‘We’ve always done it this way.’”

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels echoed the words of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, as his keynote closed out a week of innovation done differently at AWS re:Invent 2023.

At this year’s conference, Amazon Web Services continued to lead industry trends, heralding a new era in cloud computing—and we didn’t miss a minute. Explore SHI’s three key takeaways as we guide your organization to not just do cloud differently, but better than ever before.

1. AI: Beyond the hype

Above all, AWS committed to making sure this buzzword doesn’t lose its meaning. Of course, how could it when theirs is transforming industries?

At this year’s re:Invent, AWS announced numerous innovations in AI, such as:

• Amazon Q, a chat interface that allows customers to interact with AWS services using natural language and foundation models (FMs), which are ultra-large machine learning models that can generate various types of content and data. This includes AI image creation capabilities with Titan text-to-image AI model.
• AWS chips, like Graviton4 and Trainium2. These provide faster and more cost-effective performance for AI workloads, optimized for different types of AI tasks, such as inference, training, and data processing. In fact, Trainium is four times faster than the previous version.
• Amazon Bedrock, a Generative AI service that enables customers to build and scale generative AI applications using FMs from AWS and other providers—with new features like knowledge bases, agents, and more guardrails.

Ultimately, AI is being democratized as AWS allows you to create new, exciting applications that can improve efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

2. Cloud governance: The keystone of success

While tech experiences democratization, it still needs policies to run properly—especially in the cloud. Governance is a crucial aspect of adoption and management for all customers—no matter what their cloud maturity level.

Out of all 2023’s re:Invent sessions, 96 of them dealt with cloud operations, highlighting the importance of compliance, security, operational development, and cost optimization going forward.

SHI’s experts take the floor at AWS re:Invent 2023.

One of the notable announcements was the launch of AWS AppFabric and AWS Security Lake, two new services that enable you to create security data lakes for third-party SaaS applications. Many large organizations use over 100 different SaaS applications, which poses a significant challenge for security teams to monitor and analyze the security logs. AWS AppFabric and AWS Security Lake provide a solution to this problem by allowing you to collect data from various SaaS applications in a centralized and scalable manner.

Another announcement that caught attention was the release of the AWS SRA Codebase, a set of code templates and scripts that help you reduce the time and effort required to deploy AWS security services. However, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but in fact a reference for a range of options. Customers will need to modify and tailor the code samples to meet their individual environment and security needs, based on risk.

To help you through these complexities, SHI’s Cloud Governance Framework pairs efficiencies with protocols. We facilitate compliance with guidance on best practices, resulting in an organizational ecosystem aligned with governance principles. This ensures you’re never scaling in the dark.

3. Cloud costs: Architecting for efficiency

However, governance isn’t the only element that requires meticulous attention. To keep an eye on cloud costs, proactive FinOps is crucial. Experts at the conference believe that customers’ applications should be architected for cost efficiency from the start. That also means having the appropriate tags and governance models that are essential for tracking and scaling cost reporting.

To help you navigate this paradigm shift, SHI addresses the challenge proactively. Our FinOps practice and services allow you to:

• Improve visibility.
• Decrease time to savings.
• Experience hands-on optimization support.
• Increase operational efficiency.
• Get detailed cost reporting.

The synergy of these elements is encapsulated in our Cloud Optimization and Management Service (COMS), providing a holistic approach to cost management that embraces the dynamic pricing and scalability models of cloud. More than a tool, it’s a partnership, which is exactly how tomorrow’s problems get solved.

Solve what’s next—differently

If the most dangerous phrase is “We’ve always done it this way,” then the most thrilling one must be “You don’t have to do it alone.”

As your trusted partner, SHI can help your organization embrace the best innovations from AWS re:Invent and beyond. Reach out to our experts today to start a journey of innovation, efficiency, and business excellence together.