Today, we’re announcing the general availability of AWS Interconnect – multicloud, a managed private connectivity service that connects your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) directly to VPCs on other cloud providers. We’re also introducing AWS Interconnect – last mile, a new capability that simplifies how you establish high-speed, private connections to AWS from your branch offices, data centers, and remote locations through your existing network providers.

Large enterprises increasingly run workloads across multiple cloud providers, whether to use specialized services, meet data residency requirements, or support teams that have standardized on different providers. Connecting those environments reliably and securely has historically required significant coordination: managing VPN tunnels, working with colocation facilities, and configuring third-party network fabrics. The result is that your networking team spends time on undifferentiated heavy lifting instead of focusing on the applications that matter to your business.

AWS Interconnect is the answer to these challenges. It is a managed connectivity service that simplifies connectivity into AWS. Interconnect provides you the ability to establish private, high-speed network connections with dedicated bandwidth to and from AWS across hybrid and multicloud environments. You can configure resilient, end-to-end connectivity with ease in a few clicks through the AWS Console by selecting your location, partner, or cloud provider, preferred Region, and bandwidth requirements, removing the friction of discovering partners and the complexity of manual network configurations.

It comes with two capabilities: multicloud connectivity between AWS and other cloud providers, and last-mile connectivity between AWS and your private on-premises networks. Both capabilities are built on the same principle: a fully managed, turnkey experience that removes the infrastructure complexity from your team.

AWS Interconnect – multicloud

AWS Interconnect – multicloud gives you a private, managed Layer 3 connection between your AWS environment and other cloud providers, starting with Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure coming later in 2026. Traffic flows entirely over the AWS global backbone and the partner cloud’s private network, so it never traverses the public internet. This means you get predictable latency, consistent throughput, and isolation from internet congestion without having to manage any physical infrastructure yourself.

Security is built in by default. Every connection uses IEEE 802.1AE MACsec encryption on the physical links between AWS routers and the partner cloud provider’s routers at the interconnection facilities. You don’t need to configure these separately. Note that each cloud provider manages encryption independently on its own backbone, so you should review the encryption documentation for your specific deployment to verify it meets your compliance requirements. Resiliency is also built in: each connection spans multiple logical links distributed across at least two physical facilities, so a single device or building failure does not interrupt your connectivity.

For monitoring, AWS Interconnect – multicloud integrates with Amazon CloudWatch. You get a Network Synthetic Monitor included with each connection to track round-trip latency and packet loss, and bandwidth utilization metrics to support capacity planning.

AWS has published the underlying specification on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license, providing any cloud service provider the opportunity to collaborate with AWS Interconnect – multicloud. To become an AWS Interconnect partner, cloud providers must implement the technical specification and meet AWS operational requirements, including resiliency standards, support commitments, and service level agreements.

How it works

Provisioning a connection takes minutes. I create the connection from the AWS Direct Connect console. I start from the AWS Interconnect section and select Google Cloud as the provider. I select my source and destination regions. I specify bandwidth, and provide my Google Cloud project ID. AWS generates an activation key that I use on the Google Cloud side to complete the connection. Routes propagate automatically in both directions, and my workloads can start exchanging data shortly after.

For this demo, I start with a single VPC and I connect it to a Google Cloud VPC. I use a Direct Connect Gateway. It’s the simplest path: one connection, one attachment, and my workloads on both sides can start talking to each other in minutes.

Step 1: request an interconnect in the AWS Management Console.

I navigate to AWS Direct Connect, AWS Interconnect and I select Create. I first choose the cloud provider I want to connect to. In this example, Google Cloud.

Then, I choose the AWS Region (eu-central-1) and the Google Cloud Region (europe-west3).

On step 3, I enter Description,I choose the Bandwidth, the Direct Connect gateway to attach, and the ID of my Google Cloud project.

After reviewing and confirming the request, the console gives me an activation key. I will use that key to validate the request on the Google cloud side.

