Episode 5 - Announcements from AWS, Is this really serverless

This week we pivot our focus from Google Cloud to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and their annual reinvent. We take a closer look at Amazon’s serverless offerings and how it measures up against other existing services. Tuning in you’ll hear us break down our internal definition of serverless as well as Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK) and how it diverges from the serverless philosophy. We discuss Amazon MSK’s current pricing structure and how it measures up against its competitors while also reflecting on when the cost of retraining your team outweighs their hourly rate. Our conversation covers a variety of services and topics, from the features of Google Pub/Sub, to why managers need to have a firm understanding of both cost and resource trends. To learn more about Amazon, why we are big proponents of serverless, and much more, make sure you tune in today!

Key Points From This Episode:

• Some news on AWS and its annual reinvent.
• Logan’s reaction to some recent announcements including the launch of a private 5G network service.
• How a private 5G network service responds to a request from consumers.
• Some of the serverless options that AWS has announced for things like data processing and data storage.
• Why we are big fans of serverless applications.
• Our internal definition of serverless, including pricing and use cases.
• How the term serverless gets misused and diverges from our internal definition.
• Amazon MSK and how their definition of serverless diverges from our internal definition.
• Some of the reasons why Amazon MSK is can get overly expensive.
• Why an hourly charge could be more affordable than the learning curve of acquiring new skills. 
• Why managers need to be aware of both cost and resource trends.
• Why other options like Google Pub/Sub and Dataflow are more in line with the serverless philosophy.
• Amazon’s technical debt and how it is apparent in its storage.
• Get a sneak-peek into some of the topics we’ll be covering in future episodes.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK)

Amazon MSK Pricing

Amazon EMR

Google Pub/Sub

Google DataFlow

Google Dataproc

Hadoop

Apache Spark