AWS Official Blog

We are expanding the AWS footprint once again, this time with a new region in Seoul, South Korea. AWS customers in the area can use the new Asia Pacific (Seoul) region for fast, low-latency access to the suite of AWS infrastructure services.

New Region
The new Seoul region has two Availability Zones (raising the global total to 32). It supports Amazon EC2 (T2, M4, C4, I2, D2, and R3 instances are available) and related services including Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud, Auto Scaling, and Elastic Load Balancing.

It also supports the following services:

• AWS CloudFormation
• Amazon CloudFront
• AWS CloudTrail
• Amazon CloudWatch
• Amazon DynamoDB
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• Amazon ElastiCache
• Amazon EMR
• Amazon Glacier
• AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• AWS Key Management Service (KMS)
• Amazon Kinesis
• Amazon Redshift
• Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
• Amazon Route 53
• Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)
• Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)
• Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
  Amazon Simple Workflow Service (SWF)
• AWS Trusted Advisor
• VM Import

There are two edge locations in Seoul for Amazon Route 53 and Amazon CloudFront. AWS Direct Connect support is available via KINX.

This is our twelfth region (see the AWS Global Infrastructure map for more information). As usual, you can see the full list in the region menu of the AWS Management Console:

Customers
There is already a very broad base of AWS customers in Korea. Here are a couple of examples:

Samsung used AWS to build the Samsung Printing App Center. This complex app can deploy mobile printing, scanning, and copying applications to a global customer base in real time. They chose AWS in order to be cost-effective, agile, and scalable.

Nexon is Korea’s premier gaming company, providing 150 games in 150 countries. AWS allows them to address a global customer base and to experiment with different games without having to invest in local infrastructure. Their newest MMORPG game, HIT, recently achieved the number one sales rank within the Korean mobile gaming industry in a record amount of time, running 100% on AWS.

Mirae Asset Global Investments Group migrated their web properties from on-premises data centers to AWS. This allowed them to stay competitive while reducing their management costs by 50%. With the launch of the new region, they will move additional sensitive, mission-critical workloads to AWS.

Eastar Jet was the first Korean airline company to migrate workloads to the public cloud. As one of the fastest-growing low-cost carriers (4 domestic and 6 international routes), they needed to reduce costs, increase availability, and ensure reliability as the total passenger count grew to over 14 million. They plan to move additional workloads to the new region.

The Beatpacking Company runs a popular music streaming app, with traffic that sometimes surges to 300% of the usual level. Since launching on AWS in March of 2014, they have grown to over 6 million users. Despite this growth, they reduced their AWS cost per user by 97% in the past year.

Partners
We are pleased to be working with a very wide variety of partners in Korea. Here is a sampling:

• AWS Premier Consulting Partners – Megazone and GS Neotek.
• AWS Consulting Partners – BD, NDS, Hostway, Saltware, WellDataSystem, Acloud, IAANSYS, MTOS Solutions, rockPLACE, and Vsystems.
• AWS Technology Partners – Hancom, IGAWorks, PentaSecurity, Gruter, ByteCode Lab, DaliWorks, TMAXSoft, and JenniferSoft.
• AWS Managed Security Service Providers – Ahnlab, SK Infosec, and CyberOne.
• AWS Direct Connect Partners – Dreamline, Sejong Telecom, and SK Broadband.

Offices and Support
We opened an AWS office in Seoul in 2012. This office supports enterprises, government agencies, academic institutions, small-to-mid size companies, startups, and developers. The full range of AWS Support options is also available.

Compliance
Every AWS region is built and designed to meet rigorous compliance standards including ISO 27001, ISO 9001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, SOC 1, SOC 2, and PCI DSS Level 1 (to name a few); see the AWS Compliance page for more info.

AWS implements an Information Security Management System (ISMS) that is independently assessed by qualified third parties. These assessments address a wide variety of requirements which are communicated by making certifications and audit reports available, either on our public-facing website or upon request.

As customer trust is our top priority, AWS adopts global privacy and data protection best practices. Our most recent example of this commitment is our validation by an independent third party attesting that we align with ISO 27018 – the first international code of practice to focus on protection of personal data in the cloud. This demonstrates to customers that AWS has a system of controls in place specifically to address the privacy protection of their content.

For more information on how we handle data privacy, take a look at our Data Privacy FAQ.