Step 2: create the transport and VPC Peering resources on my Google Cloud Platform (GCP) account.

Now that I have the activation key, I continue the process on the GCP side. At the time of this writing, no web-based console was available. I choose to use the GCP command line (CLI) instead. I take note of the CIDR range in the GCP VPC subnet in the europe-west3 region. Then, I open a Terminal and type:

gcloud network-connectivity transports create aws-news-blog 
    --region=europe-west3  
    --activation-key=${ACTIVATION_KEY} 
    --network=default 
    --advertised-routes=10.156.0.0/20

Create request issued for: [aws-news-blog]
...
peeringNetwork: projects/oxxxp-tp/global/networks/transport-9xxxf-vpc
...
state: PENDING_CONFIG
updateTime: '2026-03-19T09:30:51.103979219Z'

It takes a couple of minutes for the command to complete. Once the command returns, I create a peering between my GCP VPC and the new transport I just created. I can do that in the GCP console or with the gcloud command line. Because I was using the Terminal for the previous command, I continued with the command line:

gcloud compute networks peerings create aws-news-blog 
      --network=default 
      --peer-network=projects/oxxxp-tp/global/networks/transport-9xxxf-vpc 
      --import-custom-routes 
      --export-custom-routes

The network name is the name of my GCP VPC. The peer network is given in the output of the previous command.

Once completed, I can verify the peering in the GCP console.

In the AWS Interconnect console, I verify the status is available.

In the AWS Direct Connect console, under Direct Connect gateways, I see the attachment to the new interconnect.

Step 3: associate the new gateway on the AWS side

I select Gateway associations and Associate gateway to attach the Virtual Private Gateway (VGW) that I created before starting this demo (pay attention to use a VGW in the same AWS Region as the interconnect)

You don’t need to configure the network routing on the GCP side. On AWS, there is a final step: add a route entry in your VPC Route tables to send all traffic to the GCP IP address range through the Virtual Gateway.

Once the network setup is done. I start two compute instances, one on AWS and one on GCP.

On AWS, I verify the Security Group accepts ingress traffic on TCP:8080. I connect to the machine and I start a minimal web server:

python3 -c 
"from http.server import HTTPServer, BaseHTTPRequestHandler 
class H(BaseHTTPRequestHandler):
   def do_GET(self):
      self.send_response(200);self.end_headers()
      self.wfile.write(b'Hello AWS World!nn')
HTTPServer(('',8080),H).serve_forever()"

On the GCP side, I open a SSH session to the machine and I call the AWS web server by its private IP address.

Et voilà! I have a private network route between my two networks, entirely managed by the two Cloud Service Providers.

Things to know

There are a couple of configuration options that you should keep in mind:

• When connecting networks, pay attention to the IP addresses range on both sides. The GCP and AWS VPC ranges can’t overlap. For this demo, the default range on AWS was 172.31.0.0/16and the default on GCP was 10.156.0.0/20. I was able to proceed with these default values.
• You can configure IPV4, IPV6, or both on each side. You must select the same option on both sides.
• The Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) must be the same on both VPC. The default values for AWS VPCs and GCP VPCs are not. MTU is the largest packet size, in bytes, that a network interface can transmit without fragmentation. Mismatched MTU sizes between peered VPCs cause packet drops or fragmentation, leading to silent data loss, degraded throughput, and broken connections across the interconnect.
• For more details, refer to the GCP Partner Cross Cloud Interconnect and the AWS Interconnect User Guide.

Reference architectures

When your deployment grows and you have multiple VPCs in a single region, AWS Transit Gateway gives you a centralized routing hub to connect them all through a single Interconnect attachment. You can segment traffic between environments, apply consistent routing policies, and integrate AWS Network Firewall if you need to inspect what crosses the cloud boundary.

