AWS re:Invent 2017

Join us to hear about our strategy for driving machine learning innovation for our customers and learn what's new from AWS in the machine learning space. Swami Sivasubramanian, VP of Amazon Machine Learning, will discuss and demonstrate the latest new services for ML on AWS: Amazon SageMaker, AWS DeepLens, Amazon Rekogntion Video, Amazon Translate, Amazon Transcribe, and Amazon Comprehend. Attend this session to understand how to make the most of machine learning in the cloud.

AWS has launched Amazon Sumerian. Sumerian lets you create and run virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D applications quickly and easily without requiring any specialized programming or 3D graphics expertise. In this session, we will introduce you to Sumerian, and how you can build highly immersive and interactive scenes for the enterprise that run on popular hardware such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and iOS mobile devices.

AWS has launched Amazon Sumerian. Sumerian lets you create and run virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and 3D applications quickly and easily without requiring any specialized programming or 3D graphics expertise. In this session, we will dive deep into details about Sumerian so you can see what's under the hood. We will cover creating a project, using the visual state machine, connecting an Amazon Sumerian scene to AWS services, and using a Sumerian Host to add presence to your applications.

In this session, you'll learn how AdTech companies use AWS services like Glue, Athena, Quicksight, and EMR to analyze your Google DoubleClick Campaign Manager data at scale without the burden of infrastructure or worries about server maintenance.  We'll live-process a click stream so you can see how Machine Learning can help maximize your revenue by finding the most optimal path of a campaign and we'll look at a real world demo from A9's Advertising Science Team of how they use the data to build Look-alike Model in their projects.

The science of saving on AWS has undergone some major revolutions in the past year. New services, Reserved Instance options, increased flexibility, and discount programs have all created 100's of new opportunities to optimize your usage and spending. We've also seen a significant uplift in operational maturity that is increasing the overall savings to be had while limiting operational risk. The most mature organizations are now using a particular set of metrics to drive their cost optimization activities as part of a repeatable feedback loop. Join Cloudability's J.R. Storment and Atlassian's Mike Fuller as they walk you through this changing landscape and how it impacts the decisions your team makes every day. Topics include: cost avoidance and savings metrics to drive your optimization initiatives; data points and techniques for making effective rightsizing decisions; maximizing coverage and flexibility with ISF and convertible Reserved Instances; and lessons from the front lines with Atlassian's Mike Fuller. Session Sponsored by: Cloudability, Inc.

Come learn how NASDAQ used AWS Marketplace to purchase and launch AppDynamics unified Application Performance Management (APM) and business performance monitoring solution for their migration to AWS. With AppDynamics, NASDAQ was able to move their critical applications to AWS and used AppDynamics to accelerate, visualize and validate the migration process.    This allowed NASDAQ to improve their applications in AWS with business performance monitoring and make clear, understandable correlations between the quality of their customer experience with their applications.

From CloudFront to ElastiCache to DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX), this is your one-stop shop for learning how to apply caching methods to your AdTech workload: What data to cache and why? What are common side effects and pitfalls when caching? What is negative caching and how can it help you maximize your cache hit rate? How to use DynamoDB Accelerator in practice? How can you ensure that data always stays current in your cache? These and many more topics will be discussed in depth during this talk and we'll share lessons learned from Team Internet, the leading provider in domain monetization.

Setting a goal for your teams to move a large number of workloads to AWS in a short period of time can be a great way to motivate teams to migrate quickly. Cardinal Health created a migration factory composed of teams, tools, and processes that streamlined the movement of workloads from on-premises to AWS. In this session, hear from Cardinal Health about how they used a migration factory to successfully move thousands of applications to the AWS Cloud.  In addition, learn best practices for creating an effective migration platform and process in your organization.

In this session, learn how customers have gained greater control over their data and improved cost savings by using NetApp ONTAP Cloud from AWS Marketplace, a curated catalog to find, buy, and deploy third-party party software. We dive into how to minimize your storage footprint by using enterprise-class storage features, such as data deduplication, compression, and snapshots with zero impact on app performance. You also learn out how to can accelerate application development using FlexClone technology to clone images and quickly create multiple environments that look just like your original data.

