7/24/2026, 12:00:00 AM ~ 7/27/2026, 12:00:00 AM (UTC)

Recent Announcements

Amazon Connect now supports audio optimization for Azure Virtual Desktop and Windows 365 Cloud PC

Agents using Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) or Windows 365 Cloud PC can now take calls directly from their virtual desktop session with audio optimization enabled. To get started, IT administrators need to complete a one-time setup for their virtual desktop environment. Once configured, media is redirected from the virtual desktop to the agent’s local device, improving audio quality.\n Agents simply log into their Azure Virtual Desktop or Windows 365 Cloud PC session and start accepting calls using the Amazon Connect Customer agent workspace or a custom agent interface built with the Amazon Connect Customer open-source JavaScript libraries. This support is in addition to existing audio optimization for Amazon WorkSpaces, Citrix cloud desktops, and Omnissa cloud desktops. This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Connect Customer is offered, except AWS GovCloud (US-West). To learn more, see the Amazon Connect Customer Administrator Guide.

Amazon MWAA now supports Apache Airflow version 2.11.2

Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (MWAA) now supports Apache Airflow version 2.11.2. Amazon MWAA is a managed service that runs Apache Airflow at scale without the operational overhead of managing the underlying infrastructure. Apache Airflow 2.11.2 is a maintenance release that includes security improvements, bug fixes, and dependency upgrades.\n This release upgrades core dependencies with security patches and stability improvements to the Airflow webserver and task execution layers. It also includes fixes to task lifecycle management for queued tasks, enhanced secrets masking in logs, UI corrections in the Task Instances list view, and provider package updates for S3 and CloudWatch log delivery. You can create a new Apache Airflow 2.11.2 environment on Amazon MWAA or upgrade your existing environments with a few clicks in the AWS Management Console in all currently available Amazon MWAA regions. To learn more, visit the Amazon MWAA documentation, review the Apache Airflow 2.11.2 release notes, and explore the list of available Airflow versions on MWAA.

Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts now support host resource groups without self-managed licenses

Starting today, customers can create Host Resource Groups (HRGs) for EC2 Dedicated Hosts without the previously required step of creating Self-Managed Licenses (SMLs) and associating AMIs through AWS License Manager.\n This flexibility is particularly valuable for EC2 Mac Instance customers and for customers who need Dedicated Hosts for hardware-level isolation rather than Bring Your Own License (BYOL). Customers with BYOL workloads can continue to create HRGs with SMLs to ensure that only instances from associated AMIs can be launched on the host and track host-level license consumption.

To create an HRG without SML, uncheck the “Restrict to AMIs associated with self-managed license” option when creating a Host Resource Group in the EC2 Console, or set instance-launch-option to license-configuration-required via the AWS CLI.

This feature is available in all AWS Regions where Host Resource Groups are supported. To learn more, visit the Host Resource Group User Guide

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams now supports scaling down ingest capacity with warm throughput

Amazon Kinesis Data Streams is a serverless streaming data service that makes it easy to capture, process, and store data streams at any scale. On-demand streams automatically increase ingest capacity in response to rising data ingest usage. With On-demand Advantage mode, you can proactively manage stream capacity using warm throughput to prepare streams for sudden changes in data traffic. We are extending warm throughput with the ability to also scale down ingest capacity, giving you full control to scale your stream’s write throughput up or down. \n To scale down, simply set a lower warm throughput value on your on-demand stream. The stream adjusts to the requested capacity or the amount needed to support peak data ingest usage in the last hour, whichever is higher. This ensures your stream always retains sufficient capacity for current traffic while releasing excess capacity you no longer need. As a result, you get optimal stream-processing performance and cost efficiency. 

Warm throughput scale-down is available at no additional cost for all on-demand streams with On-demand Advantage mode enabled.  For more information about On-demand Advantage, see Choose the right mode to stream in in the Amazon Kinesis Data Streams Developer Guide. To get started with the feature, see Update a stream. For pricing details, see Amazon Kinesis Data Streams pricing.

The feature is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Kinesis Data Streams On-demand Advantage is supported.

AWS Lambda now publishes logs for Lambda Managed Instances capacity providers

AWS Lambda now publishes logs for Lambda Managed Instances (LMI) capacity providers to Amazon CloudWatch Logs, giving you visibility into scaling activity and instance lifecycle operations. LMI enables you to run Lambda functions on Amazon EC2 instances while maintaining serverless operational simplicity. Capacity providers are resources that let you define compute resources that Lambda provisions on your behalf. With capacity provider logs, you can monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize these managed EC2 instances, helping you quickly diagnose provisioning issues and understand scaling behavior.\n Customers use LMI to operate high-volume, predictable workloads with specialized compute configurations and achieve cost efficiency through EC2 pricing options like Savings Plans and Reserved Instances. With this launch, Lambda automatically generates logs for compute resources managed by capacity providers and delivers them to CloudWatch Logs. Lambda publishes structured JSON logs capturing instance lifecycle events like launches, terminations, and health checks. This structured format lets you identify failed operations and provisioning errors through CloudWatch Logs filtering, helping you resolve issues quickly and shorten debugging cycles.

