Recently, AWS introduced a MIDI keyboard to teach machine learning. Now, AWS has launched Amazon AppFlow, a new integration service that makes it easier to transfer data between SaaS and AWS applications, like Google Analytics, ServiceNow, Slack, Zendesk, Snowflake, and Salesforce.
AWS is launching this new service more like a data transfer service than a way to automate workers. AWS’s announcement mainly focuses on moving data from the SaaS applications to other AWS services. AppFlow has several tools that transform the data as it moves through the service.
According to AWS principal advocate, Martin Beeby, “Developers spend a lot of time on writing custom integrations. This helps them to pass data between AWS services and SaaS applications. This is quite expensive and takes months to complete. If the data requirements change, then costly changes need to be made to the integrations. Companies that don’t have engineering resources import and export data from applications. However, it is quite time-consuming and has the potential for human error.”
Each flow costs around $0.001 per run; however, there is a cost associated with data processing. Kurt Kufeld, the vice president of AWS, said in a statement, “Our customers constantly tell us that they love to have the ability to process, store and analyze data in AWS. They also use several third-party SaaS applications. Amazon AppFlow is an easy way for the customers to combine the data from SaaS applications and AWS, without moving it across the internet. Through Amazon AppFlow, customers can manage petabytes or exabytes of data across their applications, without developing custom connectors and network connectivity.”
Currently, the number of supported services is quite low, with only four destinations and 14 possible sources. Sometimes, the only destination is Amazon’s S3 storage service. However, the total number of integrations will increase over time. However, it is a lot of work to do for the AppFlow Team to expand on its services.
AWS has left the market for its competitors, even though it has tools, such as AWS Step Functions for serverless workflows and EventBridge for connections applications. EventBridge supports several third-party sources, however, its core focus is on triggering events in AWS.
