AWS has rolled out significant updates across multiple service categories since early May 2025. These developments focus on enhanced AI capabilities, expanded regional availability, and improved developer productivity tools.
AI and Machine Learning Enhancements
Amazon Bedrock continues expanding its AI capabilities with Model Distillation now generally available, supporting Amazon Nova Premier as teacher models and Nova Pro as students. This allows organizations to transfer knowledge from more capable models to efficient, cost-effective alternatives for specific use cases.
Amazon Q Developer received major upgrades with agentic capabilities now available in JetBrains and Visual Studio IDEs. The GitHub integration (preview) enables developers to use Q Developer agents for feature development, code review, and Java transformation directly within GitHub projects.
Amazon Bedrock Data Automation now extracts custom insights from audio files using blueprint configurations, expanding beyond document and image processing.
Database and Storage Improvements
Amazon Aurora introduced several performance enhancements: – PostgreSQL Limitless Database now supports version 16.8 – Global Database reduces cross-region switchover time to under 30 seconds – Support for up to 10 secondary regions in global clusters – MySQL 3.09 compatibility (MySQL 8.0.40) with security updates
Amazon RDS expanded instance type availability across multiple regions, with new Graviton4-based M8g and R8g instances offering up to 40% performance improvements over Graviton3-based instances.
Amazon S3 Tables became available in eleven additional regions, providing built-in Apache Iceberg support for tabular data at scale.
Regional Expansion and Availability
AWS significantly expanded service availability across regions:
New regional launches include: – Amazon OpenSearch Serverless in Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) and (Osaka) – Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus in 7 additional regions including Africa (Cape Town) and Europe (Zurich) – Amazon MSK now available in Asia Pacific (Thailand) and Mexico (Central) – Various EC2 instance types expanded to additional regions including Europe (Paris) and Israel (Tel Aviv)
AWS GovCloud regions received enhanced support with Amazon Connect Contact Lens dashboards and Resource Control Policies now available.
Developer Tools and Productivity
AWS Transform services reached general availability: – AWS Transform for VMware: First agentic AI service for VMware modernization at scale – AWS Transform for .NET: Modernizes Windows .NET applications to Linux, reducing licensing costs up to 40% – AWS Transform for mainframe: Accelerates IBM z/OS application modernization from years to months
Amazon ECS introduced 1-click rollbacks for service deployments, automatically detecting failures and reverting to previous stable states.
AWS CodeBuild added support for remote Docker servers, enabling persistent cache across builds and reducing provisioning latency.
Infrastructure and Compute Updates
Amazon EC2 expanded instance availability: – P5en instances with NVIDIA H200 GPUs now in US West (N. California) – New Wavelength Zone in Lenexa, Kansas for low-latency edge computing – ENA Express support added for 120 new instance types across multiple categories
Networking improvements: – IPv6 support expanded across multiple services including Amazon ECR, Amazon SES, and AWS Resource Groups – Amazon VPC Route Server enhanced logging for better network monitoring – ENA queue allocation now configurable per network interface
Security and Compliance
AWS Security Hub added support for NIST SP 800-171 Revision 2 compliance framework, providing automated security checks for government and contractor environments.
AWS WAF expanded enhanced rate-based rules to additional regions and introduced ASN (Autonomous System Number) matching for improved traffic filtering.
AWS Site-to-Site VPN gained three new security capabilities including AWS Secrets Manager integration for pre-shared key management.
Cost Optimization and Management
Amazon Q Developer now provides personalized cost optimization recommendations, helping identify rightsizing opportunities and Reserved Instance purchases through natural language conversations.
AWS Cost Explorer introduced Cost Comparison features that automatically detect significant cost changes between months and identify key spending drivers.
These updates demonstrate AWS’s continued focus on AI integration, global expansion, and developer productivity while maintaining strong security and cost management capabilities. Organizations can leverage these enhancements to improve operational efficiency and accelerate their cloud adoption strategies.