And when you’re operating at global scale, with workloads spread across multiple AWS Regions and multiple Google Cloud environments, AWS Cloud WAN extends that same model across the world. Any region in your network can reach any Interconnect attachment globally, with centralized policy management and segment-based routing that applies consistently everywhere you operate.

My colleagues Alexandra and Santiago documented these reference architectures in their blog post: Build resilient and scalable multicloud connectivity architectures with AWS Interconnect – multicloud.

AWS Interconnect – last mile

Based on the same architecture and design as AWS Interconnect – multicloud, AWS Interconnect – last mile provides the ability to connect your on-premises or remote location to AWS through a participating network provider’s last-mile infrastructure, directly from the AWS Management Console.

The onboarding process mirrors AWS Interconnect – multicloud: you select a provider, authenticate, and specify your connection endpoints and bandwidth. AWS generates an activation key that you provide in the provider console to complete the configuration. AWS Interconnect – last mile automatically provisions four redundant connections across two physical locations, configures BGP routing, and activates MACsec encryption and Jumbo Frames by default. The result is a resilient private connection to AWS that aligns with best practices, without requiring you to manually configure networking components.

AWS Interconnect – last mile supports bandwidths from 1 Gbps to 100 Gbps, and you can adjust bandwidth from the console without reprovisioning. The service includes a 99.99% availability SLA up to the Direct Connect port and bundles CloudWatch Network Synthetic Monitor for connection health monitoring. Just like AWS Interconnect – multicloud, AWS Interconnect – last mile attaches to a Direct Connect Gateway, which connects to your Virtual Private Gateway, Transit Gateway, or AWS Cloud WAN deployment. For more details, refer to the AWS Interconnect User Guide.

Scott Yow, SVP Product at Lumen Technologies, wrote:

By combining AWS Interconnect – last mile with Lumen fiber network and Cloud Interconnect, we simplify the last-mile complexity that often slows cloud adoption and enable a faster, and more resilient path to AWS for customers.

Pricing and availability

AWS Interconnect – multicloud and AWS Interconnect – last mile pricing is based on a flat hourly rate for the capacity you request, billed prorata by the hour. You select the bandwidth tier that fits your workload needs.

AWS Interconnect – multicloud pricing varies by region pair: a connection between US East (N. Virginia) and Google Cloud N. Virginia is priced differently from a connection between US East (N. Virginia) and a more distant region. When you use AWS Cloud WAN, the global any-to-any routing model means traffic can traverse multiple regions, which affects the total cost of your deployment. I recommend reviewing the AWS Interconnect pricing page for the full rate card by region pair and capacity tier before sizing your connection.

AWS Interconnect – multicloud is available today in five region pairs: US East (N. Virginia) to Google Cloud N. Virginia, US West (N. California) to Google Cloud Los Angeles, US West (Oregon) to Google Cloud Oregon, Europe (London) to Google Cloud London, and Europe (Frankfurt) to Google Cloud Frankfurt. Microsoft Azure support is coming later in 2026.

AWS Interconnect – last mile is launching in US East (N. Virginia) with Lumen as the initial partner. Additional partners, including AT&T and Megaport, are in progress, and additional regions are planned.

To get started with AWS Interconnect, visit the AWS Direct Connect console and select AWS Interconnect from the navigation menu.

I’d love to hear how you’re using AWS Interconnect in your environment. Leave a comment below or reach out through the AWS re:Post community.

— seb

The post AWS Interconnect is now generally available, with a new option to simplify last-mile connectivity appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Today, we’re announcing virtual private cloud (VPC) encryption controls, a new capability of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) that helps you audit and enforce encryption in transit for all traffic within and across VPCs in a Region.

Organizations across financial services, healthcare, government, and retail face significant operational complexity in maintaining encryption compliance across their cloud infrastructure. Traditional approaches require piecing together multiple solutions and managing complex public key infrastructure (PKI), while manually tracking encryption across different network paths using spreadsheets—a process prone to human error that becomes increasingly challenging as infrastructure scales.

