Today, AWS CloudFormation StackSets  announces the capability to execute multiple operations for simultaneous execution. StackSets extends the functionality of CloudFormation stacks by letting you create, update, or delete stacks across multiple AWS accounts and Regions with a single operation. You can now submit more than one operation per stack set to be executed concurrently. This capability will enable you to reduce overall processing times with StackSets. Additionally, you can avoid the overhead of building logic to batch and queue operations submitted to StackSets.

You can now use Multi-Account Registration certificates on AWS IoT Core Credential Provider endpoints. Multi-Account Registration is a feature of AWS IoT Core that makes it easy for customers to register and use the same device certificate across multiple AWS accounts and endpoints. For example, a customer could register the same certificate with testing and production accounts. Customers can subsequently move devices easily between these AWS accounts by specifying the account endpoint when devices connect to AWS IoT Core. Until now, Multi-Account Registration certificates were supported only on IoT data plane and IoT Jobs endpoints. Starting today, customers can also use Multi-Account Registration certificates on IoT Credential Provider endpoints. See AWS IoT device data and service endpoints  for more details. 

Today, AWS Amplify announces the ability to export Amplify CLI-generated backends as a Cloud Development Kit (CDK) stack and incorporate into existing CDK deployment pipelines. The AWS Amplify CLI is a command line toolchain that helps frontend developers create app backends in the cloud. This new capability allows frontend developers to build their app backend quickly and, each time it is ready to ship, hand it over to DevOps teams to deploy to production.

The Amazon Connect Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) Adapter for Salesforce  now helps reduce the time agents spend searching for answers with integration of Amazon Connect Wisdom. Previously, agents needed to spend valuable time manually searching across data sources for information to solve customer issues and were unable to help customers quickly. With Wisdom, agents can search for terms such as “what is the pet policy in hotel rooms” across connected repositories, including Salesforce knowledge bases from right inside the CTI Adapter. When used with Contact Lens real-time, Wisdom is designed to detect customer issues during calls and proactively provide knowledge article recommendations in real-time. The Wisdom widget can be configured within the agent’s Contact Control Panel (CCP) or alongside the agent’s Salesforce Lightning screen layout for cases, contacts and accounts.

Today, we’re excited to announce that Amazon Athena supports AWS Glue Data Catalog  partition indexes to optimize query planning and reduce query runtime. When you query a table containing a large number of partitions, Athena retrieves the available partitions from the AWS Glue Data Catalog and determines which are required by your query. As new partitions are added, the time needed to retrieve the partitions increases and can cause query runtime to increase. AWS Glue Data Catalog allows customers to create partition indexes which reduce the time required to retrieve and filter partition metadata on tables with tens and hundreds of thousands of partitions.

The Amazon Connect Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) Adapter for Salesforce  now simplifies the contact center authentication procedure with the integration of Amazon Connect Voice ID to make voice interactions faster and more secure. Amazon Connect Voice ID analyzes caller’s unique voice characteristics using machine learning to help verify identity in real-time and display a confidence score and status within the Contact Control Panel (CCP) in the CTI Adapter. Using CTI Actions and Flows, you can automate fraud case creation or route the call to fraud agents based on the outcome of the Voice ID interaction. 

Starting today, Amazon AppStream 2.0 introduces Elastic fleets, a serverless fleet type that lets you stream applications to your end users from an AWS-managed pool of streaming instances without needing to predict usage, create and manage scaling policies, or create an image. Elastic fleets are designed for customers that want to stream applications to users without managing any capacity or creating AppStream 2.0 images.

Customer support conversations often require the caller to provide inputs such as first name and account ID so the agent can verify the information before handling customer requests. Starting today, you can configure your Amazon Lex bots to capture the spelling (e.g., “Z A C”) or the phonetic description (e.g., Z as in Zebra, A as in Apple, C as in Cat) for the first name, last name, email address, alphanumeric and UK postal code built-in slot types. Callers can use the spelling support to provide names with difficult or alternative spellings (e.g., “Chris” vs. “Kris”). They can disambiguate confusable letters such as “N” vs. “M” by using phonetic descriptions (e.g., to spell the name, Min: “M as in Mary, I as in Idea, N as in Nancy”). The spelling capability expands on the built-in slot types so you can simplify the dialog management and improve the end-user experience.

Elon Musk may solve the growing world hunger problem. David Beasley, director of the U.N.’s World Food Programme, asked Elon for $6.6 billion which is the cost of the programme. Elon replied that if the program could explain in detail how his donation would solve world hunger, he would give it. Now the World Food …

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In 1969 two semiconductor companies were merged into one under a large holding company. There was speculation at the time over the future of the holding company’s 49% stake in Westinghouse Brake-English Electric Semiconductors. Those who speculated didn’t have long to wait: the merged company was shuttered two years later and the 49% stake flogged off. Moral: …

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