AWS pre:Invent 2024 - Another year, another 600+ announcements

Going from 250 to 600 in the space of 12 months

Alan Blockley
General, AWS

It’s that time of year again, the turkey has been pardoned, people are gathering, not only around a family feast for thanks giving, but also preparing to descend up the Mojave desert. This can mean only one thing! Increased sales in chapstick and pre:Invent is upon us. This annual prelude to AWS re:Invent has become synonymous with an avalanche of announcements, features, and updates that leave us equal parts excited and scrambling to catch up. If you thought last year’s pre:Invent was jam-packed, 2024 has dialed it up several notches. So, grab your coffee (or energy drink) and let’s dive into what pre:Invent 2024 has brought to the table.

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What Is pre:Invent, Really?

For the uninitiated, pre:Invent is the AWS teaser trailer to the main re:Invent event in December. Think of it as a kid in a candy store but replace the candy with announcements of new services, regional expansions, feature rollouts, and product evolutions. It’s the “calm before the storm” that is re:Invent, except there’s nothing calm about it—especially for those of us tasked with keeping up.

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Over the years, pre:Invent has evolved from being a quiet lead-up to re:Invent into a spectacle in its own right. It’s where AWS gives us a sneak peek into its relentless pace of innovation.

By the Numbers: pre:Invent 2024 in Perspective

This year has been nothing short of monumental. Here’s a snapshot:

  • 2,089 announcements across the year so far.
  • 611 new updates since the start of October alone.

Let that sink in for a moment. It’s like AWS is trying to outdo itself every single year. And for those keeping score at home, normally we see roughly 100 announcements per month, but in the last 2 months we’ve had over circa 300/month, a feat that keeps all of us on our toes.

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Region Expansions: Scaling Without Borders

With pre:Invent we see regular and acelerated region expansions, services crossing borders to provide access to a wider audience. AWS continues to strengthen its global footprint with region expansions. Casing point, this month alone we’ve seen:

  • Amazon Timestream debut in the ap-south-1 region.
  • Amazon VPC Lattice expand to eu-central-2 and me-central-1.
  • AWS Wickr reaching Asia Pacific with its launch in ap-southeast-5.

These expansions aren’t just about geography; they’re about unlocking potential for businesses that need low-latency access to AWS’s growing suite of services.

New Features to Watch

pre:Invent isn’t just about geography—it’s also about pushing the envelope on capabilities. Some of this year’s standout feature announcements include:

  • Custom Domain Names for Private APIs, a much-requested feature that will simplify API management.
  • Resource Control Policies, making it easier to define guardrails at a granular level.
  • Amazon CloudFront announces VPC origins, a game-changer for those leveraging private networking.
  • Centralised root access for AWS Organisations, the feature we’ve been asking for, for years!

Product Evolutions: AWS’s Ongoing Refinement

AWS services aren’t just growing; they’re maturing. Some noteworthy transformations include:

  • The AWS Console getting usability upgrades like “corner-cutting” navigation improvements, a cleaner console and more advanced widgets.
  • AWS Documentation introducing a “Focus Mode” for distraction-free reading of the AWS Docs. .
  • Application Composer evolving into Infrastructure Composer, signaling a broader scope.
  • EC2 AMI Lineage, a tool I’m lovingly calling “Ancestry.com for Machine Images.”

My pre:Invent 2024 Favorites

As always, some announcements stand out more than others. My personal highlights this year:

  • CloudFormation Events (Timeline View): Finally, a visual way to see stack changes over time. It’s a little thing that’s going to make a big difference. Image
  • Scaling to Zero: Whether it’s Aurora Serverless v2 or Amazon SageMaker, the ability to dynamically scale down to zero is an infrastructure game-changer.
  • Dynamodb DB is cheaper: In keeping with cost savings, DynamoDB has been made 50% cheaper for on demand usage, which I think is amazing because i didn’t think we could get any cheaper for DynamoDB. I’m in the process of converting my relational DBs to DynamoDB, this has just giving more of a booost.
  • Q Developer Inline Chat: A real-time assistant for developers, bringing generative AI into the heart of the developer workflow.
  • InlineAgents for Amazon Bedrock: Making it easier than ever to build sophisticated AI-driven applications with agentic workflows. To learn more about this, hear from the man in the know, Mike Chambers. Image https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eozU4m8HwE

Staying Updated in the Madness

With announcements coming thick and fast, staying informed can feel like a full-time job. Here are my go-to resources:

Wrapping It Up

pre:Invent 2024 has cemented itself as a milestone year for AWS, showcasing not just the scale of its ambition but also its commitment to delivering meaningful innovation. As we gear up for re:Invent 2024, one thing is certain: the months of October and November may deprive me of sleep, but they fill me with excitement for the future of cloud technology.

If you’ve got questions or just want to geek out about the latest announcements, connect with me here. And don’t forget to check out my re:Invent session, DEV324, where we’ll dive into generative AI and tracking AWS launches.

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Until next time, happy building!