Interested in learning how to integrate the Internet of Things into your advertising platform and combine it with AWS Greengrass, AWS Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon API Gateway to send context-aware advertisements to users at the point of buying? In this session, Mobiquity, the leader in digital engagements servicing the world's top brands, and their Innovation Partner Flomio discuss how they've been able to use AWS to create compelling digital experiences for their clients. We deep-dive on the technology behind Mobiquity's innovative shopping system that uses RFID, Bluetooth, captive Wifi, and a mobile app to provide real-time context for understanding how and where your customers interact with your products and services, allowing you to better tailor your ads to their particular preferences.

When migrating a large number of workloads to AWS, tracking progress across the various applications and services involved can distract your team from core migration activities.  In this session, learn how AWS Migration Hub provides a single place to discover your existing servers and track the status of each application migration. It provides you with better visibility into your application portfolio and streamlines migration tracking, at no additional cost beyond the services you use.

In this session, we walk through the fundamentals of Amazon VPC. First, we cover build-out and design fundamentals for VPCs, including picking your IP space, subnetting, routing, security, NAT, and much more. We then transition into different approaches and use cases for optionally connecting your VPC to your physical data center with VPN or AWS Direct Connect. This mid-level architecture discussion is aimed at architects, network administrators, and technology decision-makers interested in understanding the building blocks that AWS makes available with Amazon VPC. Learn how you can connect VPCs with your offices and current data center footprint.

Join us for an overview and demonstration of Amazon Connect, a self-service, cloud-based contact center based on the same technology used by Amazon customer service associates worldwide to power millions of conversations. The self-service graphical interface in Amazon Connect makes it easy to design contact flows for self and assisted call-handling experiences, manage agents, and track performance metrics – no specialized skills required. In this session, you will hear from Capital One and T-Mobile on how they are using Amazon Connect to provide their customers with dynamic, natural, and personalized experiences.  See how quickly you can get started with Amazon Connect and build your contact center. 

Learn how to take advantage of AWS for disaster recovery. In this session, we examine how traditional disaster recovery concepts can be adapted to the cloud. We also explore ways to cost-effectively reinvent disaster recovery, so it can extend to applications and workloads that have never had it before. This session walks you through tiered technology approaches to apply as part of a disaster recovery strategy that aligns costs to intended business outcomes.

The rate at which employees collaborate and create content continues to grow. With this, organizations are challenged to make collaboration easy, keep file management simple, and maintain a secure and compliant environment. Amazon WorkDocs is a fully managed, secure collaboration and file management service with rich feedback capabilities, strong administrative controls, and an extensible API. In this session, we demonstrate how you can use Amazon WorkDocs as a full-fledged collaboration tool for users and easily secure and manage files across your organization. 

This session provides an overview of IPv6 and covers key aspects of AWS support for the protocol. We discuss Amazon S3 and S3 Transfer Acceleration, Amazon CloudFront and AWS WAF, Amazon Route 53, AWS IoT, Elastic Load Balancing, and the virtual private cloud (VPC) environment of Amazon EC2. The presentation assumes solid knowledge of IPv4 and these AWS services.

Amazon is a global company with over 300,000 employees worldwide. Easy and efficient communication is critical, so earlier this year, we made Amazon Chime available company-wide. Amazon Chime is a modern communications service that runs securely on AWS. It simplifies online meetings, video conferencing, and chats in one straightforward application. In this session, we provide an overview of Amazon Chime and follow with a discussion on how Amazon is rolling out this service.

In this session, learn how you can enable governance, compliance, and operational and risk auditing of your AWS account through a combination of continuous monitoring, auditing, and evaluation of your AWS resources. With AWS management tools, you can see a history of AWS API calls for your account, review changes in configurations and relationships among AWS resources, and dive into detailed resource configuration histories. You can determine your overall compliance with the configurations specified in your internal guidelines, and you can give developers and systems administrators a secure and compliant means to create and manage AWS resources.