Use it Now
This new region is open for business now and you can start using it today! If you are able to read Korean and want to know more about this region, please visit the new Seoul Region microsite. You’ll find additional information about the new region, documentation on how to migrate, customer use cases, information on training and other events, and  a list of AWS Partners in Korea.

The AWS Cost Explorer (read The New Cost Explorer for AWS to learn more) is a set of a tools that help you to track and manage your AWS costs. Last year we added saved reports, budgets & forecasts, and additional filtering & grouping dimensions.

Today we are adding EC2 usage data to Cost Explorer, along with additional dimensions for filtering and grouping:

• The EC2 cost data is now broken down into three elements: EC2 instances (EC2-Instances), Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), and Elastic Block Store (EBS).
• You can now filter, group, and view costs on additional dimensions, including Instance Type and Region.

Here’s a screen shot of the new usage data and dimensions:

The new features are available now and you can start using them today. To learn more, read about Analyzing Your Costs with Cost Explorer.

I am happy to be able to announce that we are making yet another EC2 price reduction!

We are reducing the On-Demand and Reserved instance, and Dedicated host prices for C4 and M4 instances running Linux by 5% in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Northern California), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Singapore), and Asia Pacific (Sydney) regions.

We are also reducing the On-Demand, Reserved instance, and Dedicated host prices for R3 instances running Linux by 5% in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Northern California), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and South America (Brazil) regions.

Finally, we are reducing the On-Demand and Reserved instance prices for R3 instances running Linux by 5% in the AWS GovCloud (US) regions.

Smaller reductions apply to the same instance types that run Windows, SLES, and RHEL in the regions mentioned.

Changes to the On-Demand and Dedicated host pricing are retroactive to the beginning of the month (January 1, 2016); the new Reserved instance pricing is in effect today. During the month, your billing estimates may not reflect the reduced prices. They will be reflected in the statement at the end of the month.

The new AWS Price List API will be updated later in the month.

If you are keeping score, this is our 51^st price reduction!

— Jeff;

Let’s take a quick look at what happened in AWS-land last week:

New & Notable Open Source

• awstagger is a tool for bulk adding, updating, and removing tags from AWS resources.
• Clark2015_AWS can analyze neuroimaging data in the AWS cloud.
• aws-reporting generates AWS usage reports.
• swaggy-lambda is a tool to make serverless Swagger-based REST services using API Gateway and Lambda.
• slackmessenger is a demo app for Docker, Codeship, and AWS.
• apex is a minimal Lambda function manager with Go support.
• fullstop performs audit reporting across multiple AWS accounts.
• aws-autotranscode uses Lambda to automatically transcode incoming media using an S3 bucket.
• s3-uploader is a simple file uploader for S3, written in Go.
• aws-api-gateway-for-cloudformation is a set of custom resources that enables API Gateway support for CloudFormation.

New Customer Success Stories

• Azim Premji Foundation.
• CardFlight.
• Dato.
• FernsNPetals.
• Medscheme.
• MovieStarPlanet.
• Scholastic.
• Supercell.
• ZengaTV.

New YouTube Videos

• Introduction to Amazon Route 53.
• Introduction to Amazon Kinesis Firehose.
• Introduction to Amazon DynamoDB.

Help Wanted

• Software Development Engineer – EC2 Windows.
• AWS Careers.

Stay tuned for next week! In the meantime, follow me on Twitter and subscribe to the RSS feed.

— Jeff;

I first wrote about Amazon WorkMail last year when we made it available in preview form. At the time, I noted that Amazon WorkMail is a managed calendaring and email solution that runs in the Cloud and works with your existing desktop and mobile clients. In my initial post (Amazon WorkMail – Managed Email and Calendaring in the AWS Cloud) I discussed Workmail’s security features and controls. These include location control, encryption of stored data, message scanning for spam & virus protection, and policies & actions for controlling mobile devices.

Now Generally Available
I am happy to be able to announce that Amazon WorkMail is now generally available in three AWS regions (US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland)).

We continued to add features to Amazon WorkMail during the preview, with a focus on security, ease of use, and migration. Here’s a summary:

Integration with KMS – You (the email administrator) can use AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to create and manage the keys that are used to encrypt data at rest. To learn more, read How Amazon WorkMail Uses AWS KMS.

Certifications – Amazon WorkMail has achieved the ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 certifications. You can learn more about these certifications on the AWS Cloud Compliance page.

Regional Data Control – You can choose the region where you want to store your mailboxes and be confident that the stored data will not leave the region. For more information, take a look at Amazon WorkMail Regions and Endpoints.

