Aws Re:invent 2017

Today's retail customers want to set the rules on how and when they buy, receive, and return their product. But many retailers are struggling to unify their sales channels using existing legacy e-commerce software stacks. To consistently serve customers across retail channels, retailers must adopt a modern architecture that is elastic, cost effective, and based on loosely coupled application services. In this session, we dive deep into how retailers can leverage serverless architectures using Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, and Amazon DynamoDB.  Learn how Amazon Fresh quickly responded to customer feedback on the Totes Pickup feature, developing a cost-effective and scalable self-service serverless application to deliver a 1-click experience for the customer, while providing faster insights back to the business.

We're still in the midst of a data explosion. With data, we want to do things smarter, quicker, and more accurately, and working with a company like Snowflake enables us to do so. In this session, Kelly Mungary, Lionsgate director of enterprise data and analytics, details how Lionsgate achieved the “Holy Grail” of data analytics – easily storing, blending, and analyzing structured and semi-structured data for agile reporting and data science. With modern data warehousing built for the cloud, Lionsgate achieves faster time to market and continues to migrate investment away from traditional, fading platforms. Lionsgate is a leading global entertainment company that generates vast stores of varied data types from sales, research, social media, exit polls, box office activity, and many other channels to better serve its business customers and its fans. Session sponsored by Snowflake

In this session, we provide a peek behind the scenes to learn about Amazon ElastiCache's design and architecture. See common design patterns with our Redis and Memcached offerings and how customers have used them for in-memory operations to reduce latency and improve application throughput. During this session, we review ElastiCache best practices, design patterns, and anti-patterns.

Successful mobile applications rely on a broad spectrum of backend services that support the features and functionality of the front-end mobile application. The success of the mobile application depends on those backend services being built so that they can scale as the application's audience grows, sometimes explosively when an app takes off. They must also protect the security and privacy of the data used in the application.

This is the general session for Amazon DynamoDB and will cover newly announced features, as well as provide an end to end view of recent innovations. We will also share some of our successful customer stories and use cases. Come to this session to learn all about what's new for DynamoDB!

What is the future for IoT in retail fulfilment and logistics? We discuss retail use cases from Amazon.com, which has a global network of over 150 fulfillment centers with increasing levels of automation. To create more flexible designs and increase the pool of suppliers to choose from, Amazon developed a Machine as a Service framework based on ANSI/ISA-85, allowing Amazon software systems to be vendor agnostic. This framework now extends to incorporate AWS IoT technologies like Amazon Kinesis, AWS Lambda, and AWS Greengrass. Amazon can swap machines with the same functionality without changing the interface. Amazon.com can now create a virtual fulfilment center within Amazon EC2 to test software deployments before the actual building is completed. 

Amazon RDS enables customers to launch an optimally configured, secure and highly available database with just a few clicks. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while managing time-consuming database administration tasks, freeing you up to focus on your applications and business. Amazon RDS provides you six database engines to choose from, including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB. In this session, we take a closer look at the capabilities of the RDS service and review the latest features available. We do a deep dive into how RDS works and the best practices to achieve the optimal performance, flexibility, and cost saving for your databases.

The Amazon Aurora MySQL-compatible Edition is a fully managed relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. It is purpose-built for the cloud using a new architectural model and distributed systems techniques. It provides far higher performance, availability, and durability than previously possible using conventional monolithic database architectures. Amazon Aurora packs a lot of innovations in the engine and storage layers. In this session, we do a deep-dive into some key innovations behind Amazon Aurora MySQL-compatible edition. We explore new improvements to the service and discuss best practices and optimal configurations.

This session describes the importance of digital user engagement using multi-channel messaging to drive effective end-user messaging. Mobile push notifications, SMS text messages, and email help you engage with users and drive your desired business outcomes through improved KPIs that are important for your business. Better user engagement helps drive increased conversions and improve retention for your business.

In this session, Shawn Bice, VP of NoSQL and QuickSight, will cover what's new in AWS non-relational data services, such as Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon ElastiCache, and Amazon Elastisearch. We will discuss how developers might select different data services to solve different aspects of an application and demo scenarios on which application use cases lend themselves well to which data services. If you're a developer building massively scaled applications, requiring flexibility, consistent millisecond performance, and trying to understand what non-relational data service you might use, this is a great introductory session.