Although AWS Nitro based instances automatically encrypt traffic at the hardware layer without affecting performance, organizations need simple mechanisms to extend these capabilities across their entire VPC infrastructure. This is particularly important for demonstrating compliance with regulatory frameworks such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), which require proof of end-to-end encryption across environments. Organizations need centralized visibility and control over their encryption status, without having to manage performance trade-offs or complex key management systems.

VPC encryption controls address these challenges by providing two operational modes: monitor and enforce. In monitor mode, you can audit the encryption status of your traffic flows and identify resources that allow plaintext traffic. The feature adds a new encryption-status field to VPC flow logs, giving you visibility into whether traffic is encrypted using Nitro hardware encryption, application-layer encryption (TLS), or both.

After you’ve identified resources that need modification, you can take steps to implement encryption. AWS services, such as Network Load Balancer, Application Load Balancer, and AWS Fargate tasks, will automatically and transparently migrate your underlying infrastructure to Nitro hardware without any action required from you and with no service interruption. For other resources, such as the previous generation of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, you will need to switch to modern Nitro based instance types or configure TLS encryption at application level.

You can switch to enforce mode after all resources have been migrated to encryption-compliant infrastructure. This migration to encryption-compliant hardware and communication protocols is a prerequisite for enabling enforce mode. You can configure specific exclusions for resources such as internet gateways or NAT gateways, that don’t support encryption (because the traffic flows outside of the AWS network).

Other resources must be encryption-compliant and can’t be excluded. After activation, enforce mode provides that all future resources are only created on compatible Nitro instances, and unencrypted traffic is dropped when incorrect protocols or ports are detected.

Let me show you how to get started

For this demo, I started three EC2 instances. I use one as a web server with Nginx installed on port 80, serving a clear text HTML page. The other two are continuously making HTTP GET requests to the server. This generates clear text traffic in my VPC. I use the m7g.medium instance type for the web server and one of the two clients. This instance type uses the underlying Nitro System hardware to automatically encrypt in-transit traffic between instances. I use a t4g.medium instance for the other web client. The network traffic of that instance is not encrypted at the hardware level.

To get started, I enable encryption controls in monitor mode. In the AWS Management Console, I select Your VPCs in the left navigation pane, then I switch to the VPC encryption controls tab. I choose Create encryption control and select the VPC I want to create the control for.

Each VPC can have only one VPC encryption control associated with it, creating a one-to-one relationship between the VPC ID and the VPC encryption control Id. When creating VPC encryption controls, you can add tags to help with resource organization and management. You can also activate VPC encryption control when you create a new VPC.

I enter a Name for this control. I select the VPC I want to control. For existing VPCs, I have to start in Monitor mode, and I can turn on Enforce mode when I’m sure there is no unencrypted traffic. For new VPCs, I can enforce encryption at the time of creation.

Optionally, I can define tags when creating encryption controls for an existing VPC. However, when enabling encryption controls during VPC creation, separate tags can’t be created for VPC encryption controls—because they automatically inherit the same tags as the VPC. When I’m ready, I choose Create encryption control.

Alternatively, I can use the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI):

aws ec2 create-vpc-encryption-control --vpc-id vpc-123456789

Next, I audit the encryption status of my VPC using the console, command line, or flow logs:

aws ec2 create-flow-logs 
  --resource-type VPC 
  --resource-ids vpc-123456789 
  --traffic-type ALL 
  --log-destination-type s3 
  --log-destination arn:aws:s3:::vpc-flow-logs-012345678901/vpc-flow-logs/ 
  --log-format '${flow-direction} ${traffic-path} ${srcaddr} ${dstaddr} ${srcport} ${dstport} ${encryption-status}'
{
    "ClientToken": "F7xmLqTHgt9krTcFMBHrwHmAZHByyDXmA1J94PsxWiU=",
    "FlowLogIds": [
        "fl-0667848f2d19786ca"
    ],
    "Unsuccessful": []
}