The capacity provider logs are available in all AWS Commercial Regions where LMI is available. The logs are enabled by default for all capacity providers. You can view your capacity provider logs by visiting the Lambda console’s capacity provider page. You can use the Lambda API, Lambda console, AWS CLI, AWS SAM, or AWS CloudFormation to change capacity provider log configuration. Standard Amazon CloudWatch Logs charges apply. To learn more, visit the AWS Lambda Managed Instances product page and documentation.

Amazon SES simplifies sending emails over SMTP using Mail Manager

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) now offers a simplified console experience for sending emails over SMTP using Mail Manager. Mail Manager is a capability within SES for managing email flow, but configuring its resources individually to set up SMTP sending requires multiple steps. The new guided setup creates and configures these resources automatically, so developers can get started in just a few clicks.\n The guided setup gives developers a working SMTP endpoint and downloadable credentials they can plug into any application or framework that supports SMTP. This is ideal for teams building applications that send email notifications, password resets, or transactional messages and need a fast path to a production-ready SMTP configuration.

This experience is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon SES is available.

To learn more, visit the Amazon SES console or refer to the documentation.

Claude Opus 5 is now available on AWS

AWS now offers Claude Opus 5 — the most advanced Opus model yet, and compatible with zero data retention (ZDR) — bringing a step-change in coding, long-running agents, and complex professional work to teams building at the highest level. \n Claude Opus 5 delivers advances in coding, understanding and navigating codebases like an experienced engineer and writing production-quality code while adapting its strategy as it works. It powers dependable agents that run for hours and even overnight, finding paths around obstacles, recovering from errors, and reaching their objectives. And it brings deeper reasoning to long documents and higher accuracy to complex analysis, with the largest gains on document-heavy enterprise work. 

Customers have two ways to access Claude Opus 5: Amazon Bedrock and Claude Platform on AWS. 

Amazon Bedrock offers Claude Opus 5 with zero data retention (ZDR) enabled by default, giving you Opus’ top-tier intelligence while meeting your data governance requirements. It keeps your data within AWS infrastructure with regional data residency, and provides access through a unified service with AWS-managed features like Guardrails and Knowledge Bases. To learn more, see the Amazon Bedrock documentation and regional availability.

Claude Platform on AWS gives you direct access to Anthropic’s native platform experience and capabilities via the AWS Console, with support for zero data retention (ZDR) available on request. Build, test, and deploy with the same APIs, features, and console experience you’d get working with Anthropic directly, unified with AWS billing and authentication. To get started, see the Claude Platform on AWS documentation.

Opus 4.8, Sonnet 5, and User Activity Monitoring now available on Kiro in AWS GovCloud (US)

Two new models are now available in the Kiro IDE and CLI for the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions.\n Claude Opus 4.8 is the most intelligent Opus model, delivering stronger self-verification, more efficient tool calling, and better follow-through on long-horizon projects. It plans before it edits, catches its own mistakes, and finds creative paths around obstacles instead of stalling, making it well suited for complex multi-step tasks that previously required close supervision. Available with a 1M context window and 2.2x credit multiplier. Claude Sonnet 5 is the most agentic Sonnet model, bringing stronger reasoning, tool use, and coding at Sonnet-class pricing. It approaches Opus 4.8 on reasoning and agentic coding benchmarks while running at meaningfully lower cost, giving developers a cost-performance dial between maximum accuracy and higher throughput. Available with experimental support, a 1M context window, and 1.3x credit multiplier. Kiro enterprise administrators now have full visibility into organizational usage through built-in monitoring and tracking. A usage dashboard provides aggregate metrics at a glance, per-user activity reports deliver daily CSV telemetry (credits, model usage, and more) to your S3 bucket for license optimization and audit, and optional prompt logging captures user prompts and Kiro responses for compliance and debugging. All data is stored in your own account with no additional charge beyond S3 storage. Ensure your IDE or CLI is updated to the latest version, then restart it to access the new models from the model selector. For more details, visit the GovCloud documentation, the monitoring and tracking guide, or contact your AWS account team. To learn more about Kiro, visit the Kiro product page.

AWS announces aws-bench, an open-source benchmark for AI agents on AWS

Today, AWS announces a research preview of aws-bench, an open-source benchmark that measures how accurately and efficiently AI agents complete real-world AWS tasks. Model providers and AI researchers building agents that operate on AWS infrastructure need an objective, reproducible way to measure performance and diagnose failures. aws-bench provides a public suite of test cases derived from analysis of real AWS usage, including investigation, troubleshooting, and infrastructure creation tasks.\n Each test case pairs a natural-language query with a defined cloud resource state and a ground-truth answer, so you can score any agent or model on a consistent, verifiable basis. Researchers and model providers can use aws-bench to improve foundation model performance on AWS tasks, improve agent harnesses, and track improvement progress. The release includes an easy-to-use CLI tool to instantiate testing environments, execute and score evaluation runs, and reset resource state. aws-bench is available now on GitHub. To get started, follow the setup instructions on the README.

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