Amazon wants to make it easier for users to transfer data between AWS and SaaS applications by removing the need to write custom integration code.
In order to fully automate the bidirectional data flow, Amazon has crafted a new service called AppFlow. Amazon notes that this service has been specifically designed for customers with large datasets used for data lakes, machine learning, IoT and analytical workloads.
According to Amazon, millions of customers run applications, data lakes, large-scale analytics, machine learning, and IoT workloads on AWS. These customers often also have data stored in dozens of SaaS applications, resulting in silos that are disconnected from data stored in AWS.
Organisations want to be able to combine their data from all of these sources, but that requires customers to spend days writing code to build custom connectors and data transformations to convert disparate data types and formats across different SaaS applications.
Customers with multiple SaaS applications end up with a sprawl of connectors and complex code that is time-consuming and expensive to maintain. Further, custom connectors are often difficult to scale for large volumes of data or near real-time transfer, causing delays between when data is available in SaaS and when other systems access the data.
In large enterprises, business users wait months for skilled developers to build custom connectors. In firms with limited in-house developer skills, users resort to manually uploading and downloading data between systems, which is tedious, error-prone and risks data leakage.
Amazon says that AppFlow solves these problems, and allows customers with diverse technical skills, including CRM administrators and BI specialists, to easily configure private, bidirectional data flows between AWS services and SaaS applications without writing code or performing data transformation.
The company notes that customers can use AppFlow to build and execute data flows between sources ‘in minutes’, with just a few clicks in the Amazon AppFlow console.
Additionally, Amazon AppFlow automatically encrypts data at rest and in motion using AWS or customer-managed encryption keys, and enables users to restrict data from flowing over the public internet for applications that are integrated with AWS PrivateLink, reducing exposure to security threats.
“Our customers tell us that they love having the ability to store, process, and analyze their data in AWS. They also use a variety of third party SaaS applications, and they tell us that it can be difficult to manage the flow of data between AWS and these applications,” said Kurt Kufeld, Vice President, AWS.
“Amazon AppFlow provides an intuitive and easy way for customers to combine data from AWS and SaaS applications without moving it across the public Internet. With Amazon AppFlow, our customers bring together and manage petabytes, even exabytes, of data spread across all of their applications – all without having to develop custom connectors or manage underlying API and network connectivity.”
Amazon AppFlow is available today in US East (Northern Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Northern California), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Toyko), Asia Pacific(Sydney), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Europe (Paris), Europe (Ireland), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (London), and South America (São Paulo) with more regions to come.