After a few minutes, I see this traffic in my logs:

flow-direction traffic-path srcaddr dstaddr srcport dstport encryption-status
ingress - 10.0.133.8 10.0.128.55 43236 80 1 # <-- HTTP between web client and server. Encrypted at hardware-level
egress 1 10.0.128.55 10.0.133.8 80 43236 1
ingress - 10.0.133.8 10.0.128.55 36902 80 1
egress 1 10.0.128.55 10.0.133.8 80 36902 1
ingress - 10.0.130.104 10.0.128.55 55016 80 0 # <-- HTTP between web client and server. Not encrypted at hardware-level
egress 1 10.0.128.55 10.0.130.104 80 55016 0
ingress - 10.0.130.104 10.0.128.55 60276 80 0
egress 1 10.0.128.55 10.0.130.104 80 60276 0

• 10.0.128.55 is the web server with hardware-encrypted traffic, serving clear text traffic at application level.
• 10.0.133.8 is the web client with hardware-encrypted traffic.
• 10.0.130.104 is the web client with no encryption at the hardware level.

The encryption-status field tells me the status of the encryption for the traffic between the source and destination address:

• 0 means the traffic is in clear text
• 1 means the traffic is encrypted at the network layer (Level 3) by the Nitro system
• 2 means the traffic is encrypted at the application layer (Level7, TCP Port 443 and TLS/SSL)
• 3 means the traffic is encrypted both at the application layer (TLS) and the network layer (Nitro)
• “-” means VPC encryption controls are not enabled, or AWS Flow Logs don’t have the status information.

The traffic originating from the web client on the instance that isn’t Nitro based (10.0.130.104), is flagged as 0. The traffic initiated from the web client on the Nitro- ased instance (10.0.133.8) is flagged as 1.

I also use the console to identify resources that need modification. It reports two nonencrypted resources: the internet gateway and the elastic network interface (ENI) of the instance that isn’t based on Nitro.

I can also check for nonencrypted resources using the CLI:

aws ec2 get-vpc-resources-blocking-encryption-enforcement --vpc-id vpc-123456789

After updating my resources to support encryption, I can use the console or the CLI to switch to enforce mode.

In the console, I select the VPC encryption control. Then, I select Actions and Switch mode.

Or the equivalent CLI:

aws ec2 modify-vpc-encryption-control --vpc-id vpc-123456789 --mode enforce

How to modify the resources that are identified as nonencrypted?

All your VPC resources must support traffic encryption, either at the hardware layer or at the application layer. For most resources, you don’t need to take any action.

AWS services accessed through AWS PrivateLink and gateway endpoints automatically enforce encryption at the application layer. These services only accept TLS-encrypted traffic. AWS will automatically drop any traffic that isn’t encrypted at the application layer.

When you enable monitor mode, we automatically and gradually migrate your Network Load Balancers, Application Load Balancers, AWS Fargate clusters, and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) clusters to hardware that inherently supports encryption. This migration happens transparently without any action required from you.

Some VPC resources require you to select the underlying instances that support modern Nitro hardware-layer encryption. These include EC2 Instances, Auto Scaling groups, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) databases (including Amazon DocumentDB), Amazon ElastiCache node-based clusters, Amazon Redshift provisioned clusters, EKS clusters, ECS with EC2 capacity, MSK Provisioned, Amazon OpenSearch Service, and Amazon EMR. To migrate your Redshift clusters, you must create a new cluster or namespace from a snapshot.

If you use newer-generation instances, you likely already have encryption-compliant infrastructure because all recent instance types support encryption. For older-generation instances that don’t support encryption-in transit, you’ll need to upgrade to supported instance types.

Things to know when using AWS Transit Gateway

When your VPCs with encryption controls enabled are connected via a Transit Gateway, you’ll need to manually activate encryption controls on the Transit Gateway to encrypt traffic between the VPCs. This can be done using the AWS console, the modify-transit-gateway command or API. Enabling encryption on an existing Transit Gateway won’t disrupt the traffic flowing between VPCs attached to the Transit Gateway.

