AWS just dropped a game changer for startups, small business

Amazon Chief Technology Officer Werner Vogels’ keynote at re:Invent is a not-to-be-missed occurrence. Vogels covered a lot of ground in his keynote at re:Invent 2021 — and we'll go over the announcements in a second. But there's one announcement that I feel is going to be a game changer for startups and small business enthusiasts: the latest improvements to AWS Amplify.

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AWS Amplify Studio is a new service that helps people build feature-rich applications quickly using a visual interface which requires little knowledge of how to write code. 

Why's that a big deal?

Many start-up strategists face challenges on the road to getting their idea to a minimum viable product due to the costs and difficulties of coding an application from the ground up. This is the challenge that AWS Amplify Studio is here to solve.

As AWS puts it: AWS Amplify Studio means building and shipping "complete web and mobile apps in hours instead of weeks."

Here are some of the features within AWS Amplify Studio that are going to make getting your app off the ground a much easier lift.

• Through AWS Amplify Studio, you now set up your backend, UI components, and connect them together. This includes the creation of database tables, file storage, and user authentication.

• From a front-end perspective, all of the components are completely customizable, which allows you to style to your liking using front-end tooling of your choice.

• Amplify Studio also exports all back-end and front-end artifacts to code, which assists developers with more coding experience and expertise in the further customization of behavior and design using standard programming concepts.

The service is currently in public preview. For more information on the AWS Amplify Studio release, visit the AWS product page or the announcement.

In Vogels’ keynote, he celebrated the milestone of Amazon Web Services’ 15 years in the cloud, and the 10th year of re:invent. He also covered the following major announcements:

• Amazon EC2 M1 Mac Instances — This is an upgrade from last year's Mac EC2 instance release which includes Apple's latest and greatest M1 chip for developers building for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

• Continuous expansion of over 30 AWS Local Zones, which provide record-breaking latency, which is key for real-time conversations, as well media streaming services. This expansion is expected to rollout in 2022 and will bring Local Zones to Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

• AWS Cloud WAN — This new AWS service which allows customers to build, manage and monitor global wide area networks.

Errol Hooper is a Training Architect at A Cloud Guru and the co-author of the AWS SysOps Administrator Course. Errol has over ten years of IT experience in cloud computing, engineering, and data services. Beginning his IT career as an Enterprise Data Warehouse Developer, Errol gained expertise in data modeling, data architecture, and business intelligence through data mining and the implementation of Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) processes. Later transitioning to a Software Engineer role, he gained additional experience in cloud computing, microservice architectures, and API development. Errol subsequently served as a Lead Platform Engineer at Georgia Tech Research Institute, where he led the engineering of cloud infrastructure solutions. Errol is currently an AWS Training Architect with A Cloud Guru. Errol has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Technology from Savannah State University.

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