Easy Setup – By using Amazon WorkMail in conjunction with Simple AD, you can be up and running with a modest number of clicks, generally in 10 minutes or less. Read Getting Set Up to learn more.

Additional Client Support – Amazon WorkMail now supports clients that run on OS X, including Apple Mail and Outlook. It also supports clients that use the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol including iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Fire Phone, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry 10. To learn more, read about Desktop Clients and Mobile Clients (there’s also a web application).

Resource Creation – Users can now create and book resources such as meeting rooms and equipment. Read Working with Resources to learn more.

Migration & Interoperability – Amazon WorkMail now includes a migration tool that you can use to migrate existing mailboxes to Amazon WorkMail (see Migrating Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes to Amazon Workmail for more info).

In the Works
We are working on interoperability support that will allow users of  Amazon WorkMail to benefit from a single Global Address Book, and to access free/busy calendar information across both environments. I’ll have more information on this feature in the near future.

We are also working on an email journaling feature. This feature will allow you to use your existing email archiving system to capture and preserve all Amazon WorkMail communication.

Getting Started
Amazon WorkMail costs $4 per user per month, including 50 GB of mailbox storage per user (see the Workmail Pricing page for details). There’s also a 30-day free trial for up to 25 users.

You can read Getting Started with Amazon Workmail to learn how to put WorkMail to use in your organization.

For my final batch of 2015 podcasts, I spoke with representatives of Banter, Predicsis, Peak, Urban Massage, Contentful, Babbel, and Intel IoT. As always, the “Episode” links go directly to the audio files. You can also find several subscription options on the AWS Podcast page.

Episode 127
For Episode 127, I interviewed Diego Villareal (CEO and Co-founder) of Banter!, a discovery platform app that provides real-time updates on nightlife options. In the podcast they discussed how to differentiate from competitors, strategies for building your app’s audience, and how Banter! has evolved since it launched on AWS.

Episode 128
For Episode 128, I interviewed Jean Louis Fuccellaro (CEO) and Bastien Murzeau (CTO) of Predicsis, a French-based startup. Predicsis offers businesses the opportunity to enhance customer performance through machine learning and big data. Listen as they discuss how the guys decided to tackle the problem of customer churn with machine learning and AWS.

Episode 129
For Episode 129, I interviewed Bertrand Lamarque (Director of Engineering) and Itamar Lesuisse (CEO) of Peak, a London-based startup bringing the latest advancements in brain training to mobile. Learn how Peak has changed since they started, and how they use data to make decisions about their product.

Episode 130
For Episode 130, I interviewed Giles Williams, co-founder and CTO of Urban Massage, a UK-based on-demand massage service app. We discused how Urban Massage is changing the online massage booking space, the company’s origins, how the business works, and how AWS powers their application behind the scenes.

Episode 131
For Episode 131, I interviewed interviews Paolo Negri co-founder and CTO of Contentful, a Berlin-based startup that has their API first content management system running on AWS. Listen in as we discuss the API first development model, what’s next for Contentful, and advice for aspiring and would-be entrepreneurs.

Episode 132
For Episode 132, I interviewed Boris Diebold (EVP Engineering) and Christian Hillemeyer (Director PR) of Babbel, a language learning company running on AWS. Listen as they discuss how Babbel started, the pivot from their original idea, and how their company makes learning a new language fun, easy, and effective.

Episode 133
For Episode 133, I interviewed Rose Schooler, vice president of the Internet of Things Group and general manager of IoT Strategy and Technology Office at Intel Corporation. We discussed the current state of IoT, practical applications, and business benefits. Learn how IoT is solving real, tangible business problems, with specific use cases such as an IoT-connected rice farm! You can hear how Intel’s Internet of Things Group offers products and solutions to help IoT become a reality for customers in three areas:  things, network, and cloud.

Thanks Again
Wrapping up 2015, I would like to thank all of my guests, and all of my colleagues on the AWS Podcast team for their patience, hard work, support, and enthusiasm! We are working on our plans for 2016, so (as always) stay tuned for more!

After some experimentation, I am now somewhat proficient at recording podcasts remotely! In fact, three of the four podcasts below were recorded over Skype with the aid of Zencastr.

This time around, I spoke with representatives of Aerobatic, Aire, Prairie Cloud, and Osper. As usual, the “Episode” links go directly to the audio files.