When a Transit Gateway and its attached VPCs have encryption controls in enforce mode (with no exclusions), traffic is encrypted end-to-end.

When creating a Transit Gateway through AWS CloudFormation with encryption support enabled, you need one additional AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permission: ec2:ModifyTransitGateway. This permission is required because CloudFormation uses a two-step process to create a Transit Gateway. It first creates the Transit Gateway with basic configuration, then calls ModifyTransitGateway to enable encryption support. Without this permission, your CloudFormation stack will fail during creation when attempting to apply the encryption configuration, even if you’re only performing what appears to be a create operation.

Pricing and availability

You can start using VPC encryption controls today in these AWS Regions: US East (Ohio, N. Virginia), US West (N. California, Oregon), Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Jakarta, Melbourne, Mumbai, Osaka, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Canada (Central), Canada West (Calgary), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Milan, Paris, Stockholm, Zurich), Middle East (Bahrain, UAE), and South America (São Paulo).

VPC encryption controls is free of cost until March 1, 2026. The VPC pricing page will be updated with details as we get closer to that date.

To learn more, visit the VPC encryption controls documentation or try it out in your AWS account. I look forward to hearing how you use this feature to strengthen your security posture and help you meet compliance standards.

— seb

The post Introducing VPC encryption controls: Enforce encryption in transit within and across VPCs in a Region appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

Summer is well and truly here in the UK! I’m a bit of a summer grinch though so, unlike most people, I’m not crazy about “the glorious sun” scorching me when I’m out and about. On the upside, this provides the perfect excuse to retreat to the comfort of a well-ventilated room where I can focus on coding and curating the latest AWS releases to bring you the highlights.

I also managed to escape the heat for most of yesterday while recording an episode for the AWS Developers Podcast where the wonderful Sebastien Stormaq and Tiffany Souterre interviewed me about games development. If you haven’t discovered it yet, I highly recommend you give it a go as the episodes are full of interesting lessons and insights from not just AWS, but customers and community members who share their stories and expertise in a relaxed conversation.

Alright, ready to discover some of the new things we released last week? Here are the highlights.

AWS Builder Center
There is a new home for AWS builders and community members! AWS Builder Center is a new place where cloud builders can connect, share knowledge, and access resources to enhance their AWS journey. The platform enables users to join community programs, discover trending topics, access AWS Skill Builder courses, participate in technical challenges, and more, using a single Builder ID sign-in.

One the features that I’m personally most excited about is the Wishlist. You can now create wishes and tell AWS directly about ways to improve our products and services or share original ideas that you think could help you and your teams. You can also browse and upvote existing wishes to support any suggestions that you think should be prioritized. The AWS teams will keep an eye on this and if a wish has enough traction it may just be considered!

Read the news blog post for a quick tour through some of the most exciting features or head over to AWS Builder Center and start exploring!

AI
The world of AI keeps moving fast and changing our world, by providing new and exciting ways to do things and become more productive. Here are two releases from last week that caught my attention.

• Amazon Q chat in the AWS Management Console can now query AWS service data – Amazon Q Developer expands its capabilities by enabling natural language queries of data stored across AWS services like S3, DynamoDB, and CloudWatch, directly from the AWS Console, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and AWS Console Mobile Application. This enhancement streamlines cloud management and troubleshooting by allowing users to access and analyze service data through conversational interfaces, with access controls managed through IAM permissions.
• Amazon CloudWatch and Application Signals MCP servers for AI-assisted troubleshooting – AWS has released two new Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers – CloudWatch MCP and Application Signals MCP – that enable AI agents to leverage observability data for automated troubleshooting through conversational interfaces. These open-source servers allow AI assistants to analyze metrics, alarms, logs, traces, and service health data across AWS environments, streamlining incident response and root cause analysis without requiring developers to manually navigate multiple AWS consoles.