Many customers are hesitant to adopt SaaS solutions due to the concerns on the safety of the network connectivity traversing internet. It is also difficult to manage the firewall rules, NAT Gateway or VPN connections. AWS PrivateLink provided solution that let our customers' applications, whether in a VPC or in their own data center,  to connect to SaaS solutions in a highly scalable and highly available manner, while keeping all the network traffic within the AWS network.

Learn about the new services and features we have and that we are launching across AWS Networking this year. Learn also about our vision for continued innovation in this space and the ongoing evolution of networking capabilities and performance. Gain insight into how these new capabilities help everyone—from developers to enterprises to startups—drive greater security and reliability, improved flexibility, and higher performance. Join Dave Brown, director of Amazon EC2 Networking, and learn more about Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Elastic Load Balancing, AWS PrivateLink, VPN, AWS Direct Connect, and more. In addition, we cover new releases and show how easy it is to get started. You leave armed with details of how everything fits together in real-world customer scenarios.

In this session, we explore multi-account considerations for compliance and auditing. We include topics such as API call prefiltering, a repeatable approach to SCP and IAM policy creation, internal separation of duty and need to know, compliance scope ring-fencing, scope of impact limitation, and mandatory access control. We review approaches for log and event analytics and log record lifecycle management (including redaction where necessary) and alerting. We also discuss how you can deploy compliance assessment tools in multi-account environments and how you can interpret these tools' output so it makes sense. Finally, no set of detailed multi-account sessions is complete without discussing tools for visualization.

Many enterprises on their journey into the cloud require consistent and highly secure connectivity between their existing data center and AWS footprints. In this session, we walk through the different architecture options for establishing this connectivity using AWS Direct Connect and VPN. With each option, we evaluate the considerations and discuss risk, performance, encryption, and cost. As we walk through these options, we answer some of the common questions that arise from enterprises that tackle design and implementation. You'll learn how to make connectivity decisions that are suitable for your workloads, and how to best prepare against business impact in the event of failure.

Amazon Connect is a cloud-based contact center service that allows you to create dynamic contact flows and personalized caller experiences by using their history and responses to anticipate their needs. Learn how with Amazon Lex, an AI service that allows you to create intelligent conversational “chatbots,” turning your contact flows into natural conversations using the same technology behind Amazon Alexa. Routine tasks such as password resets, order status, and balance inquiries can be automated without an agent. In this session, you will hear from Asurion about their Amazon Connect contact center environment and how they enhanced the customer and agent experience with Amazon Lex.

When you plan your data center migration to the cloud, it's critical to consider how workloads will run to ensure maximum performance and availability. With Microsoft applications making up 60% or more of most on-premises data centers, more and more customers are moving their Microsoft workloads to AWS to improve performance, increase availability, and improve their security posture. In this session, we discuss how customers are accomplishing this task. We cover the common architectural patterns for moving Microsoft applications such as SQL Server, SharePoint, and Dynamics, and we discuss how to integrate with Active Directory for a seamless transition. We also examine tools like AWS Application Discovery and AWS Server Migration Service that can help make your move faster and easier.

In this mid-level architecture session, we cover everything you need to get started with Amazon Route 53, AWS's highly available DNS service. Learn how to use public DNS, including routing techniques such as weighted round-robin, latency-based routing, and geo DNS. Learn also how to configure DNS failover using health checks, how and when to use private DNS within your VPC, and how Amazon Route 53 interacts with Amazon EC2's DNS for instance naming and DNS resolution across your network. We also walk through how to use Traffic Flow to manager traffic to your applications' globally distributed endpoints to optimize for constraints such as endpoint load, the health of your resources, geographic restrictions, and internet latency.

