Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies, and governments, on a paid subscription basis, recently introduced its new wave of capabilities.
“The AWS cloud operates 60 availability zones within 20 geographic regions,” said Santanu Dutt of AWS. From this regions, the company has a 27-billion revenue run rate business. It grew by 43 percent in the third quarter year-on-year.
One of the highlights of the AWS’ new solutions and capabilities is the 13 machine learning (ML) services including a custom chip for ML inference.
Dutt said these newly ML capabilities impact all layers in this technology stack, which will enable developers to build, train, and deploy ML models easily. The AWS Marketplace for Machine Learning includes over 150 algorithms and models that can be deployed directly to Amazon SageMaker, which developers can start using right away. Sellers using AWS Marketplace can add a listing by themselves.
The AWS DeepRacer allows developers to start learning about reinforcement learning, which is about one-eighteenth scale of a fully autonomous race car. The all-wheel-drive car sports monster truck tires, a high-definition video camera, and onboard computing.
The artificial intelligence (AI) component of AWS services wants developers to bring intelligence into their applications without requiring any ML experience. These products include Amazon Personalize, which a real-time recommendation and personalization service; Amazon Forecast, which creates accurate time-series forecasts, and Amazon Textract, which uses ML to instantly read virtually any type of document to accurately extract text and data without the need for any manual review or custom code.
Edge computing
Dutt also introduced AWS Ground Station, which is a new service that will make it cost-effective for customers to download data from satellites into AWS Global Infrastructure REgions using a fully managed network of 12 ground station antennas located around the world.
Its four new capabilities include AWS IoT Sitewise, AWS IoT Events, AWS IoT Things Graph, and AWS IoT Greengrass Connectors.
AWS Robomaker extends the most widely used open source robotics software framework called the Robot Operating System (ROS). with connectivity to AWS services including analytics services, ML, and monitoring to enable a robot to stream data, navigate, communicate, comprehend, and learn. This also provides AWS Cloud9-based robotics integrated development environment for application development, robotics simulation to accelerate application testing, fleet management for remote application deployment, update, and management.
Amazon Lake Formation is a service that allows developers to build a secure data lake in just days. Amazon said it can move, store, and clean data faster with ML. It can also enforce security policies across multiple services.
AWS Project
Dutt mentioned that Amazon is working on the Hawaii transpacific cable that extends to 14,000 km that links Australia, Hawaii, Oregon, and New Zealand, where it held its recent groundbreaking.
Amazon aims to use 100-percent renewable energy in the coming years. Dutt reported that from 25 percent of renewable energy in 2015, the company has used 40 percent in 2016, and jumped 50 percent in 2017.