Oracle Database@AWS
It seems like yesterday when Andy Jassy announced our partnership with Oracle to create Oracle Database@AWS, a jointly offered service that runs Oracle databases on Exadata infrastructure directly within AWS data centers, providing a unified AWS-Oracle experience. Fast forward to last week and Oracle Database@AWS has reached a significant milestone with its general availability release. It is now available in US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) regions, with plans to expand to 20 additional regions globally.

In addition, VPC Lattice has added support for Oracle Database@AWS enabling seamless connectivity between applications in VPCs and on-premises environments to Oracle database networks. The integration simplifies network management and provides secure access from Oracle Database@AWS to AWS services like Amazon S3 and Amazon Redshift, without requiring complex networking setup.

So if you’re looking to migrate your Oracle database workloads, now is a great time to explore Oracle Database@AWS as it offers a compelling path forward with minimal modifications required.

Additional highlights
Here are some other releases that I think many people will be happy about.

• AWS Config now supports 12 new resource types – AWS Config has expanded its monitoring capabilities with support for 12 new resource types across services including BackupGateway, CloudFront, EntityResolution, Bedrock, and more. These additions are automatically tracked if you have enabled recording for all resource types, enhancing your ability to discover, assess, and audit AWS resources.
• Amazon SageMaker Studio now supports remote connections from Visual Studio Code – Amazon SageMaker Studio now supports remote connections from Visual Studio Code, allowing developers to use their familiar VS Code setup while leveraging SageMaker’s scalable compute resources for AI development.
• AWS Network Firewall: Native AWS Transit Gateway support in all regions – AWS Network Firewall now offers native integration with AWS Transit Gateway across all supported regions, enabling direct attachment and simplified traffic inspection between VPCs and on-premises networks. This integration eliminates the need for managing dedicated VPC subnets and route tables while providing multi-AZ redundancy for improved security and reliability.

Upcoming AWS Events
AWS Summit New York – this is definitely one to watch…literally! Registrations are closed due to capacity but you can tune in to watch live all the announcements and launches! No spoilers, but, trust me, there are a quite a few exciting things in store, so make sure to check it out.

AWS Gen AI Lofts – AWS Gen AI Lofts are multi-day events offering hands-on workshops, expert guidance, and networking opportunities for developers and business leaders looking to explore or advance their generative AI journey. These events are hosted across multiple global locations including San Francisco, Berlin, Dubai, Dublin, Bengaluru, Manchester, Paris, and Tel Aviv, providing accessible opportunities to accelerate your generative AI adoption.

And that’s it for this week! Come back next Monday for more highlights and keep your AWS knowledge up to date as we cover the latest releases.

Matheus Guimaraes | @codingmatheus

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS Builder Center, Amazon Q, Oracle Database@AWS, and more (July 14, 2025) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.

As we move into the second week of 2025, China is celebrating Laba Festival (腊八节), a traditional holiday, which marks the beginning of Chinese New Year preparations. On this day, Chinese people prepare Laba congee, a special porridge combining various grains, dried fruits, and nuts. This

nutritious mixture symbolizes harmony, prosperity, and good fortune — with each ingredient representing the diversity and abundance of life. This traditional practice dates back to when Buddha achieved enlightenment after consuming rice porridge, making it a symbol of both material and spiritual nourishment. The festival, occurring on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, marks the countdown to Spring Festival, China’s most significant traditional holiday celebrating family reunion and renewal.

As our global tech community grows, such cultural celebrations remind us of the importance of inclusive innovation and shared progress.

Last week’s launches

Let’s take a look at what Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched in this week.

New AWS Asia Pacific (Thailand) Region– AWS has expanded its global infrastructure with the launch of the new Asia Pacific (Thailand) AWS Region, featuring three Availability Zones. With this addition, customers in Thailand and throughout Southeast Asia can serve customers with reduced latency while maintaining data residency within Thailand. The newly launched Region supports the complete range of AWS services and strengthens our presence in the rapidly growing ASEAN market.

