You can now set default application settings for your users. This includes application connection profiles, browser settings, and plugins. For example you can set the default connection profiles for your users’ SQL clients so they always have the exact settings they need, without having to configure their application.

Amazon CloudWatch Metric Math now supports the ability to perform bulk transformations of metrics in a single expression. You can now also calculate a metrics rate of change over time. This makes it easier for you to perform calculations across multiple metrics for real-time analysis.

Starting today you can provision Amazon MQ message brokers using AWS CloudFormation. Amazon MQ is a managed message broker service for Apache ActiveMQ. AWS CloudFormation automates the process of creating and managing Amazon MQ message brokers. 

Your users can now configure their streaming sessions to use regional settings. They can set the time zone, locale, and input method used by their applications in their streaming sessions. Each user’s settings persist across all future sessions in the same AWS Region.

You can now create Private APIs in Amazon API Gateway. Private APIs can only be accessed from within your Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) using VPC Endpoints. 

Amazon Aurora combines the performance and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL compatibility is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US) Region, so you can host sensitive Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and all types of regulated workloads and export-controlled data.

Starting today, Amazon GameLift emits 18 new metrics that will give you deeper insight into what is happening with your Queue placements. These new metrics track information such as how often your lowest latency regions and lowest priced fleets are selected by Amazon GameLift Queues. With this data, you can optimize to lower latency for players on a global scale and reduce your server hosting costs. 

Starting today, AWS CloudTrail’s event history will automatically log all read and write management events for supported AWS services. Event history lets you view, filter, and download your recent AWS account activity. This new release allows you to gain additional visibility into your account actions taken over the past 90 days without setting up a trail.

Details: Since launching Amazon CloudFront in November 2008, we’ve been continuously expanding our infrastructure footprint around the world to improve availability and performance for content delivery. Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of two new Edge locations: one in Johannesburg, South Africa, and one in Bangalore, India. The Edge location in Johannesburg is Amazon CloudFront’s first PoP on the African continent. The addition of these two locations brings CloudFront’s global network to 119 points of presence in 58 cities, across 26 countries.

Amazon CloudFront’s expansion into South Africa further improves availability and performance of content delivery to viewers in the region. We expect that customers who use Amazon CloudFront to reach viewers in South Africa will see performance improvements of as much as 75% from reductions in latency for their content. The new Bangalore PoP is expected to increase CloudFront capacity in India by up to 25%.

In addition to reducing latency, these Edge locations also bring the full suite of benefits provided by Amazon CloudFront, such as Lambda@Edge, Field Level Encryption, and Amazon S3 Transfer Acceleration, as well as seamless integration with other AWS services like AWS Certificate Manager (ACM), AWS Shield, AWS WAF, AWS Simple Storage Service (S3), and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). These new Edge locations in Johannesburg and Bangalore are built to the same high standards as our other CloudFront Edge locations around the world, including infrastructure and processes that are all compliant with PCI, DSS, HIPAA, and ISO to ensure secure delivery of the most sensitive data.

Information about pricing for CloudFront, including pricing for the new South Africa Edge locations, can be found on the pricing page.

AWS Landing Zone is a solution that helps customers more quickly set up a secure, multi-account AWS environment based on AWS best practices. With the large number of design choices, setting up a multi-account environment can take a significant amount of time, involve the configuration of multiple accounts and services, and require a deep understanding of AWS services. This solution can help save time by automating the set-up of an environment for running secure and scalable workloads while implementing an initial security baseline through the creation of core accounts and resources.