AWS re:Invent 2024: Innovation, AI, and the power of seamless data movement

From developers and tech leaders to start-ups and students, over 60,000 attendees from around the world gathered in Las Vegas for the 13th AWS re:Invent. This year’s event showcased continuing innovation from AWS, offered an abundance of content for every type of attendee, plus a sprawling Expo Hall hosting hundreds of AWS partners and industry vendors. Reflecting on the jam-packed week, the event highlighted not only the future of cloud, AI, and security, but also how businesses can harness these technologies effectively.

In this blog, we highlight key moments from the event, including takeaways from Matt Garman’s keynote and insights from Console Connect’s Paul Gampe and Neil Templeton, who joined AWS for a joint session.

Customer-centricity fuels AWS’s innovation

AWS CEO Matt Garman set the tone for re:Invent by underscoring AWS’s commitment to customer-centric innovation. AWS’ principle of "working backwards" from listening to the customer fuels their innovation strategy which also enables them to invent solutions that customers may not yet realise they need.

Garman also reminded the audience that AWS’s journey began with supporting start-ups and that this spirit of innovation continues to drive the company forward, especially in the era of generative AI.

Innovations in cloud computing and generative AI

A key focus this year was on AI – particularly generative AI – and the infrastructure needed to support it. Garman emphasised how the vast majority of generative AI workloads run on Nvidia GPUs. To keep up with the demand of AI workloads, AWS announced new GPU instances like G6, G6e, P5en, and the upcoming P6, which offers 2.5 times faster compute performance compared to general GPUs.

Furthermore, AWS highlighted their investment in purpose-built AI chips with the launch of Trainium2. This next-generation chip powers the most intensive generative AI training workloads in the cloud and allows for edge deployment. The endorsement from Apple's Benoir Dupin, who spoke about Apple's collaboration with AWS on AI and ML lifecycle scaling, reinforced Trainium2's significance. Looking ahead, Trainium3 is set to launch in 2025, promising even greater capabilities for building faster and more sophisticated AI applications.

Storage, databases, and AI for real-world impact

AWS announced several innovations in storage and databases to address these challenges. Notably, they introduced Amazon S3 Tables, designed to eliminate manual tasks like table maintenance and improve the performance of Apache Iceberg tables. This was complemented by S3 Metadata, which makes finding and managing data more intuitive.

AWS also launched Amazon Aurora DSQL, a distributed SQL database that simplifies database management while ensuring high availability, low latency, and strong consistency. This innovation is helping organisations like JP Morgan Chase scale their cloud infrastructure significantly. During the keynote, JP Morgan’s CIO, Lori Beer, revealed that the company went from running 100 cloud applications in 2021 to over 1,000 globally by 2023, and they are now embedding AI into many facets of their operations.

Generative AI is also driving business transformation. For example, pharmaceutical company Genentech uses AWS AI tool, Bedrock, to process weeks of research in mere minutes. Additionally, Bedrock continues to refine generative AI capabilities with features like Model Distillation, which delivers models up to 500% faster and at 75% lower cost.

Security is a core component

Security remains a top priority for AWS, a theme that resonated throughout the event. AWS's dedication to security has allowed them to overcome initial resistance from industries like financial services, where stringent regulations once hindered cloud adoption.

This year, AWS revealed that 78% of organisations consider security their top cloud challenge. The cost of a data breach for non-compliant organisations averages $5 million, highlighting the need for robust security measures. AWS's security-first approach ensures that organisations can confidently entrust their data to the cloud.

Simplifying cloud migration

Garman also highlighted the launch of Amazon Q Developer, a ground-breaking AI tool designed to transform VMware and Mainframe workloads into cloud-native architectures. Amazon Q Developer streamlines cloud migrations by autonomously generating migration plans, identifying dependencies, and transforming network configurations.

The success of these autonomous assessments will increasingly need robust connectivity and scalable bandwidth to facilitate the seamless transfer of data between on-premises environments and the cloud.

Enhancing efficient and secure data movement

Amidst the thousands of insightful sessions, Console Connect presented with AWS to highlight the challenges and opportunities in moving data efficiently and securely between applications, clouds, and devices. Here’s a breakdown of the fundamental insights shared.

Navigating data sovereignty

Digital sovereignty is an evolving concern for businesses worldwide. Riggs Goodman III, Principal Partner Solutions Architect at AWS, outlined four primary areas that organisations have to consider:

• Data residency: Businesses need full control over where their data is stored and transferred.
• Operator access restriction: Ensuring that neither cloud providers nor foreign governments can access sensitive data without authorisation.
• Resiliency and survivability: The ability to maintain operations in the face of geopolitical disruptions, natural disasters, or technical failures.
• Independence: Supporting local economies and infrastructure by developing in-country technical skills and resources.

Goodman highlighted how AWS’s extensive global footprint, with 102 Availability Zones across 32 Regions, can help businesses meet their digital sovereignty needs. For example, European customers can store their data in one of AWS’s eight European Regions, and the upcoming European Sovereign Cloud set to launch in Germany will provide even greater control over data residency.

Data movement roadblocks

However, storing data is only one part of the puzzle. Console Connect’s SVP of Marketing, Neil Templeton, went on to explain the common roadblocks when moving data between different environments:

• Legacy systems: Outdated applications and manual processes hinder scalability and inflate costs. Businesses relying on legacy solutions face slow data transfers and reduced efficiency.
• Hybrid and multi-cloud complexity: Managing diverse cloud environments is resource-intensive and costly. Complex data ecosystems lead to delays, inefficiencies, and lost opportunities.
• Data standardisation and integration: With data coming in various formats from different sources, standardisation and integration become essential yet challenging tasks.
• Technical bottlenecks: Large file sizes, combined with manual transfer processes and fragmented infrastructure, create bottlenecks.
• Data governance, security and compliance: Balancing the flexibility of cloud solutions with the need for strict security and compliance measures is crucial. The financial and reputational risks associated with data breaches are too high to ignore.

Addressing data movement challenges

These roadblocks can be overcome by partnering with the right cloud connectivity partner. Console Connect CTO, Paul Gampe, continued the presentation by sharing practical examples of how Console Connect helps solve data movement challenges:

• Cloud-to-cloud data transfers: By connecting clouds between different regions and providers using CloudRouter®, businesses can reduce latency and achieve significant egress cost savings.
• Securing IoT data movement: Edge SIM enables all the fixed or mobile device data to be sent to the public or private cloud bypassing the public internet.
• Flexibility for complex hybrid-cloud: Leveraging our UI or API, Console Connect lets you create efficient temporary high-speed links between data sources, partners, and clouds.
• AWS Direct Connect integration: Leveraging open APIs to provide AWS customers with secure, high-performance connections with AWS services.

AWS re:Invent showcased how AI, security, and data sovereignty will shape the future of cloud computing. With this comes the need to move more sensitive data to AWS cloud. Learn more about how Console Connect can help meet your immediate and long term network requirements to AWS through our on-demand platform and global automated network.