Episode 123
For Episode 123, I spoke with David Von Lehman and Jason Gowans, cofounders of Seattle-based startup Aerobatic. Aerobatic is a static-hosting platform for Bitbucket that delivers easy git push deployment for static HTML websites. David and Jason share their best practices for using S3, Lambda, Activate, and other AWS services to run their company successfully. Finally, we chat about their expansion plans for the future and how they plan to scale in the years to come. The guys participated in the AWS Activate Startup Pitch Event and Networking Mixer in Seattle earlier this month – don’t miss their promo code at the end of the podcast for a free first month of usage!

Episode 124
For Episode 124, I interviewed Tim Kimball, the VP of Engineering at UK startup Aire. Aire’s mission is to bring more people into the financial system who would otherwise have a difficult time entering. Aire lowers the barrier to entry to financial services by enhancing credit scores and ensuring accuracy in credit modeling, thus helping to solve the financial inclusion problem. Tim talks about how he and his team got into the space, their experience with the FinTech accelerator, and how they hope to make significant change in the financial industry. After talking a bit about the business of being a financial services startup, we chat about the technical systems and processes that make Aire secure and successful.

Episode 125
For Episode 125, I interviewed Doug Parr, CRO of innovative payment startup company Prairie Cloudware. Prairie Cloudware enables banks and credit unions to utilize digital payments (i.e., mobile wallets), rather than rely on third-party partners like Apple Pay or Samsung Pay. Prairie Cloudware is designed to provide financial institutions with the ability to deliver secure customer-controlled digital payment services to customers. Doug and I talk about the appeal of mobile-driven services, entering the startup market, and how his team got started in the payment industry. We also discuss how AWS can deliver a more secure service to ensure customer satisfaction, and the various features that allow Prairie Cloudware to deliver on its security promise.

Episode 126
For Episode 126, I spoke with Nico Esteves, VP of Engineering of mobile banking startup Osper. Osper is mobile banking built just for families, with tools for young people to learn how to manage their finances. Parents can set up allowances for their kids, control online spending, and get notifications for failed transactions or insufficient funds. Children can check their balance, learn how to save responsibility, and transfer money to family and friends. Nico shares his insights on the future of mobile banking, how he got into the space, and the security services that allow Osper to grow and succeed.

Special Thanks
Once again, thanks are due to my awesome colleagues on the AWS Podcast team. These episodes were brought to you by:

• Melissa Higa – Program Management.
• Sarah Silverstein – Editing, content management, and show notes.
• Ashwin Rodrigues – Editing, Content management, and show notes.

Let’s take a quick look at what happened in AWS-land last week:

New & Notable Open Source

• botoform helps you to manage AWS infrastructure using YAML templates.
• Lambda-AWS-Automated-Alarm-Creation does what it says.
• Alexa-NestThermostat uses the Alexa Skills Kit to manage a Nest thermostat.
• Radiian creates Ansible provisioning files for immutable infrastructure on AWS.
• Pyutu is a Python library for the AWS Pricing API.
• LambdaDeploy promises better deployment for AWS Lambda.
• ansible-lambda is a set of custom Ansible modules for AWS Lambda support.
• awsam is an AWS account manager.
• gulp-aws-lambda-runner is a Gulp plugin that runs Lambda functions locally.
• kinesis-stream-fetcher uses a simple polling strategy to fetch data from Kinesis streams.

New Customer Success Stories

• Acquia -IT infrastructure to host customer websites and apps.
• gumi -Build, test, and deploy mobile games.
• Instructure -Learning management system.
• Newscorp – Host newspapers, websites, and movies.
• Pitney-Bowes -Build and host new applications.
• Space Ape Games – Mobile game studio.

New YouTube Videos

• APN Partner Success:
  • Looker.
  • Chef.
• Introduction to Amazon DynamoDB.
• Introduction to Amazon EC2 Container Service.
• Introduction to Amazon Elasticsearch Service.
• AWS Loft Talk: Better Living Through Faster Continuous Integration.

Upcoming Events

• January 18 – Seattle AWS Architects & Engineers Meetup – Security on AWS & All in on AWS.

Help Wanted

• AWS Careers.

Stay tuned for next week! In the meantime, follow me on Twitter and subscribe to the RSS feed.

— Jeff;

My colleague Jon Fritz wrote the guest post below to introduce you to an important new feature for Amazon EMR.

