3/17/2025, 12:00:00 AM ~ 3/18/2025, 12:00:00 AM (UTC)
Recent Announcements
Amazon Redshift Serverless now supports Current and Trailing Tracks for release updates
Amazon Redshift Serverless is now available on two different release cycles - Current Track and Trailing Track. With the Current Track you will get the most up-to-date certified release version with the latest features, security updates, and performance enhancements. With the Trailing Track you will be on the previous certified release. With the Trailing Track feature, you now have the option to run a subset of Amazon Redshift Serverless workgroups in the Amazon Redshift Serverless Trailing Track to allow for a few weeks of integration validation in your environment before adopting the release across all your workgroups.\n Each Amazon Redshift Serverless release undergoes thorough testing by our QA and security teams. By default, all Amazon Redshift Serverless workgroups are created in the Current Track to take advantage of the most up-to-date certified release. Amazon Redshift Serverless Trailing track provides you additional diligence and time needed for testing and development environments to evaluate the Current Track, before adopting the Current Track for your mission-critical workloads in production. The Trailing track ensures maximum stability, making it ideal for mission-critical workloads in production environments. With a few clicks in the Amazon Redshift console, you can choose the Current Track or Trailing Track. Amazon Redshift Serverless Current and Trailing Tracks support is available in all commercial AWS regions and the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions where Amazon Redshift Serverless is available.
Refer to this documentation to learn more about the Current and Trailing Tracks in Amazon Redshift Serverless.
AWS announces new upgrades to the Amazon Q Business browser extension
Today, AWS announced several upgrades to the Amazon Q Business browser extension to enhance its utility and improve user efficiency when performing browser-based tasks. The upgrades include company knowledge access, in-line PDF support, the ability to delete previous attachments from conversation context, image file attachment support, and an expanded prompt context window.\n With the new upgrades, browser extension users are now able to access questions from a wide range of data sources that include not only their open web pages and attached documents, but also their company’s indexed data, PDFs they open in their browser, and multimodal file attachments such as charts and images. Users now also gain finer control over their prompt context with the ability to remove previous web pages or attachments that are no longer relevant from their conversation context. With the expanded context window, users can incorporate larger web pages and files alongside more detailed prompts to enhance the helpfulness of responses they receive from Amazon Q. Furthermore, the extension provides a convenient link to continue their work in the Amazon Q Business web experience, where users can access powerful features like Actions and Q Apps. These new features are available on the Amazon Q Business browser extension in all regions where Amazon Q Business is available. To learn more, visit the Amazon Q Business product page or review the documentation for detailed setup instructions and feature descriptions.
Amazon Connect Tasks now support durations up to 90 days
Amazon Connect Tasks can now be configured to expire up to 90 days from creation, with a default of 7 days. For example, tasks like auto repairs can take weeks to complete or that have longer follow-up times can stay active for up to 90 days before being escalated to a supervisor, while more time-critical tasks like rescheduling a hotel reservation can be distributed and tracked to completion within minutes. Amazon Connect Tasks empowers you to prioritize, assign, and track all contact center agent tasks to completion, improving agent productivity and ensuring customer issues are quickly resolved.\n This feature is supported in all AWS regions where Amazon Connect Tasks is offered. To learn more, see our documentation. To learn more about Amazon Connect, the easy-to-use cloud contact center, visit the Amazon Connect website.
Amazon Redshift Query Editor v2 now supports larger result sets in GovCloud (US)
AWS announces Amazon Redshift Query Editor V2 now supports increased maximum result set and export size to 100MB of your query result sets with no row limit in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. Prior to this limit of your query result sets was* 5MB or 100,000 rows. This enhancement provides greater flexibility for you and your team to work with large datasets, enabling you to generate, analyze, and export more comprehensive data without previous constraints.\n If you work with large datasets, such as security logs, gaming data, and other big data workloads, that require in-depth analysis, the previous 5MB or 100,000-row limit on result sets and exports often fell short of your needs, forcing you to piece together insights from multiple queries and downloads. With the new 100MB result set size and export capabilities in Amazon Redshift Query Editor, you can now generate a single, more complete view of your data, export it directly as a CSV or JSON file, and conduct richer analysis to drive better-informed business decisions. The increased 100MB result set and export size capabilities for Amazon Redshift Query Editor V2 are available in AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. For more information about the AWS Regions where Redshift is available, please refer to the AWS Regions table. To learn more, see the Amazon Redshift documentation.
Amazon OpenSearch Service expands cross-VPC connectivity to the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions
Amazon OpenSearch Service now offers support for managed VPC endpoints (powered by AWS PrivateLink) in two additional regions - AWS GovCloud (US-East), and AWS GovCloud (US-West). Managed VPC endpoints allow to connect to your Amazon OpenSearch Service VPC-enabled domain in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). With an Amazon OpenSearch Service managed endpoint, you can now privately access your OpenSearch Service domain within your VPC from your client applications in other VPCs, within the same or across AWS accounts, without using public IPs or requiring traffic to traverse the Internet.\n With this release, OpenSearch Service allows you to create an endpoint to an OpenSearch Service domain from another VPC in the same account or in another AWS account. You can either use the OpenSearch Service console or OpenSearch Service APIs to create an OpenSearch Service managed VPC endpoint. Amazon OpenSearch Service managed VPC endpoints are powered by AWS PrivateLink. If you use OpenSearch Service managed VPC endpoints to access your OpenSearch Service domain from your client applications in another VPC, you will incur standard AWS data transfer charges and the associated cost for the AWS PrivateLink interface endpoint. Please refer to the AWS Region Table for more information about OpenSearch Service availability. For more information, including instructions on getting started with setting up cross-VPC connectivity, please refer the OpenSearch Service documentation.
