Coin Graham, VP of Professional Services
As one of the pioneers in cloud computing technology, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is known for imagining a better future for how we interact with cloud computing and bringing that vision to life. More American healthcare companies are moving from on-premises technology into the cloud – empowering them to deliver an elevated standard of care for patients throughout the country – and AWS re:Invent 2022 gave us a glimpse into the innovations that will help drive our industry forward.
Read on to learn more about the top 5 themes from AWS re:Invent 2022 – plus one bonus announcement that was quietly introduced but is expected to have an outsized impact on healthcare companies – and how your healthcare organization can position itself to capitalize on these developments.
#1 Data Drove The Conference
In the modern, always-on information economy, data continues to shape the way organizations go-to-market and optimize their growth. It came as no surprise to attendees that AWS re:Invent 2022 centered around data, and the announcements from companies to support their collection and utilization of data.
We were fortunate to hear about the improvements to Amazon Redshift – a prolific data warehouse product that has been part of the AWS offering for a decade. Offering simplified data ingestion, Redshift will now support auto-copy from Amazon S3 so that files arriving in an S3 bucket automatically load into a pre-specified location in your data warehouse.
In addition, Amazon announced the Aurora zero-ETL integration with Redshift, enabling near real-time analytics on certain transactional data stored in Aurora MySQL and PostgreSQL databases. These features will save data engineers from needing to manually or repeatedly run copy procedures or build complicated pipelines of data.
Improving the Quality of AWS Glue Data
AWS Glue, the serverless computing platform that automatically activates computing based on events – and efficiently manages computing resources as programmed – announced new developments and features to improve the quality of data in AWS Glue. Now, the new features can analyze tables and recommend rules for the data. Users can also adjust these rules or write their own custom rules.
The efficacy of data analytics can be limited by poor data quality, and these innovations are a step in the right direction for any AWS Glue users.
Optimized Reads and Optimized Writes for RDS
The teams at AWS re:Invent 2022 also announced improvements to the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), making it more cost-effective for RDS engines. With RDS Optimized Reads, certain queries that use temporary tables will now be able to execute up to 50% faster. Additionally, RDS Optimized Writes will enable up to double the write transaction throughput without additional cost or a reduction in the number of provisioned IOPS.
#2 SageMaker Innovations Abound
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning continue to be top priorities for the technology industry. Amazon SageMaker enjoyed nearly a dozen announcements at AWS re:Invent 2022, and shows Amazon’s commitment to enable developers to create, train, and deploy machine-learning models in the cloud.
Announcements included: Data Wrangler now supporting SaaS applications as data sources, customizable permissions for SageMaker users, redesigned UI for ease of access in SageMaker Studio, and SageMaker JumpStart to more easily share ML Models and Notebooks with other users in your organization.
As we’ve witnessed recently with ChatGPT, the market demand – or at least curiosity – for artificial intelligence and machine learning is undeniable. We are excited to see how SageMaker continues to innovate and improve the AI/ML space.
#3 Improving Interoperability with Integrations
With so many new products and services, AWS is a formidable cloud computing ecosystem. One strategy that was unveiled during AWS re:Invent 2022 – which we believe will build an even larger moat around AWS – is the introduction of multiple integrations of AWS offerings. One announcement was the introduction of VPC Lattice, which will allow users to create policies for traffic management, network access, and monitoring so that applications can be connected with simplicity and consistency across AWS compute services.
Another notable announcement was Amazon EventBridge Pipes, which introduces the creation of point-to-point integrations. Now, users can integrate supported AWS and self-managed services as event producers and event consumers into applications.
Each of these integrations is slated to improve interoperability within the AWS ecosystem, and we believe it will ultimately create a stickier product offering that will keep customers with AWS for the long term.
#4 Supplementing AWS Security
In addition to user expectations about the robust capabilities of AWS technology, users also expect to see world-class security defending each of the products and services. AWS re:Invent 2022 saw multiple noteworthy announcements to improve an already impressive security profile from AWS.
AWS Marketplace Vendor Insights is a new capability that helps ensure your third-party software continuously meets industry standards. With automated technology that compiles security and compliance information about the third-party software, users can review and monitor the software from one consolidated dashboard.
Another announcement that generated buzz was Amazon Inspector. Amazon Inspector will now scan AWS Lambda functions for vulnerabilities, thus obviating the need for customers to analyze their mixed workloads with another third-party tool or review the functions manually.
Finally, proactive compliance is becoming a standard offering as part of updated AWS Config rules. Now, AWS Config rules will support proactive mode so they can be run any time before provisioning. Customers will no longer have to spend a considerable amount of time implementing custom pre-deployment validations.
In our view, the security and compliance innovations coming out of AWS re:Invent 2022 will help support a more defensible and optimized cloud computing environment, without too much additional lift from the technical folks at the helm of these controls.
#5 Growing Computing Capabilities
With widespread use in cloud computing, AWS Lambda enjoyed major improvements in computing speed. AWS re:Invent 2022 saw the announcement of Lambda SnapStart; enabling this feature for Java functions can make them start up to 10x faster, with no additional cost to the user.
Plus, AWS leaders announced ENA Express, which will bring improved network latency and per-flow performance on EC2. With this new feature, users will receive much more per-flow bandwidth and much less variability – both of which are critical to continually improve cloud computing environments.
Conference attendees also received a sneak peek at three new EC2 instance types: C7gn Instances, Hpc7g Instances, and R7iz Instances. Although the technical specifications are beyond the scope of this recap of the event, ultimately these new instance types will empower EC2 instances to handle more network-intensive workloads and expand the frontiers of cloud computing.
Bonus! Amazon Omics
As the leading managed cloud partner for healthcare companies in the US, we paid particular attention to the introduction of Amazon Omics, a new service announced at AWS re:Invent 2022. This new service will help bioinformaticians and researchers store, query, and analyze genomic data – in turn improving their ability to improve health outcomes for patients and advance scientific discoveries.
Given Amazon’s recent push into the healthcare space with their acquisition of PillPack in 2018 – and their high-profile acquisition of OneMedical earlier this year – it was encouraging to see AWS’s commitment to developing technology that can make Amazon an even more formidable player in the American healthcare space.
In-Depth Information From AWS re:Invent 2022
AWS has exciting innovations on the horizon, and the pace of technological improvement in the ecosystem can feel nonstop at times. As we continue to work with hundreds of healthcare companies in the US to help them secure and optimize their cloud and cyber security, we are optimistic that AWS and the other major cloud providers will help accelerate health outcomes for the entire industry.
If you’d like to consume content from the event, including individual breakout sessions and speakers, you can find it all on-demand at https://reinvent.awsevents.com.
Additionally, customers who are wondering how to improve their business with these new innovations and want professional guidance throughout the process can connect with our team here.
Until next year, re:Invent!
