On Monday, I'm teaching Building Advanced Agentic Systems on AWS. I just found a new case study showing a multi-agent architecture on Bedrock AgentCore that I'll show the class. aws.amazon.com/blogs/archite… If you need to learn about secure, scalable, production-ready architectures, join me in an upcoming class. techreformers.com/upcoming-i…

AWS Lambda now supports a 90-minute function timeout for asynchronous and event source mapping (ESM) invocations on Lambda Managed Instances (LMI). That's a 6x increase from the previous 15-minute ceiling, and it changes the conversation around when Lambda is the right tool for longer-running workloads like media transcoding, Monte Carlo financial simulations, and AI inference jobs. docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/l…

AWS just republished and expanded its guidance on managing identity source transitions in IAM Identity Center — and this time it includes Active Directory migration strategies AND automation for permission sets. That's a big deal for anyone responsible for enterprise access management. Here's what changed: IAM Identity Center now has clearer, more structured guidance on how to move between identity sources (like switching from the built-in Identity Center directory to Active Directory or an external IdP) without breaking user access or losing permission set assignments. The automation piece means engineers don't have to manually re-map every permission set during a migration — a painful process in large environments. aws.amazon.com/blogs/securit…

AWS has announced a definitive agreement to acquire DuckLabs — the Amsterdam-based company behind DuckDB, the wildly popular open source analytical database. aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-dat…

AWS just celebrated 10 years of AWS Managed Microsoft AD (AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory), and this milestone is more than nostalgia. It's a reminder that enterprise identity in the cloud is a foundational concept that shows up across multiple certification exams and real-world architectures. Here's what matters for your cert prep: 🎯 AWS Managed Microsoft AD is a tested topic on the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, Solutions Architect – Professional, and Security – Specialty exams. Expect questions around trust relationships, hybrid identity, MFA integration, and when to use Managed AD vs. Simple AD vs. AD Connector. In the real world, a Solutions Architect designing a hybrid enterprise environment would use AWS Managed Microsoft AD to extend an on-premises Active Directory into AWS—enabling seamless SSO for users accessing EC2 instances, RDS databases, and AWS applications without manually managing domain controllers. A CloudOps engineer would use this service to enforce group policies across fleets of Windows instances while keeping identity management centralized and auditable. A decade of enterprise identity evolution means the exam questions are nuanced. Surface-level knowledge won't cut it anymore. aws.amazon.com/blogs/securit… Drop a comment: let's talk AD on AWS. 👇

AWS now has five AI certifications to help professionals stand out in a competitive job market. The expanded portfolio covers foundational AI knowledge, business strategy, and technical implementation, with free and low-cost training via AWS Skill Builder. The newest credential, AWS Certified AI Business Strategist, validates the business judgment needed to take AI from adoption to scale. An AWS-commissioned study found employers will pay premiums for AI-certified talent—up to 47% more for IT roles, 43% more for sales and marketing, and 42% more for finance. Read more: aboutamazon.com/news/aws/aws…

If you learned about or implemented Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Memory, note that it just got a meaningful upgrade. The new IngestData API lets developers push content directly into long-term memory without first creating a short-term memory event. That might sound like a subtle plumbing change, but architecturally it's a big deal. It means long-term and short-term memory are now decoupled, giving builders far more flexibility in designing persistent, context-aware AI agents. aws.amazon.com/about-aws/wha…

“AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10,” ex-Anthropic researcher. washingtonpost.com/technolog…

Join @TechReformers AWS instructor-led courses this week: Architecting on AWS - August 24, Agentic AI Foundations - August 24, Building Agentic AI with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore - August 25, Building Advanced Agentic Systems on AWS - August 26 techreformers.com/upcoming-i…

Amazon Bedrock just added SpaceXAI Grok 4.6, a frontier model purpose-built for long-running agentic tasks, complex reasoning, and visual work. What makes this one stand out on the exam radar? Two things: a massive 500K context window and configurable reasoning effort levels (low, medium, high, and xhigh). Let’s take Grok seriously and give it a try. Amazon Bedrock = Model Choice + Security aws.amazon.com/about-aws/wha…