Netflix is big and dynamic. At Netflix, IP addresses mean nothing in the cloud. This is a big challenge with Amazon VPC Flow Logs. VPC Flow Log entries only present network-level information (L3 and L4), which is virtually meaningless. Our goal is to map each IP address back to an application, at scale, to derive true network-level insight within Amazon VPC. In this session, the Cloud Network Engineering team discusses the temporal nature of IP address utilization in AWS and the problem with looking at OSI Layer 3 and Layer 4 information in the cloud.

Oracle enterprise applications and middleware such as E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and WebLogic are central to many IT departments. They often require complex deployments that can greatly benefit from the flexibility, scalability, and security of the cloud. In this session, we discuss architecture patterns and best practices for migrating these applications to and running these applications on AWS. We cover how to work with Oracle enterprise applications and multiple services including Amazon RDS, AWS Database Migration Service, Amazon Elastic File System, and AWS CloudFormation. As part of this, we show examples of successful customer deployments.

In this session, we explore the new Network Load Balancer that was launched as part of the Elastic Load Balancing service, which can load balance any kind of TCP traffic. This offers customers a high-performance, scalable, low-cost load balancer that can handle millions of requests per second with very low latencies, while maintaining high levels of performance. Come and learn more about this new Network Load Balancer.

You've successfully moved your desktops to AWS using Amazon WorkSpaces. Now, you'd like to start automating your operations. In this session, we show you how to use the Amazon WorkSpaces APIs to automate common tasks, such as provisioning and deprovisioning WorkSpaces, building self-service portals to allow your users to perform basic support tasks themselves, and integrating WorkSpace operations into your existing workflow and helpdesk tools.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) enables you to have complete control over your AWS virtual networking environment. Given this control, have you ever wondered how new Amazon VPC features will affect the way you design your AWS networking infrastructure, or even change existing architectures that you use today? In this session, we explore the new design and capabilities and how you might use them.​

Are you tired of maintaining and upgrading the PC infrastructure for your organization? Do you want to provide your users with a fast, fluid desktop that is accessible from anywhere, on any device? With Amazon WorkSpaces, you can do both simultaneously by running your desktops on AWS. In this session, we demonstrate the flexibility of Amazon WorkSpaces and show you how easy it is to get started. We also cover more advanced topics, including using Microsoft Active Directory for end-user management and authentication, and using Amazon WorkSpaces to implement a bring-your-own-device policy.

Databases continue to grow to be multiple terabytes in size, but migrating to the cloud doesn't have to take days or create disruption for your business. To perform data migration at petabyte scale with minimal impact to your business, you can now use the new combination of AWS Database Migration Service replication agents and AWS Snowball. In this session, we discuss how to extract large-scale data from an on-premises Oracle database and migrate it to Amazon Aurora. We then outline a step-by-step process for converting your Oracle schema to a PostgreSQL-based schema.

PrivateLink provides private connectivity between VPCs, AWS Services and on-premises applications. Built with the same underlying technology that powers NAT Gateway, Network Load Balancer and AWS Service endpoints, PrivateLink is now available for use with your own applications. In the session, we'll do a deep dive into the underlying network technology that is used by PrivateLink and explore how PrivateLink can be deployed to improve your network topologies and application architectures. We'll also look at how PrivateLink improves micro-service architectures, allowing for services to be vended between AWS accounts and over DirectConnect connections.  

Learn how to use Amazon Connect with AWS IoT and AWS Lambda to proactively resolve customer issues before they occur. In this session, we show you how to configure an AWS IoT device to proactively place a phone call to a customer using the Amazon Connect API when an impending problem is detected. From there, we demonstrate how Amazon Connect contact flows make the customer interaction personal, more satisfying, and less costly.

Many applications are network I/O bound, including common database-based applications and service-based architectures. But operating systems and applications are often not tuned to deliver high performance. This session uncovers hidden issues that lead to low network performance, and shows you how to overcome them to obtain the best network performance possible.

