Happy New Year!
We’re entering a time where technology augments human capabilities in genuinely inspiring ways. As we move forward, the positive impacts of technology will redefine our concept of success. Amazon CTO, Dr. Werner Vogels, has shared five forward-looking tech predictions for 2025 and beyond:
- The workforce of tomorrow is mission-driven
- A new era of energy efficiency drives innovation
- Technology tips the scales in the discovery of truth
- Open data drives decentralized disaster preparedness
- Intention-driven consumer technology takes hold
To delve deeper into these technological trends and their potential to shape our future, you can download the Werner Vogels’ Tech Predictions for 2025 and Beyond ebook or read Werner’s All Things Distributed blog.
AWS re:Invent 2025 Videos and re:Caps
If you’re looking to catch up on the announcements from re:Invent or explore the latest AWS innovations, several options are available:
- Watch the keynotes, innovation talks, and breakout sessions on-demand.
- Download the summary of key AWS re:Invent announcements.
- Attend free in-person community re:Cap sessions organized by volunteers from AWS User Groups around the world.
Launches from the Last Few Weeks
Since our last weekly review on December 16, 2024, a few notable launches have occurred:
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Availability of Llama 3.3 70B in Amazon SageMaker JumpStart and in Amazon Bedrock – Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B represents a significant advancement in model efficiency and performance optimization. This text-only, instruction-tuned model offers improved performance compared to Llama 3.1 70B and Llama 3.2 90B, particularly for text-based applications. The model is now accessible in both Amazon SageMaker JumpStart and Amazon Bedrock.
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Availability of Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large in Amazon Bedrock – Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large, developed by Stability AI, is the most powerful model in the Stable Diffusion family, boasting 8.1 billion parameters and trained on Amazon SageMaker HyperPod. This model allows users to generate high-quality images from text descriptions within Amazon Bedrock.
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New Amazon Kinesis source connector for Apache Flink – The Apache Flink community has released version 5.0.0 of AWS services connectors, an open-source contribution from AWS. This version introduces the Kinesis Streams Source, a new connector that replaces the previous Kinesis Consumer for reading data from Amazon Kinesis Data Streams.
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Support of AWS Global Accelerator in Amazon WorkSpaces Personal – Amazon WorkSpaces Personal now integrates with AWS Global Accelerator (AGA) to enhance the performance of WorkSpaces connections. This integration optimizes streaming traffic through the AWS Global Network and edge locations, benefiting customers whose end users connect to WorkSpaces from remote locations. The AGA feature can be enabled at either the WorkSpaces directory level or for individual WorkSpaces running Amazon DCV protocol.
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New resource insights in AWS Resource Explorer – The enhanced Resource Explorer experience offers centralized relevant data and insights from multiple AWS services for supported resource types. The new features allow users to take actions on resources directly from the Resource Explorer console, such as managing tags and adding resources to applications, and getting more information about a resource using Amazon Q.
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General availability of custom billing view in AWS Billing and Cost Management – The custom billing view feature enables application and business unit owners to access relevant cost management data across multiple AWS accounts through a single view in AWS Cost Explorer, without granting access to the AWS management account. Users can create filtered views of cost management data based on cost allocation tags or specific AWS accounts.
For a comprehensive list of all AWS announcements, please visit the What’s New at AWS page.
Upcoming AWS Events
Mark your calendars for these upcoming AWS events:
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AWS at CES 2025 (January 7-10) – AWS will showcase the latest cloud services and solutions designed for the automotive, mobility, transportation, and manufacturing industries. Attendees will explore advancements in generative AI, software-defined vehicles, product engineering, sustainability, new digital customer experiences, connected mobility, autonomous driving, and more, within the Amazon Experience Area.
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AWS at NRF 2025 (January 12-14) – Join AWS at this major retail event to see generative AI and cutting-edge technologies in action. The event will feature innovative big ideas sessions, curated TechTalks, and the latest trends and technologies in retail.
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Amazon QuickSight Learning Series – Kick off 2025 by enhancing your data skills. This online Learning Series in January will explore the latest features of Amazon QuickSight unveiled at re:Invent 2024.
You can find a complete list of both in-person and virtual events at the AWS Events page.
That’s all for this week! Check back next Monday for the next Weekly Roundup.
– Prasad
This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!
