AWS AppFabric is a no-code solution that makes it easier to integrate various software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, according to Amazon Web Services (AWS). During the AWS Applications Innovation Day event, the announcement took place.
The business claims that utilising AppFabric, IT and security professionals can quickly integrate outside applications inside their company using the AWS dashboard. A single picture of application use and performance is provided by the integration, which does away with the requirement for specialised point-to-point (P2P) integrations.
According to AWS, AppFabric can connect to 12 productivity apps and 5 security apps. Additionally, it may be connected through APIs with 17 SaaS programmes. The business asserts that by providing clients with access into application data, they may save operating expenses and enhance the security posture of their organisations.
According to Federico Torreti, director of product at AWS AppFabric, \”customers asked us to abstract away this connectivity layer and just enable apps to work better together without having to do any integration work.\” Our key distinction with this solution is that AppFabric works better with applications that aren\’t intended to function together.
According to Torreti, the business wants to enable clients to take use of the over 100,000 AWS partners\’ network via AppFabric. By doing this, AWS hopes to provide these partners the tools they need to improve and broaden the experiences they provide to their customers and employees, embracing all facets of a company\’s SaaS operations.
AWS also demonstrated an upcoming generative AI tool for AppFabric that will use Amazon Bedrock and be live later this year. Users of various SaaS services may produce insights, automate processes, and rapidly find answers thanks to the AI capability.
After Microsoft recently unveiled its own Fabric suite, an end-to-end platform for analytics and data workloads, the announcement follows. The Fabric package unifies solutions for all of an organization\’s data users, from analysts and engineers processing technical data to engineers doing data analysis and making decisions.
The practise of Amazon and other cloud suppliers of charging clients numerous times for different discrete analytics and data products used on their clouds was emphasised by Microsoft in its statement. Microsoft celebrated the release of its Fabric suite as a development that would allow it to outperform Amazon and other cloud service providers, particularly in the area of catering to big companies.
Connectivity for apps through a common layer
Modern processes call for cross-departmental collaboration for effective cooperation, according to AWS\’s Torreti. These processes are cross-functional and interconnected, often requiring users to hop between many SaaS apps to complete a single activity.
According to an AWS survey, workers move between applications up to 30 times each day, and 12% of that time is spent looking for information. Constantly jumping between apps causes distractions and makes it difficult to maintain attention. According to Torreti, the business created the no-code functionality to address the interconnectedness of contemporary digital processes.
According to AWS, the functionality would act as a link between data silos in various SaaS apps, improving cross-functional staff collaboration. It attempts to foster a collaborative culture and provide workers the tools they need to do their jobs more efficiently.
Without coding or development labour, Torreti said, \”AppFabric is a fully managed service that connects SaaS applications across your organisation quickly.\” \”It improves visibility across application data and removes the complexity of building and maintaining point-to-point SaaS application integrations.\”
Customers can now rely on AWS as the best platform for executing applications, according to Torreti, who also claimed that security observability has improved throughout an organization\’s application tech stack.
By feeding normalised data from SaaS apps into security solutions like Splunk, RSA Netwitness, Logz.io, Rapid7, Netskope, or other security tools of their choosing, he said, \”Enterprise IT leaders can respond to security threats faster and reduce operational costs.\” \”Administrators will be able to set common policies, standardise security alerts, and manage user access across multiple applications.\”
Easing the clients\’ integration burden
According to AWS, customers have traditionally been in charge of app integration tasks. Although there are still certain use cases where point-to-point linkages are essential, such as data lake hydration, they may be expensive and time-consuming.
Because distinct application APIs have different data models, each integration requires specialised expertise to analyse, construct, protect, and manage it.
In response, the business unveiled the new service, claiming that it covers end-to-end app integration, including standardising various data types, APIs, privacy, and security.
At the occasion, the business unveiled a collaboration between Zoom and AWS AppFabric to provide cutting-edge AI experiences. The biggest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi, was also mentioned as a company using AppFabric to improve its security operations centre.
According to Torreti, \”AWS AppFabric connects 12 SaaS applications and manages them all in one place, including some of the most popular productivity applications by Asana, Atlassian Jira suite, Dropbox, Miro, Okta, Slack, Smartsheet, Webex by Cisco, Zendesk, and Zoom.\” \”AppFabric will also pull data from Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace to enhance the experience.\”
Customers may choose the apps their company uses in the AWS Management Console and connect to AppFabric from there. After that, AppFabric automatically provides each app with a standardised set of security and operational data.
The process of transforming audit log data from SaaS apps and centralising it into a logs stash is not without its difficulties. But before we can start generating warnings and tracking use across several applications, it is a fundamental necessity, according to Boris Surets, chief information security officer at Optibus. \”With little work and expense, AppFabric has doubled our visibility into SaaS activity overnight.\”
The platform also easily combines SaaS apps with different security measures.
According to Torreti, who was speaking to VentureBeat, \”AppFabric aggregates and normalises security data using the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF), an open community schema, making the data accessible by these tools.\” By using this architecture, IT and security professionals may define common policies, alerts, and a uniform set of rules across many SaaS services, as well as analyse data more quickly.
Generating AI to provide complex insights
The platform includes generative AI capabilities powered by Amazon Bedrock to assist clients perform tasks based on context from numerous apps in addition to employing AppFabric for the security use case.
Torreti emphasised that AWS customers often bemoaned the hassle of accessing many programmes or turning to copy-and-paste from different data sources, resulting in continual switching between applications throughout their day.
To solve this problem, AppFabric has developed generative AI capabilities that can be used across SaaS apps. This eliminates the need for users to constantly move between applications in order to find information or carry out actions like taking notes during meetings, composing update emails, or updating projects.
AWS outlined how AppFabric approaches its models\’ reasoning and comprehension skills as dynamic entities rather than just as knowledge warehouses. By combining recent data and expertise, the service enhances the context of its generative AI model, and users may modify these AI models using Bedrock.
\”We carry out three activities as part of our architecture: First, we use consumer data to root and augment suggestions. Finally, we actively endeavour to customise prompts to certain client use cases. Secondly, we are always assessing and enhancing the prompts, added Torreti.
He emphasised that by providing findings in the desired format of the user\’s selected application, the new AI capability helps users complete tasks.
According to Torreti, \”when you attend a virtual conference using Zoom, AppFabric will utilise the context of the transcription and present relevant data, such the user\’s most recent messages and emails, and then leverages APIs to propose actions that the user may do across SaaS services. We are changing the paradigm for using generative AI with the generative AI feature from knowledge retrieval to depending on their reasoning skills and being action-oriented.
According to a statement from AWS, AppFabric is now immediately usable in the U.S. East (N. Virginia), Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo), with plans to shortly be made accessible in more AWS regions.