AWS re:Invent, Day 2: Amazon unveils Pinpoint, AppStream 2.0, Sheild and more

After the long list of exciting new announcements on its first day, Amazon Web Service's re:Invent event continued with new launches on its second day as well that included likes of AppStream 2.0, AWS Shield, ‘Pinpoint’ and open source Blox container management tools among others.

Let’s get started with Blox software that Amazon has open-sourced to let developers create custom schedulers for use inside AWS’ EC2 Container Service (ECS). The open source Blox technology that includes both the reference scheduler and a service the can be used for capturing and querying data on clusters is available now on GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license.

Developers “really want to have more control over their own schedulers,” and they “want to be able to test locally,” said Amazon vice president and chief technology officer Werner Vogels.

For more on how to use the Blox tools, you can read AWS principal product manager Chris Barclay’s detailed blog post.

The next in line is revamped Amazon AppStream service, AppStream 2.0 that lets AWS customers run the service atop a variety of AWS virtual machine instance types, whereas the original version was limited to the g2.2xlarge instance, Gene Farrell, vice president for enterprise applications and EC2 Windows at AWS, wrote in a blog post.

The new version is apparently simpler to set up and manage, and it provides a simpler user experience, too.

As a growing force in the cloud computing domain, Amazon is foraying deeper into the mobile analytics game by launching ‘Pinpoint’. AWS’ Pinpoint is aimed at helping developers better understand how users interact with their apps on mobile devices and makes it easy to run targeted campaigns to improve user engagement.

With Alexa already in hand, Amazon’s Pinpoint will also enable real-time analytics with dashboards for analyzing user engagement, monetization, user demographics, custom events, and funnels so you can understand how users engage with your application.

Interestingly, there is no minimum fee, no setup cost and no fixed monthly cost based on your total user pool. You only pay for the number of users you target or collect events from, the messages you send, and events you collect, so you can start small and scale as your application grows.

The day also says launching of a DDoS protection service for web applications running on Amazon’s cloud computing service, dubbed AWS Shield.

The service that has been launched generally for all AWS subscribers and will be able to protect web applications against 96 percent of the most common attacks comes with zero price tag.

There’s a paid version too to handle rest 4 percent of attacks. Advanced subscribers will also have 24×7 access to Amazon’s response teams to quickly sort out any issues that may arise. A one-year subscription to AWS Shield Advanced will set you back by $3,000/year plus extra for data transfer.

That’s too pricey Amazon!