— Jeff;

Today we are announcing that Amazon EMR now supports launching clusters in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) private subnets, allowing you to quickly, cost-effectively, and securely create fully configured clusters with Hadoop ecosystem applications, Spark, and Presto in the subnet of your choice. With Amazon EMR release 4.2.0 and later, you can launch your clusters in a private subnet with no public IP addresses or attached Internet gateway. You can create a private endpoint for Amazon S3 in your subnet to give your Amazon EMR cluster direct access to data in S3, and optionally create a Network Address Translation (NAT) instance for your cluster to interact with other AWS services, like Amazon DynamoDB and AWS Key Management Service (KMS). For more information on Amazon EMR in VPC, visit the Amazon EMR documentation.

Network Topology for Amazon EMR in a VPC Private Subnet
Before launching an Amazon EMR cluster in a VPC private subnet, please make sure you have the required permissions in your EMR service role and EC2 instance profile, and that you have a route (either through a route from your subnet to an S3 endpoint in your VPC or a NAT/Proxy instance) to the required S3 buckets for your cluster’s initialization. Click here for more information about configuring your subnet.

You can use the new VPC Subnets page in the EMR Console to view the VPC subnets available for your clusters, and configure them by adding S3 endpoints and NAT instances:

Also, here is a sample network topology for an Amazon EMR cluster in a VPC private subnet with a S3 endpoint and NAT instance. However, if you do not need to use your cluster with AWS services besides S3, you do not need a NAT instance to provide a route to those public endpoints:

Encryption at Rest for Amazon S3 (with EMRFS), HDFS, and Local Filesystem
A typical Hadoop or Spark workload on Amazon EMR utilizes Amazon S3 (using the EMR Filesystem – EMRFS) for input datasets/output results and two filesystems located on your cluster: the Hadoop Distributed Filesystem (HDFS) distributed across your cluster and the Local Filesystem on each instance. Amazon EMR makes it easy to enable encryption for each filesystem, and there are a variety of options depending on your requirements:

1. Amazon S3 Using the EMR Filesystem (EMRFS) – EMRFS supports several Amazon S3 encryption options (using AES-256 encryption), allowing Hadoop and Spark on your cluster to performantly and transparently process encrypted data in S3. EMRFS seamlessly works with objects encrypted by S3 Server-Side Encryption or S3 client-side encryption. When using S3 client-side encryption, you can use encryption keys stored in the AWS Key Management Service or in a custom key management system in AWS or on-premises.
2. HDFS Transparent Encryption with Hadoop KMS – The Hadoop Key Management Server (KMS) can supply keys for HDFS Transparent Encryption, and it is installed on the master node of your EMR cluster with HDFS. Because encryption and decryption activities are carried out in the client, data is also encrypted in-transit in HDFS. Click here for more information.
3. Local Filesystem on Each Node – The Hadoop MapReduce and Spark frameworks utilize the Local Filesystem on each slave instance for intermediate data throughout a workload. You can use a bootstrap action to encrypt the directories used for these intermediates on each node using LUKS.

Encryption in Transit for Hadoop MapReduce and Spark
Hadoop ecosystem applications installed on your Amazon EMR cluster typically have different mechanisms to encrypt data in transit:

1. Hadoop MapReduce Shuffle – In a Hadoop MapReduce job, Hadoop will send data between nodes in your cluster in the shuffle phase, which occurs before the reduce phase of the job. You can use SSL to encrypt this process by enabling the Hadoop settings for Encrypted Shuffle and providing the required SSL certificates to each node.
2. HDFS Rebalancing – HDFS rebalances by sending blocks between DataNode processes. However, if you use HDFS Transparent Encryption (see above), HDFS never holds unencrypted blocks and the blocks remain encrypted when moved between nodes.
3. Spark Shuffle – Spark, like Hadoop MapReduce, also shuffles data between nodes at certain points during a job. Starting with Spark 1.4.0, you can encrypt data in this stage using SASL encryption.

IAM Users and Roles, and Auditing with AWS CloudTrail
You can use Identity and Access Management (IAM) users or federated users to call the Amazon EMR APIs, and limit the API calls that each user can make. Additionally, Amazon EMR requires clusters to be created with two IAM roles, an EMR service role and EC2 instance profile, to limit the permissions of the EMR service and EC2 instances in your cluster, respectively. EMR provides default roles using EMR Named Policies for automatic updates, however, you can also provide custom IAM roles for your cluster. Finally, you can audit the calls your account has made to the Amazon EMR API using AWS CloudTrail.