Tomorrow, Friday, at 7am PDT / 10am EDT, we have a guaranteed-to-run, instructor-led AWS Technical Essentials training. Take Friday off and work from home with a mix of presentation, games, and 4 hands-on labs. techreformers.com/catalogue/…

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore is the managed runtime for building, deploying, and evaluating production-grade AI agents. This announcement shows how AgentCore integrates with AWS HealthLake (FHIR-compliant health data) and AgentCore Evaluations to create agents that assist clinicians — without removing human oversight. aws.amazon.com/blogs/archite… This is the type of architecture that we teach in Building Advanced Agentic Systems on AWS. techreformers.com/catalogue/… @johnkrull #AWS #CloudTraining #AIdevelopment

We have a guaranteed-to-run, instructor-led AWS Technical Essentials training this Friday at 7am PDT / 10am EDT. This introductory course will teach you about AWS cloud products, services, and common solutions. You will learn the fundamentals with a mix of presentation and 4 hands-on labs. techreformers.com/catalogue/…

The real AI-native development revolution isn't about code velocity. It's about reimagining how engineering teams work. Swami, VP af Agentic AI at AWS, says Frontier teams are achieving 4.5x to 10x+ productivity gains not by treating AI as a faster coding tool, but by fundamentally restructuring how software gets built. One Amazon Bedrock team shipped more production code in five months than in the previous decade. The insight? The bottleneck isn't generating code. It's freeing developers from non-coding overhead (documentation, coordination, status reporting) so human judgment focuses where it matters. This means treating AI adoption as an engineering investment, not a tool rollout. Whether you're in government, education, or enterprise—the organizations that will lead in 2027 aren't the ones bolting AI onto existing workflows. They're the ones restructuring around it. Read how frontier teams are doing it: the practices, the three paths forward, and what's actually changing in the SDLC. [aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine… #AINative #SoftwareEngineering #CloudArchitecture #Bedrock #DevOps

Sometimes a new sticker is better than a digital badge!

A lot of "agentic coding" tools stop at generating code fast. What sold me on Kiro is what happens before the code: the Requirements, Design, and Tasks phases; EARS notation to make requirements unambiguous; and property-based testing that catches the kinds of edge cases a quick unit test never will. It's also built to scale: steering files and execution modes to control agent autonomy, MCP servers and Kiro Powers to extend it, and real enterprise governance for teams that need it. I go through all of it, hands-on, in our new two-day course. August 6–7: techreformers.com/beyond-vib… #Kiro #SpecDrivenDevelopment #AWS

How many times have you watched a prompt-and-pray coding session produce something that looks right but isn't? A feature that technically works but solves the wrong problem, or misses an edge case nobody thought to test? That's not an AI problem; it's a planning problem. The fix isn't "prompt better"; it's putting a spec between the request and the code. That's why I'm excited to be teaching our new AWS course, Spec-Driven Development with Kiro. It's two days on how to actually do this well, using AWS's agentic IDE built specifically around spec-first workflows. First session is August 6–7. More here: techreformers.com/beyond-vib… #Kiro #AgenticAI #SoftwareEngineering

Tech Reformers uses AWS Transform MGN, formerly AWS Application Migration Service, AWS’s rehosting service that automates the conversion of physical, virtual, or cloud source servers into native Amazon EC2 instances. It uses continuous block-level replication, automated machine conversion, and orchestrated cutovers to let you migrate workloads with minimal downtime and without altering the source environment. Migrate to the cloud yourself or let us help you easily move your on-prem to the cloud. aws.amazon.com/application-m…

AWS just made Claude Opus 5 available on Amazon Bedrock. It’s not just a model upgrade. It's a governance story, an agent story, and a production AI story all rolled into one. Here's what changed: Claude Opus 5 is now accessible through Amazon Bedrock with Zero Data Retention (ZDR) enabled by default. That means your prompts and completions are never stored which is a critical requirement for regulated industries. It's also available through Claude Platform on AWS for teams that want Anthropic's native experience with AWS billing and authentication unified. aws.amazon.com/about-aws/wha…

Tech Reformers uses Archera to help clients with cost savings on AWS. Learn how you can save on AWS with as little as a 1-month commitment. Complete our form at techreformers.com/quickstart….