New AWS Direct Connect location in Bangkok – Following the launch of our Thailand Region, we’ve established a new AWS Direct Connect location in Bangkok and expanded our existing infrastructure. This addition provides customers in Thailand with improved connectivity options and reduced network latency when accessing AWS services.

Database and analytics

Configurable point-in-time recovery periods for Amazon DynamoDB – Amazon DynamoDB now enables customizable point-in-time recovery (PITR) periods, which means customers can specify recovery durations ranging from 1 to 35 days on a per-table basis. This enhancement enables organizations to meet precise compliance requirements while maximizing cost-efficiency. The feature is now available across all AWS Regions, including AWS GovCloud (US West) and China Regions. This flexibility in data recovery periods empowers customers to align their backup policies precisely with their business requirements and regulatory obligations.

Amazon MSK Connect APIs with AWS PrivateLink – Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka Connect (Amazon MSK Connect) APIs now support AWS PrivateLink, giving customers access to MSK Connect APIs through private endpoints within their virtual private cloud (VPC). This enhancement provides increased security and reduced data exposure by keeping traffic within the AWS network.

Generative AI and machine learning

Amazon Q Developer in SageMaker Code Editor– Amazon Q Developer is now integrated into the Amazon SageMaker Code Editor integrated development environment (IDE), enhancing the developer’s experience with AI-powered code assistance. Intelligent code suggestions, documentation assistance, and contextual recommendations are now directly available within the SageMaker development environment.

Management and governance

AWS Systems Manager Automation in AWS Chatbot – AWS Chatbot now offers 20 additional AWS Systems Manager Automation runbook recommendations, expanding its capabilities for automated operations management. These new recommendations help customers streamline their operational tasks and implement best practices more efficiently through chat-based interactions.

AWS Transit Gateway cost analysis enhancement – We’ve introduced new capabilities for analyzing Transit Gateway data processing charges using cost allocation tags. This feature provides improved visibility and control over networking costs, enabling organizations to track and optimize AWS Transit Gateway usage efficiently. The enhanced cost analysis tools deliver detailed insights into network traffic patterns and associated costs.

Other AWS news and highlights

2024’s most popular DevOps blog posts – The retrospective blog post “The most visited DevOps and Developer Productivity blog posts in 2024” has reached the top one position on this week’s AWS most popular articles chart. This compilation presents the most influential DevOps content from 2024, offering insights into trending topics and best practices. The collection examines key developments in continuous integration and continuous development (CI/CD), infrastructure as code (IaC), and automation practices.

New security course for generative AI – AWS Skill Builder has released a new course focusing on securing generative AI applications on AWS. This comprehensive training teaches professionals to implement security best practices for artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) workloads, addressing data protection, model security, and compliance requirements. The course meets the growing demand for specialized security knowledge in the rapidly evolving field of generative AI.

Amazon Connect Contact Lens free trials – We’re introducing free trials for first-time users of Amazon Connect Contact Lens conversational analytics and performance evaluations. New customers can process up to 100,000 voice minutes monthly at no cost for 2 months, and first-time performance evaluation users receive a 30-day free trial starting with their first evaluation. With this initiative, customers can experience Contact Lens capabilities in their environment without additional costs. The free trials are available across all AWS Regions where Contact Lens is supported.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS page.

Whether you’re a developer, architect, business leader, or you’re starting your cloud journey – and regardless of what 2024 brought your way – 2025 presents new opportunities for everyone.

This post is part of our Weekly Roundup series. Check back each week for a quick roundup of interesting news and announcements from AWS!

– Betty

The post AWS Weekly Roundup: New Asia Pacific Region, DynamoDB updates, Amazon Q developer, and more (January 13, 2025) appeared first on The NOKIA Blog.