Thoughts from AWS re:Invent22

One week ago, at about this time, my plane was about to land in Rennes, France. One week is the time it took me to recover from an unusual event like AWS re:Invent 2022 which took place in Las Vegas from November 28th to December 2nd. Unusual in every sense of the word: number of announcements, number of participants, number of partners, distance covered... For this occasion, an Orange and Orange Business joint delegation was present to cover the different themes of interest with Geraldine Steinberg , David Guyomarch , Alexis Dupuydauby ☁️ , Patrick Clement , and Stefan Kanis Kanis .

On an event of such a size, you have to establish a double strategy very quickly: 1. focus on a few topics and be registered, and 2. look carefully where the sessions are taking place so you don't have to run from shuttle to shuttle that covered the Strip and its parallel streets to connect the conference sites. For my part, I decided to follow the #Tech keynotes, and focus mainly on 2 topics concerning: #sovereignty in the broad sense, and #network and #Telco services.

On the keynote side, the week started with the excellent session "Monday Night with Peter Desantis " which opened with a big focus on #Nitro which was the first reason for AWS to launch its own custom chips to manage the triptych #performance, #cost and #security. It's impossible to start a session that focuses on silicon without talking about a third-generation #Graviton chip and the performance scales delivered. I also liked when Peter shared that the topology of AWS data centers makes a protocol like TCP slow down communication, introducing a new protocol implemented in Nitro, #SRD (Scalable Reliable Datagram), favoring multi-path. Then, we had a part about hardware improvement and acceleration for AI and Deep Learning workloads with dedicated instances. The session ended on AWS #Lambda with a focus on avoiding cold starts and isolation, especially with the use of #Firecracker microVMs.

For Adam Selipsky 's keynote, what surprised me the most was the focus to AWS to structure itself to respond to verticals such as healthcare, retail, and industry, and the announcement of an ERP for the supply chain or the Connect contact center. It's a bit like if AWS was transforming itself into a #SaaS company whereas in previous years it was a succession of announcements on the technological and enablers side. By the way, on this subject, I recommend you to read the excellent post "A Faster Horse" by Stephen O'Grady from RedMonk which offers an analysis that summarizes quite well the feeling I had there. The other important part of Adam Selipski's talk is about #data with important announcements about data #governance with Amazon DataZone, data #sharing with Amazon Clean Rooms, #security with Amazon Security Lake, or with the announcement of a #ZeroETL approach between Amazon Aurora and Amazon Redshift with an integration enabling near real-time analytics and machine learning on petabytes of transactional data. In the chats with peers, Google Cloud is often mentioned as a leader in the Data component, I have the feeling that with these announcements AWS is repositioning itself in the race. Obviously, it is impossible not to address the theme of environmental concerns where AWS took a commitment to be water positive by 2030 in addition to its commitment to run on 100% renewable energy by 2023. The customer testimonies from ENGIE , Siemens , and Lyell Immunopharma were perfect illustrations.

The last keynote with Werner Vogels was the most awaited for me, and I think nobody was disappointed, with a Matrix-like setting that allowed Werner to remind us that "Synchronous is just an illusion", and the importance of producing #asynchronous and #event-based systems and solutions. He had fun reminding us that apart from systems created by humans, nothing in nature is synchronous, notably with the now cult scene where a cook prepares French fries, one by one to reinforce the absurdity of the situation. It was also an opportunity to review all the integration and event management services, including Amazon EventBridge Pipes. Werner also took the opportunity to talk about the new services to bring a developer experience, #devX, integrated into the AWS ecosystem with Amazon Code Catalyst, to which we could add Amazon CodeWhisperer for the production of code assisted by AI or Amazon Application Builder. The end of Werner's keynote clearly appears to me as a response to the #Metaverse theme, but on the other side of the coin, with a focus on #digitaltwins and the contribution of #simulation to the construction of services. The keynote ended in the madness of the announcement of the superstar DJ Martin Garrix at re:Play, the festive event of the re:invent22.

On the theme of sovereignty, the week began with the publication of the post "AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge: Control without compromise" from Matt Garman , and that led me to follow several really interesting sessions on #Nitro and #Enclave where finally AWS is doing "sovereignty by design", even before the question of sovereignty is really asked. I can recommend the following sessions that I followed with interest: CMP301 Powering Amazon EC2: Deep dive on the AWS Nitro system, SEC205: Meeting Digital Sovereignty requirements on AWS, CMP306: Building apps to isolate & process sensitive data with AWS Nitro Enclaves, and CMP302: Confidential Computing with AWS compute.

On the theme of Networking and Telco services, I followed the sessions TLC304: Coinventing connectivity with CSPs, HYB202: AWS Local Zones: Building applications for distributed Edge, and HYB206: AWS, A great way to run private 5G. On public 5G network, Dish wireless is the most advanced case with a 20% of US population coverage and a deployment that took less than a year using AWS infrastructure with a by default Cloud Native move. The testimony from Swisscom was also really impressive on 5G move with a cloud native mix of AWS Cloud and Edge solutions. On the private 5G #P5G side, AWS is coming to market with bundled partner solutions deployable on #Outpost instances. On the connectivity theme, I found that the storytelling of AWS Cloud WAN has progressed well with work on the distribution of value with Carriers where Telco play (15%) is moving to an integration play (65%), the remaining laying on platform and cloud services. We had the opportunity to meet Timo Bauer who carries the #LEO #Kuiper service, who was able to share with us how from a 4-pagers 4 years ago the company created itself to build a software-defined Satellites service, claimed as being able to reconfigure itself to optimize #latency and #bandwidth to cover targeted regions.

re:Invent is also an incredible concentration of partners where I mainly exchanged with players positioned in #FinOps and Multi-Cloud Networking #MCN services. 

re:Invent was also the opportunity to record two videos, a news post with David Guyomarch by Jean-Baptiste Lefevre for AWS France, and a #Edge case study for AWS communication on the deployment of an Outpost infrastructure at the Orange Velodrome stadium in Marseille, France, to support B2C uses for augmented spectators or professionals, such as photographers.

Obviously, it has been a rich week which allowed us to spend time and to make great meetings with Gilles Laurent , Alexis MARCOU , Fabio Cerone , Adolfo Hernandez , Umer Chaudhary , François Bouteruche who were able to introduce us to the service teams to talk directly with the ones who make the cloud products and services.

Finally, happy to have been able to meet the only Corey Quinn , to have a drink with my hero James Governor or to have been able to spend time with the brilliant Liam Randall ☁️🚀 who kept me informed of the latest developments of his #WASM platform Cosmonic !

Oh, just a last point, a choreography for 60K people is just another dimension, and honestly, it has been well executed, with overflow rooms and content hubs when rooms were full, shuttles every 10 to 15 minutes toward all the conference locations, and a final word about what we've eaten during the week that wasn't the junk food we may expect but fairly well-balanced meals with all dairies taken into account 👍 Well there's still coffee, but I think I'll never get used to it 😉

Final note: This article was also published on Medium.