EC2 Security Groups and Optional SSH Access
Amazon EMR uses two security groups, one for the Master Instance Group and one for slave instance groups (Core and Task Instance Groups), to limit ingress and egress to the instances in your cluster. EMR provides two default security groups, but you can provide your own (assuming they have the necessary ports open for communication between the EMR service and the cluster) or add additional security groups to your cluster. In a private subnet, you can also specify the security group added to the ENI used by the EMR service to communicate with your cluster.

Also, you can optionally add an EC2 key pair to the Master Node of your cluster if you would like to SSH to that node. This allows you to directly interact with the Hadoop applications installed on your cluster, or access web-UIs for applications using a proxy without opening up ports in your Master Security Group.

Hadoop and Spark Authentication and Authorization
Because Amazon EMR installs open source Hadoop ecosystem applications on your cluster, you can also leverage existing security features in these products. You can enable Kerberos authentication for YARN, which will give user-level authentication for applications running on YARN (like Hadoop MapReduce and Spark). Also, you can enable table and SQL-level authorization for Hive using HiveServer2 features, and use LDAP integration to create and authenticate users in Hue.

Run your workloads securely on Amazon EMR
Earlier this year, Amazon EMR was added to the AWS Business Associates Agreement (BAA) for running workloads which process PII data (including eligibility for HIPAA workloads). Amazon EMR also has certification for PCI DSS Level 1, ISO 9001, ISO 27001, and ISO 27018.

Security is a top priority for us and our customers. We are continuously adding new security-related functionality and third-party compliance certifications to Amazon EMR in order to make it even easier to run secure workloads and configure security features in Hadoop, Spark, and Presto.

— Jon Fritz, Senior Product Manager, Amazon EMR

PS – To learn more, read Securely Access Web Interfaces on Amazon EMR Launched in a Private Subnet on the AWS Big Data Blog.

Here’s the final batch of interviews that I recorded on Tuesday, September 1 at the AWS Loft in San Francisco as part of the Intel Startup Spotlight for the AWS Podcast. Episode 122 was recorded remotely (a first for me).

I spoke with representatives from JAWS, Muterra, Betabrand, and DubSmash. As usual, the “Episode” links go directly to the audio files; you can also visit the AWS Podcast page and subscribe to the feed.

Episode 119 – JAWS
For Episode 119, I spoke with Austen Collins, founder of the JAWS project (subsequently renamed to Serverless). JAWS optimizes all Lambda functions, with the plans to grow beyond that capability in the future. I emailed Austen after finding him online, and we began an ongoing conversation about Lambda, JAWS, and API Gateway. We discussed the future of Lambda (“Lambda has the potential to be the focal point of AWS cloud”) and its best qualities, as well as the future of serverless models as a whole.

Episode 120 – Muterra
For Episode 120, I spoke with engineer-turned-entrepreneur Nick Badger about his newly launched startup, Muterra. Muterra launched the Muse protocol to protect personal digital autonomy with ubiquitous encryption and functions with the goal of interoperability. Nick is also developing Ethyr, a new private email system built on Muse. Nick and I talk about his journey from mechanical engineer to entrepreneur, his upcoming Kickstarter campaign, advice for future entrepreneurs, and the technology behind Muterra.

Episode 121 – Betabrand
For Episode 121, I interviewed Seamus James, software engineer at Betabrand. Betabrand is an online crowdfunding clothing community based in San Francisco. Customers (“fans”) co-design and crowdfund new products in just a matter of weeks, bringing new, fresh ideas to life almost every day. While the company is not 100% AWS-powered,  Seamus and I met off of a Reddit thread when he shared a story of how AWS’s scalability helped the ecommerce site survive a high-traffic “success disaster.”

Episode 122 – DubSmash
For Episode 122, I spoke with DubSmash co-founder and CTO Daniel Taschik about the social media and audio-dubbing app. DubSmash enables users to dub audio and video together on an easy-to-use social platform. Daniel explains how they came up with the idea for DubSmash, how people use the app, and how they’ve been able to expand their user network to more than 75 million users in 192 countries.  I enjoyed learning about how AWS has enabled the now-viral app to scale exponentially.

Special Thanks
As always, special thanks are due to my awesome colleagues on the AWS Podcast team:

• Gloria Kim – Scheduling and hosting at the AWS Loft in San Francisco.
• Melissa Higa – Program Management.
• Sarah Silverstein – Editing and content management.