Breaking Down the Latest AWS re:Invent Announcements from Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services kicks off its AWS re:Invent event today from Las Vegas with a rapid-fire stream of announcements, including many unveilings of recent things it’s been working on.
We know you don’t always have time to watch the whole keynote today, so we’re taking that on and will deliver quick hits of the biggest news as they are announced, all in an easy-to-digest, easy-to-skim list. Here we go!”
Stay tuned for more developments throughout the day.

Going serverless

Amazon announces three new serverless offerings to make it easier to manage Aurora, Elastic Cache and Redshift serverless services. Ron writes that “Because each of these options is serverless, it means that Amazon manages all of the hardware in the background, and delivers just the right amount of resources you need, scaling up when needed without IT having to deal with all of the back-end management work.” Read more.

Now that’s using your palm

AWS lifted the lid on a new palm-scanning identity service that allows companies to authenticate people when entering physical premises. Paul reports that Amazon One Enterprise builds on the company’s existing Amazon One offering which it debuted back in 2020 to enable biometric payments in Amazon’s own surveillance-powered cashierless stores. Visitors to Amazon Go stores can associate their payment card with their palm-print, allowing them to enter the store and complete their transaction by hovering their hand over a scanner. Read more.

Virtual desktop environment

Amazon launched new $195 devices that allow enterprise users to access virtual desktop environments, like Amazon WorkSpaces, over the internet. Sarah writes that the devices are housed in Fire TV Cube hardware — a decision Amazon made to leverage existing expertise from the arm of the retail giant that makes streaming media players. The company explained its decision to build new hardware came from customer feedback about wanting to lower IT spending by replacing desktops and laptops with less expensive hardware. Read more.