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Summer is well and truly here in the UK! I’m a bit of a summer grinch though so, unlike most people, I’m not crazy about “the glorious sun” scorching me when I’m out and about. On the upside, this provides the perfect excuse to retreat to the comfort of a well-ventilated room where I can focus on coding and curating the latest AWS releases to bring you the highlights.
I also managed to escape the heat for most of yesterday while recording an episode for the AWS Developers Podcast where the wonderful Sebastien Stormaq and Tiffany Souterre interviewed me about games development. If you haven’t discovered it yet, I highly recommend you give it a go as the episodes are full of interesting lessons and insights from not just AWS, but customers and community members who share their stories and expertise in a relaxed conversation.
Alright, ready to discover some of the new things we released last week? Here are the highlights.
AWS Builder Center
There is a new home for AWS builders and community members! AWS Builder Center is a new place where cloud builders can connect, share knowledge, and access resources to enhance their AWS journey. The platform enables users to join community programs, discover trending topics, access AWS Skill Builder courses, participate in technical challenges, and more, using a single Builder ID sign-in.
One the features that I’m personally most excited about is the Wishlist. You can now create wishes and tell AWS directly about ways to improve our products and services or share original ideas that you think could help you and your teams. You can also browse and upvote existing wishes to support any suggestions that you think should be prioritized. The AWS teams will keep an eye on this and if a wish has enough traction it may just be considered!
Read the news blog post for a quick tour through some of the most exciting features or head over to AWS Builder Center and start exploring!
AI
The world of AI keeps moving fast and changing our world, by providing new and exciting ways to do things and become more productive. Here are two releases from last week that caught my attention.
- Amazon Q chat in the AWS Management Console can now query AWS service data – Amazon Q Developer expands its capabilities by enabling natural language queries of data stored across AWS services like S3, DynamoDB, and CloudWatch, directly from the AWS Console, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and AWS Console Mobile Application. This enhancement streamlines cloud management and troubleshooting by allowing users to access and analyze service data through conversational interfaces, with access controls managed through IAM permissions.
- Amazon CloudWatch and Application Signals MCP servers for AI-assisted troubleshooting – AWS has released two new Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers – CloudWatch MCP and Application Signals MCP – that enable AI agents to leverage observability data for automated troubleshooting through conversational interfaces. These open-source servers allow AI assistants to analyze metrics, alarms, logs, traces, and service health data across AWS environments, streamlining incident response and root cause analysis without requiring developers to manually navigate multiple AWS consoles.
Oracle Database@AWS
It seems like yesterday when Andy Jassy announced our partnership with Oracle to create Oracle Database@AWS, a jointly offered service that runs Oracle databases on Exadata infrastructure directly within AWS data centers, providing a unified AWS-Oracle experience. Fast forward to last week and Oracle Database@AWS has reached a significant milestone with its general availability release. It is now available in US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) regions, with plans to expand to 20 additional regions globally.
In addition, VPC Lattice has added support for Oracle Database@AWS enabling seamless connectivity between applications in VPCs and on-premises environments to Oracle database networks. The integration simplifies network management and provides secure access from Oracle Database@AWS to AWS services like Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift, without requiring complex networking setup.
So if you’re looking to migrate your Oracle database workloads, now is a great time to explore Oracle Database@AWS as it offers a compelling path forward with minimal modifications required.
Additional highlights
Here are some other releases that I think many people will be happy about.
- AWS Config now supports 12 new resource types – AWS Config has expanded its monitoring capabilities with support for 12 new resource types across services including BackupGateway, CloudFront, EntityResolution, Bedrock, and more. These additions are automatically tracked if you have enabled recording for all resource types, enhancing your ability to discover, assess, and audit AWS resources.
- Amazon SageMaker Studio now supports remote connections from Visual Studio Code – Amazon SageMaker Studio now supports remote connections from Visual Studio Code, allowing developers to use their familiar VS Code setup while leveraging SageMaker’s scalable compute resources for AI development.
- AWS Network Firewall: Native AWS Transit Gateway support in all regions – AWS Network Firewall now offers native integration with AWS Transit Gateway across all supported regions, enabling direct attachment and simplified traffic inspection between VPCs and on-premises networks. This integration eliminates the need for managing dedicated VPC subnets and route tables while providing multi-AZ redundancy for improved security and reliability.
Upcoming AWS Events
AWS Summit New York – this is definitely one to watch…literally! Registrations are closed due to capacity but you can tune in to watch live all the announcements and launches! No spoilers, but, trust me, there are a quite a few exciting things in store, so make sure to check it out.
AWS Gen AI Lofts – AWS Gen AI Lofts are multi-day events offering hands-on workshops, expert guidance, and networking opportunities for developers and business leaders looking to explore or advance their generative AI journey. These events are hosted across multiple global locations including San Francisco, Berlin, Dubai, Dublin, Bengaluru, Manchester, Paris, and Tel Aviv, providing accessible opportunities to accelerate your generative AI adoption.
And that’s it for this week! Come back next Monday for more highlights and keep your AWS knowledge up to date as we cover the latest releases.