AWS Transfer Family enhances AS2 certificate management capabilities
AWS Transfer Family enhances certificate management capabilities for Applicability Statement 2 (AS2) with more options to import and monitor your AS2 certificates. This update makes it easier to migrate AS2 trading partner relationships to AWS and ensure uninterrupted communications.\n AS2 is a widely used business-to-business messaging protocol in industries such as healthcare, retail and supply chain, and uses certificate keys for secure message transmission and signing. You now have an option to import complete certificate information, including the full certificate chain, as a single PEM file. To ensure timely rotation of your certificates, you can check the certificate expiration status using the Transfer Family console or the DescribeCertificate API command. These enhancements make it easier to manage your AS2 certificates within AWS Transfer Family and ensure seamless communications with your trading partners. The new AS2 certificate management capabilities are available in all AWS Regions where the Transfer Family service is available. To learn more, visit the documentation and take the self-paced AS2 workshop.
Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server supports new minor version in February 2025
A new minor version of Microsoft SQL Server is now available on Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) Custom for SQL Server, providing performance enhancements and security fixes. Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server now supports this latest minor version of SQL Server 2022 across the Developer, Web, Standard, and Enterprise editions.\n We encourage you to upgrade your Amazon RDS for SQL Server database instances at your convenience. You can upgrade with just a few clicks in the Amazon RDS Management Console or by using the AWS CLI. Learn more about upgrading your database instances from the Amazon RDS User Guide. The new minor version is SQL Server 2022 CU17 16.0.4175.1. This minor version is available in all AWS commercial regions where Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server databases are available. Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server makes it simple to set up, operate, and scale SQL Server deployments in the cloud. See Amazon RDS Custom Pricing for pricing details and regional availability.
Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect is now generally available
Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect, now generally available, is a groundbreaking offering that integrates native digital and voice capabilities into Salesforce Service Cloud, delivering a unified and streamlined experience for agents. Salesforce users can now unify and route voice, chat, email, and case management across Amazon Connect and Service Cloud capabilities, streamlining operational efficiency and enhancing customer service interactions.\n With Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect, companies can now seamlessly integrate their Salesforce CRM data and agent experience with Amazon Connect’s leading voice, digital channels, and routing capabilities. Salesforce users can innovate with personalized and responsive service across every touchpoint. Customers receive personalized, AI-powered self-service experiences across Amazon Connect voice and chat, quickly solving issues. For more complex inquiries, the seamless transition from self-service to agent-assistance connects customers to the right agent, who has a unified view of the customer’s data, issue, and interaction history in Salesforce Service Cloud. Integrated data and APIs empower agents with Amazon Connect Contact Lens real-time voice transcripts and supervisors with call monitoring in Salesforce Service Cloud. Salesforce admins can quickly deploy and configure an integrated contact center solution in minutes with Amazon Connect voice, digital channels and routing of Salesforce cases. This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect is available. To learn more and get started, see the Salesforce Contact Center with Amazon Connect documentation. To learn more about Amazon Connect, see Amazon Connect.
Manage SLO exclusion time windows using CloudWatch Application Signals
Customers can now set exclusion time windows to avoid affecting a service’s reliability score during planned downtime. This feature works with service-level objectives (SLOs) that are created and tracked using CloudWatch Application Signals. SLOs help track longer term performance of services against pre-defined thresholds. Customers can now gain control for pausing/resuming their SLOs during planned outages on CloudWatch Application Signals, an application performance monitoring (APM) tool that simplifies health and performance monitoring for applications hosted on AWS.\n Customers occasionally need to omit specific timeframes from their SLO status and budget calculations due to scheduled maintenance, such as a periodical database maintenance window. This could be a single event, like a one time testing window, or a repeating event, such as off-hours. Using the Application Signals console or the SLO CloudFormation template, they can configure a start date and time, plus a duration or end time, to pause SLO measurements during a specific window. The new feature allows for configuring exclusion windows for multiple SLOs at a time, including existing SLOs. All regions with Application Signals also support SLO time window exclusion. See documentation to learn more about SLOs. Customers may now sign up for the new bundled pricing plan for Application Signals. To learn more, see Amazon CloudWatch pricing.
Configure Amazon Q in Connect directly from Connect Admin Website
Amazon Q in Connect, a generative AI-powered assistant for customer service, now makes it easy to create and modify generative AI experiences to improve customer interactions through an intuitive user interface within the Amazon Connect admin website.\n With this no-code approach, contact center administrators can now configure AI agent behaviors, create or edit custom prompts and set appropriate guardrails directly through the Amazon Connect admin website. For example, users can update AI prompts when launching new products, adjust AI guardrails to filter inappropriate content, or refine AI agents. For region availability, please see the availability of Amazon Connect features by Region. To learn more about Amazon Q in Connect, please visit the website or see the help documentation.
AWS Blogs
AWS Japan Blog (Japanese)
- Building Smart Industrial Machines with AWS: A Comprehensive Guide
- Information on AWS re: Inforce 2025 and Japan Tour
- An ultra-fast new agent-style coding experience with the Amazon Q Developer CLI
- How insurance companies implement disaster recovery for three-tier applications
- Weekly Generative AI with AWS — Week of 2025/3/10
- AWS Weekly — 2025/3/10
- Secure cloud innovation starting with AWS re: Inforce 2025
AWS Japan Startup Blog (Japanese)
AWS News Blog
AWS Compute Blog
AWS Contact Center
AWS Database Blog
- Use pgactive for rolling major version upgrades in Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
- Grouping database tables in AWS DMS tasks for Oracle source engine