With Alexa for Business, your employees and customers can access a variety of different voice skills that relate to your business. Alexa for Business allows you to easily manage where and how these voice skills can be accessed, and by whom. In this session, we'll walk through how you can use Alexa for Business to deploy and manage access to the custom skills you build for your organization. We'll walk through how employees "enroll" to use Alexa at work, and how the permissions model for your voice skills works. This session will include a demo showing the deployment of a pre-built custom skill, and the enrollment process for employees.

Financial Impact Regulatory Authority (FINRA)'s Technology Group has changed its customers' relationship with data by creating a managed data lake that enables discovery on petabytes of capital markets' data, while saving time and money over traditional analytics solutions. FINRA's managed data lake unlocks the value in its data to accelerate analytics and machine learning at scale. The data lake includes a centralized data catalog and separates storage from compute, allowing users to query from petabytes of data in seconds. Learn how FINRA uses Spot Instances and services such as Amazon S3, Amazon EMR, Amazon Redshift, and AWS Lambda to provide the right tool for the right job at each step in the data processing pipeline. All of this is done while meeting FINRA's security and compliance responsibilities as a financial regulator.

Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances for fault tolerance and load distribution. In this session, we go into detail about Elastic Load Balancing configuration and day-to-day management, and also its use with Auto Scaling. We explain how to make decisions about the service and share best practices and useful tips for success.

As enterprises move to the cloud, robust connectivity is often an early consideration. AWS Direct Connect provides a more consistent network experience for accessing your AWS resources, typically with greater bandwidth and reduced network costs. This session dives deep into the features of AWS Direct Connect and VPNs. We discuss deployment architectures and the process from start to finish. We show you how to configure public and private virtual interfaces, configure routers, use VPN backup, and provide secure communication between sites by using the AWS VPN CloudHub.

Alexa for Business allows you to use Alexa-enabled devices to transform your conference rooms. Using simple voice skills, you can control the conference room environment, start online meetings, turn on video projectors, and more. In thiAlexa for Business allows you to use Alexa-enabled devices to transform your conference rooms. Using simple voice skills, you can control the conference room environment, start online meetings, turn on video projectors, and more. In this session, we'll walk through the Alexa-enabled conference room, and show you how you can use Alexa for Business to specify device locations, connect to conference room calendars, and provide access to meeting-specific skills. session, we'll walk through the Alexa-enabled conference room, and show you how you can use Alexa for Business to specify device locations, connect to conference room calendars, and provide access to meeting-specific skills.

IT organizations today need to support a modern, flexible, global workforce and ensure their users can be productive from anywhere. Moving desktops and applications to AWS offers improved security, scale, and performance, with cloud economics. In this session, we provide an overview of Amazon WorkSpaces and Amazon AppStream 2.0, and talk through best practices for moving your end-user computing to AWS. We also dive deep into Amazon AppStream 2.0, and demonstrate some of the newest capabilities, including Microsoft Active Directory integration, single sign-on with SAML 2.0, and new graphics instances.

This session focuses on best practices for connectivity between many virtual private clouds (VPCs), including the Transit VPC. We review how the Transit VPC works and use cases for centralization, network security, and connectivity. We include best practices for multiple accounts, multiple regions, and designing for scale. In addition, we also review some of the variants and extensions to the Transit VPC, including how to customize your own.

In this session, you'll learn how to migrate your virtualized desktop apps to the cloud using Amazon AppStream 2.0, and stream them to a desktop browser. We discuss how to assess your existing virtualized application environment, map to concepts in Amazon AppStream 2.0, and start the planning and architecture process. We demo the building blocks you use to create your AppStream 2.0 environment, and provide tips for achieving the best performance and user experience.

In this session, we walk through the Amazon VPC network and describe the problems we were solving when we created it, and the features we've been adding as we scale it. We cover how these problems and features are traditionally solved, and why those solutions are not scalable, inexpensive, or secure enough for AWS. Finally, we provide an overview of the solution that we've implemented. We discuss some of the unique mechanisms that we use to ensure customer isolation, get packets into and out of the network, and support new features such as NAT and VPC endpoints.

