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Dec 10, 2024

Takeaways from AWS re:Invent 2024

If you’ve ever spent a week navigating the hallways of The Venetian or Mandalay Bay during AWS re:Invent, you know just how easy it is to get overwhelmed. There’s the constant buzz—thousands of cloud practitioners, founders, and big-name vendors, all jockeying for attention, promising a future where the friction of scaling technology disappears at the click of a button. The scope is massive, the hype is unavoidable, and the announcements come at a breakneck pace. For us at Allata, as cloud and technology strategists, this year’s event was a chance to filter the noise, keep a conversational and realistic perspective, and find a few gems that point the way to what’s next. Our guiding ethos? “Now go build”—not just more of the same, but better, more sustainable, and more imaginative solutions.

The Data Layers Are Becoming Truly Foundational

Let’s start with what’s undeniable: Data is everywhere, and it’s now the heart of everything from analytics to AI-driven decision-making. AWS’s continued push to integrate analytics directly at the point of data captured—what many are calling a zero-ETL future—felt more like a promise than a pipe dream this year.

  • Aurora DSQL: Another highlight was Aurora DSQL, a distributed SQL flavor meant to play nicely with low-latency reads and writes at scale. For practitioners who struggle to keep transactional and analytical workloads under one roof, Aurora DSQL suggests a future where you don’t have to compromise. Your transactional database can begin to power real-time insights, rather than waiting on some brittle ETL pipeline.
  • S3 Metadata: One of the more meaningful enhancements was the introduction of automatic metadata capture for objects in S3, backed by managed Apache Iceberg tables. Translation: simpler curation and discovery for large datasets, less time wasted in painful ETL jobs, and more time spent running queries against data that’s actually accessible. While there’s still some refinement needed, it’s an exciting step. Stop wrangling data and start experimenting with it—that’s the spirit of zero-ETL.

AI at the Core: SageMaker’s Big Tent

SageMaker feels like it’s truly cementing its position as the go-to, all-in-one AI hub in AWS’s ecosystem. Whether you’re dabbling in machine learning for the first time or orchestrating large-scale model training for complex LLMs, SageMaker’s ongoing expansions—from improved training speeds to better model deployment options—make it feel like the center of gravity for AI on AWS. While not every enterprise needs full-blown generative AI right now, it’s clear that AWS wants SageMaker to be the first stop on your journey, no matter how modest or ambitious your ML goals.

Architecture Patterns: MACH, Event-Driven, and Multi-Agent

If re:Invent 2024 taught us anything, it’s that there’s no single architecture pattern to rule them all. Instead, it’s about pick-and-choose, assemble, and evolve.

  • MACH Architectures: MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless) continues to gain steam, showing up in conversation after conversation. The flexible, decoupled, and composable nature of MACH fits right in with zero-ETL pipelines and AI-first strategies. Modern enterprises want the freedom to pivot quickly—MACH approaches let you innovate without being handcuffed to legacy monoliths.
  • Event-Driven Architectures (EDAs): EDAs are no longer fringe. They’re front and center. With sessions like “Generative AI architecture patterns in production” and “Event-driven architectures at scale,” AWS pushed the narrative that loosely coupled, asynchronous systems are the future. Services like MSK and Kinesis point the way to a world where real-time event streams feed directly into analytics, ML models, and business logic—all without waiting for a scheduled ETL job.
  • Task Orchestration & Multi-Agent Collaboration: On the AI side, multi-agent systems and more advanced orchestration tools are emerging. Whether it’s programmatic flows governed by Step Functions or semantic orchestration guided by AI agents, the takeaway is that complex workflows no longer need to be chained together by brittle scripts and manual interventions. Instead, we can use intelligent agents to collaborate, handle complexity, and scale up our decision-making processes. This shift also ties into the concept of GraphRAG (Graph + Retrieval Augmented Generation), LLM validation tools, and orchestration strategies. The key trend: Let’s get smarter and more strategic about how services talk to each other, rather than just wiring everything together in one big spaghetti mess.

Modern Collaboration and Planning: Miro Steps In

In a world defined by remote teams and distributed architectures, it’s not just about the code anymore. Collaboration, brainstorming, and planning tools are finding new niches within the AWS ecosystem. Tools like Miro, with its diagramming, cost calculator integrations, and AWS MAP templates, are becoming vital parts of the workflow. The idea of “diagrams to code” or “AWS accounts to diagrams” isn’t just a neat demo; it’s a way to break down silos between technical, product, and strategic teams. Everyone can visually reason about the architecture, and in turn, the architecture can produce code that’s faithful to the team’s shared understanding. Miro’s presence at re:Invent showed that as complexity grows, the tools that let us visualize, share, and iterate become just as important as the code that runs behind the scenes.

Other Cool Things We Saw

Let’s talk about the expo floor. Sure, AWS dominates the headlines, but part of the fun of re:Invent is wandering the expo hall and bumping into innovative startups and established players pushing the envelope.

  • Harness: A platform focused on modern CI/CD and feature flagging, making continuous delivery more approachable.
  • Port: With an emphasis on environment management and infrastructure governance, Port is riding the wave of internal developer platforms.
  • Orb (fine-grained payments): Interesting solutions around payment models, usage tracking, and monetization mechanics.
  • Flox: A novel take on open-source software management to streamline dev workflows.
  • WorkOS: Making enterprise authentication and SaaS integrations simpler.

These are just a handful of the many companies working hard to stand out from the crowd. What’s special here is the sense of camaraderie and cross-pollination. It’s fun to discover tools that might solve that one pain point you’ve been wrestling with for months.

Speaking of fun, it’s not all about the tech. There’s something to be said for grabbing a coffee with a colleague, striking up a conversation with a stranger about their approach to event-driven frontends, and later watching Weezer play at the rePlay party. That’s the intangible value of re:Invent—the serendipity, the unexpected connections, and a soundtrack that reminds you that tech isn’t just about code and data centers; it’s about people and shared experiences.

Engaging as a Professional Services Firm: Exploring, Not Just Showcasing

At Allata, we’ve come to realize that simply having a booth at re:Invent might look good on paper, but it doesn’t always produce the most meaningful value. It’s expensive, it’s loud, and it’s hard to differentiate yourself when everyone’s jostling for attention. Instead, we prefer to dive into the sessions, sit next to customers and colleagues, and “be in it” rather than just “be at it.” Attending re:Invent as a participant—actively exploring new services, patterns, and conversations—gives us a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the trends and tools that matter.

This approach aligns with our guiding philosophy: Don’t just coast along with the status quo. Embrace new architectures like MACH or event-driven approaches, try out new features like S3 Metadata or Aurora DSQL, and resist the urge to keep doing what you’ve always done just because it’s comfortable. Innovation requires a willingness to pivot, to consider intangible ROI, and to experiment without a guaranteed payoff. That’s exactly what the spirit of re:Invent encourages.

Now Go Build

As we pack up and head home, the message from re:Invent is clear: The landscape is moving fast, and waiting on the sidelines isn’t an option. Data-driven decisions, zero-ETL architectures, AI at the core, event-driven patterns, and the evolving toolkit around orchestration and collaboration are changing the playbook. Don’t just add these capabilities as afterthoughts—integrate them into your DNA.

In other words, now go build. Build to learn, build to adapt, and build to meet customers where they are. You might not get everything right on the first try, but that’s part of the journey. With a little guidance—and a whole lot of curiosity—you’ll be ready for the next re:Invent and beyond.

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