AWS Weekly Roundup: 197 new launches, AI training partnership with Anthropic, and join AWS re:Invent virtually

Amazon Aurora – Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 now supports scaling to 0 Aurora Capacity Units (ACUs). With 0 ACUs, you can now save cost during periods of database inactivity. Instead of scaling down to 0.5 ACUs, the database can now scale down to 0 ACUs. Amazon Aurora is now compatible with MySQL 8.0.39 and PostgreSQL 17.0 in the Amazon RDS Database preview environment. Amazon Bedrock – You can quickly build and execute complex generative AI workflows without writing code with the general availability of Amazon Bedrock Flows (previously known as Prompt Flows). Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases now supports binary vector embeddings for building Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) applications. Amazon Bedrock also introduce a preview launch of Prompt Optimization to rewrite prompts for higher quality responses from foundational models (FMs). You can use AWS Amplify AI kit to easily leverage your data to get customized responses from Bedrock AI models to build web apps with AI capabilities such as chat, conversational search, and summarization. Amazon CloudFront – You can use gRPC applications in Amazon CloudFront that allows bidirectional communication between a client and a server over HTTP/2 connections. Amazon CloudFront introduces Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) origins to deliver content from applications hosted in VPC private subnets, and Anycast Static IPs to provide you with a dedicated list of IP addresses for connecting to all CloudFront edge locations worldwide. You can also conditionally change or update origin servers on each request with origin modification within CloudFront Functions, and use new log configuration and delivery options. Amazon CloudWatch – You can use field indexes and log transformation to improve log analytics at scale in the CloudWatch Logs. You can also use enhanced search and analytics experience and runtime metrics support with CloudWatch Application Signals, and percentile aggregation and simplified events-based troubleshooting directly from the web vitals anomaly in CloudWatch Real User Monitoring (RUM). Amazon Cognito – You can secure user access to your applications with passwordless authentication, including sign-in with passkeys, email, and text message. Amazon Cognito introduces Managed Login, hosted sign-in and sign-up experience that customers can personalize to align with their company or application branding. Cognito launches new user pool feature tiers: Essentials and Plus as well as a new developer-focused console experience. To learn more, visit Donnie’s blog post. Amazon Connect – You can use new customer profiles and outbound campaigns to help you proactively address customer needs before they become potential issues. Amazon Connect Contact Lens now supports creating custom dashboards, as well as adding or removing widgets from existing dashboards. With new Amazon Connect Email, you can receive and respond to emails sent by customers to business addresses or submitted via web forms on your website or mobile app.