Day 1 is an absolute thrill at re:Invent! I normally dedicate this dynamic day to connect with new faces, explore the bustling expo hall, engage with customers and service team members, and fully immerse myself in the electrifying atmosphere of re:Invent. This day sets the stage for a wave of exhilarating announcements across a range of services, and here are my top favorites that have truly captured my attention.
AWS Transform launches an AI agent for full-stack Windows modernization
I have been a database person most of my life, and modernizing an engine like SQL Server to a more open platform like PostgreSQL is often challenging. The motivation to modernize is mainly due to factors like high licensing costs and the adoption of a more open engine with strong community support, etc. When you are dealing with hundreds and thousands of these engines, the complexity will increase, and the pace at which you modernize will slow down. Oftentimes, the app teams also find these modernization efforts very time-consuming and challenging, which slows down the appetite to modernize.
This is where AWS Transform comes to the rescue. AWS Transform is expanding its capability from the .NET modernization agent to now include the full-stack Windows modernization agent that handles both .NET applications and their associated databases. The new agent automates the transformation of .NET applications and Microsoft SQL Server databases to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and deploys them to containers on Amazon ECS or Amazon EC2 Linux. AWS Transform accelerates full-stack Windows modernization by 5x across application and database layers, while reducing operating costs by up to 70%. With AWS Transform, customers can accelerate their full-stack modernization journey through automated discovery, transformation, and deployment. The full-stack Windows modernization agent scans Microsoft SQL Server databases in Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS instances, and it scans .NET application code from source repositories (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure Repos) to create customized, editable modernization plans. It automatically transforms SQL Server schemas to Aurora PostgreSQL and migrates databases to new or existing Aurora PostgreSQL target clusters. For .NET application transformation, the agent updates database connections in the source code and modifies database access code written in Entity Framework and ADO.NET to be compatible with Aurora PostgreSQL—all in a unified workflow with human supervision. All the transformed code is committed to a new repository branch. Finally, the transformed application along with the databases can be deployed into a new or existing environment to validate the transformed applications and databases.
AWS Transform custom to accelerate organization-wide application modernization
Transform custom can transform any code pattern and you can crush tech debt and this is huge for customers. It supports pre-built and custom transformations for languages like Java, Node.js, and Python, handling tasks such as framework and runtime upgrades, SDK updates, and infrastructure-as-code migrations. Users can define transformation logic using documentation, natural language, or code samples, enabling the tool to learn and automate migration patterns specific to their needs. Custom offers both CLI and web interfaces for campaign management, integrates with CI/CD pipelines, and provides detailed reports following each transformation, reducing technical debt and freeing developers to focus on innovation.
As a precursor for Day1, we had some significant announcements on Sunday as well and here are my favorites.
Lambda Managed Instances, a capability to run functions on your EC2 instances
This is a game changer for customers! Lambda Managed Instances is ideal for customers requiring specialized hardware configurations, as well as those with steady-state or predictable workloads seeking to optimize costs while maintaining Lambda’s serverless experience. Lambda Managed Instances lets you run Lambda functions on your EC2 instances while maintaining Lambda’s operational simplicity. With Lambda Managed Instances, you can access specialized compute configurations and drive cost efficiency through EC2 pricing advantages, without managing infrastructure. Lambda Managed Instances fully manages all infrastructure tasks, including instance lifecycle, OS and runtime patching, built-in routing, load balancing, and auto-scaling based on configurable parameters – so you can focus on writing code. This operational simplicity extends to the extensive EC2 instance catalog, giving you access to the latest-generation processors like AWS Graviton4 and high-bandwidth networking options. You can process parallel requests within each execution environment, maximizing resource utilization and improving price-performance.
Amazon Connect launches Model Context Protocol (MCP) support
Amazon Connect now supports Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling AI agents for end-customer self-service and employee assistance to use standardized tools for retrieving information and completing actions. With this launch, businesses can enhance their AI agents with extensible tool capabilities that improve issue resolution. For example, an AI agent can automatically look up order status, process refunds, and update customer records during a self-service interaction without requiring human intervention. With this launch, Amazon Connect provides out-of-the-box MCP tools for common tasks such as updating contact attributes and retrieving case information
AWS MCP Server(Preview)
With the AWS MCP Server, you can ask AI assistants to perform tasks like hosting static websites on S3, provisioning EC2 instances, troubleshooting Lambda issues, and configuring CloudWatch alarms using Agent SOPs to provide step-by-step guidance. The server handles authentication and authorization through AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and provides audit logging through AWS CloudTrail, giving you full control over resources and permissions while enabling AI agents to execute tasks across multiple AWS services helping you complete real-world tasks faster.
Amazon Route 53 Global Resolver for secure anycast DNS resolution (Preview)
Amazon Route 53 Global Resolver is a new internet-reachable DNS resolver that provides easy, secure, and reliable DNS resolution from anywhere for queries made by your authorized clients. With Global Resolver, authorized clients in your organization can achieve split DNS resolution by resolving public domains on the internet and private domains associated with Route 53 private hosted zones, from anywhere. Global Resolver also allows you to create rules that protects your clients from DNS-based data exfiltration attacks. Using DNS Firewall rules for Global Resolver, you can filter queries for domains based on threat categories (e.g. Malware, Spam), web-content (e.g. Adult and Mature Content, Gambling), or advanced DNS threats (DNS tunneling, Domain Generation Algorithms), and log all queries centrally for easy auditing. Global Resolver enables you to achieve high availability of DNS resolution for your clients, by allowing you to select two or more regions for anycast DNS resolution with automatic failover to the closest available region. With the launch of Global Resolver, Route 53 Resolver is renamed to Route 53 VPC Resolver, to help clarify the distinction between the two services.
AWS Interconnect – multi-cloud(Preview)
AWS announces preview of AWS Interconnect – multi-cloud, providing simple, resilient, high-speed private connections to other cloud service providers (CSPs), starting in preview with Google Cloud as the first launch partner and then with Microsoft Azure later in 2026. Customers have been adopting multi-cloud strategies while migrating more applications to the cloud. They do so for many reasons including interoperability requirements, the freedom to choose technology that best suits their needs, and the ability to build and deploy applications on any environment with greater ease and speed. Previously, when interconnecting workloads across multiple cloud providers, customers had to go the route of a ‘do-it-yourself’ multi-cloud approach, leading to complexities of managing global multi-layered networks at scale. AWS Interconnect – multi-cloud is the first purpose-built product of its kind and a new way of how clouds connect and talk to each other. It enables customers to quickly establish private, secure, high-speed network connections with dedicated bandwidth and built-in resiliency between their Amazon VPCs and other cloud environments.