In this session, we explore how enterprises are rethinking their graphics workstation strategy, and moving their 3D apps to the cloud using Amazon AppStream 2.0. We discuss common use cases for delivering 3D apps to users and how to implement them. You'll learn about the benefits of integration with other AWS resources for driving simulations and storing data, while lowering your costs by avoiding upfront investments, and only paying for what you use. Our guest speaker from Cornell University will share his experience delivering industry-standard simulation tools such as ANSYS FLUENT into courses. We will also demonstrate popular 3D Graphics apps running on AppStream 2.0 using newer graphics design and pro instances.

Cox Automotive provides digital solutions that transform how the world buys, sells, and owns cars. Cox is currently engaged in a multiyear effort to migrate the bulk of its applications from physical data centers to AWS, including client-facing SaaS applications and large, consumer-facing websites. In this session, they discuss their learnings on how to effectively migrate large, service-based architectures to AWS while minimizing the impact to customers. They also share lessons learned for conducting organizational change at scale and creating a culture of self-service.

A challenge faced by many retailers is how to form an integrated single view of the customer across multiple retail channels to help you better understand purchasing behavior & patterns. In this session, we will present a solution that merges web analytics data with customer purchase history based on AWS API Gateway, Lambda and S3. Learn how to track customer purchase behaviors across different selling channels to better predict future needs and make relevant, intelligent recommendations.

Auto Scaling allows cloud resources to scale automatically in reaction to the dynamic needs of customers. This session shows how Auto Scaling offers an advantage to everyone—whether it's basic fleet management to keep instances healthy as an Amazon EC2 best practice, or dynamic scaling to manage extremes. We share examples of how Auto Scaling helps customers of all sizes and industries unlock use cases and value. We also discuss how Auto Scaling is evolving to scaling different types of elastic AWS resources beyond EC2 instances. Data Scientist & Principal Investigator, Hook Hua, from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) / California Institute of Technology will share how Auto Scaling is used to scale science data processing of remote sensing data from earth-observing satellite missions, and reduce response times during hazard response events such as those from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and volcanoes. JPL will also discuss how they are integrating their science data systems with the AWS ecosystem to expand into NASA's next two large-scale missions with remote-sensing radar-based observations. Learn how Auto Scaling is being used at a global scale – and beyond!

Maintaining control of sensitive data is critical in the highly regulated financial investments environment that Vanguard operates in. This need for data control complicated Vanguard's move to the cloud. They needed to expand globally to provide a great user experience while at the same time maintaining their mainframe-based backend data architecture. In this session, Vanguard discusses the creative approach they took to decouple their monolithic backend architecture to empower a microservices architecture while maintaining compliance with regulations. They also cover solutions implemented to successfully meet their requirements for security, latency, and end-state consistency.

Today's retail customers expect exceptional customer service and tailored solutions to their problems. Chat and voice interfaces provide retailers with new ways to interact with their customers and to provide intelligent & efficient solutions. In this session, we will build and demonstrate a ChatBot powered by Amazon AI that can autonomously guide a customer through the process of reporting an undelivered or defective item & quickly offer appropriate solutions. Learn how to redefine your customer service experience by tying together Amazon Lex, AWS Lambda and AWS DynamoDB to easily add ChatBot functionality to your retail solution.

With serverless computing, you can build and run applications without the need for provisioning or managing servers. Serverless computing means that you can build web, mobile, and IoT backends, run stream processing or big data workloads, run chatbots, and more. In this session, learn how to get started with serverless computing with AWS Lambda, which lets you run code without provisioning or managing servers. We introduce you to the basics of building with Lambda. As part of that, we show how you can benefit from features such as continuous scaling, built-in high availability, integrations with AWS and third-party apps, and subsecond metering pricing. We also introduce you to the broader portfolio of AWS services that help you build serverless applications with Lambda, including Amazon API Gateway, Amazon DynamoDB, AWS Step Functions, and more.