MySQL is the world's most popular open source relational database and is used by dozens of popular open source applications. AWS provides several ways to run a MySQL application in the cloud, including Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS for MySQL, Amazon RDS for MariaDB, and Amazon Aurora. This session presents the different options for running MySQL in the AWS Cloud, discusses the different ways to migrate your MySQL database to AWS, and provide tips and tricks for optimizing your MySQL workloads in AWS. Also, a customer presents lessons learned while migrating their MySQL databases to AWS.

Today's retail customers expect exceptional customer service and tailored solutions to their problems. Chat and voice interfaces provide retailers with new ways to interact with their customers and to provide intelligent & efficient solutions. In this session, we will build and demonstrate a ChatBot powered by Amazon AI that can autonomously guide a customer through the process of reporting an undelivered or defective item & quickly offer appropriate solutions. Learn how to redefine your customer service experience by tying together Amazon Lex, AWS Lambda and AWS DynamoDB to easily add ChatBot functionality to your retail solution.

Amazon Aurora services are MySQL and PostgreSQL -compatible relational database engines with the speed, reliability, and availability of high-end commercial databases at one-tenth the cost. This session introduces you to Amazon Aurora, explores the capabilities and features of Aurora, explains common use cases, and helps you get started with Aurora.

Have you ever thought about building a mobile app, but you're daunted by the technology? Join this session to learn the basics of building native cloud-enabled mobile apps with AWS Mobile Hub. Learn about the tools you need, and then follow along to learn how to build your first mobile app. Understand what AWS offers for mobile app developers, and learn how to build a native app and distribute it through AWS Mobile Hub.

Nowadays, it's common for a web server to be fronted by a global content delivery service, such as Amazon CloudFront, to accelerate delivery of websites, APIs, media content, and other web assets. Website administrators and developers want to generate insights in order to improve website availability through bot detection and mitigation, by optimizing web content based on the devices and browser used, by reducing perceived latency by caching a popular object closer to its viewer, and so on. In this session, we dive deep into building an end-to-end serverless analytics solution to analyze Amazon CloudFront access logs, both at rest and in transit, using Amazon Athena and Amazon Kinesis Analytics, respectively, and we generate visualization insights using Amazon QuickSight. Join a discussion with AWS solution architects to learn more about the various ways to generate insights to improve the overall perceived experience for your website users.

A challenge faced by many retailers is how to form an integrated single view of the customer across multiple retail channels to help you better understand purchasing behavior & patterns. In this session, we will present a solution that merges web analytics data with customer purchase history based on AWS API Gateway, Lambda and S3. Learn how to track customer purchase behaviors across different selling channels to better predict future needs and make relevant, intelligent recommendations.

Join this session for an in-depth look into how the Amazon CloudFront team measures the internet in real time to give our customers the best possible experience using AWS technologies, such as Amazon Kinesis and Amazon EMR. AWS customers should expect to leave this whiteboarding session with sample design patterns that they can use when they build their own distributed applications that need a feedback control system.

If you want to deliver videos to all consumers on all devices, building such workloads is complex, time consuming, and expensive. Now, it is fast and easy to implement video-on-demand workflows on AWS and distribute video content to a global audience. Companies, small or large and in various industries, can deliver streaming video without complex professional video tools. In this session, learn how to build complex video workflows entirely in code using AWS services.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are the future of distributable mobile apps. Learn what they are, what tools you need, and how to build a mobile PWA. Then follow along and build your own mobile PWA. Understand what AWS offers for mobile app developers, and learn how to build a PWA and distribute it through AWS Mobile Hub.

Reaching a large podcast audience can present some significant infrastructure scaling challenges. In this session, startup company Whooshkaa walks you through the podcasting landscape. During this session, you will learn about the new audiences you can reach through podcasts. We will explore technical solutions such as Amazon Lightsail, S3 and CloudFront which can facilitate experimentation and help you reach a global audience at low cost. We will dive into Whooshkaa's podcasting platform and explore advanced architectures, leveraging AWS services, allowing you to curate and customize content for each listener. We will also explore tools and solutions for measuring engagement and connecting with your audience through podcasting.