AWS Launches New Device Farm, API Gateway

Mobile application developers will be able to test the quality of their apps through a new service — AWS Device Farm — unveiled by Amazon Web Services. The announcement was one of several made during the AWS Cloud Summit taking place Thursday at the Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Other new developments announced during the event included Amazon API Gateway, a managed service designed to help customers create and manage application programming interfaces at any scale; an expanded SaaS (software-as-a-service) partner program for ISVs; and the rollout of the previously announced AWS CodeCommit managed revision control service.

Among the new partner ISVs joining the program are Looker, Qlik, Sumo Logic and Works Applications. They join other AWS partners that include Acquia, Informatica, Infor, MicroStrategy and Splunk.

Android, Fire OS Apps Testing at Scale

The new AWS Device Farm is designed to help mobile apps developers quickly and securely test their Android and Fire OS apps for smartphones, tablets and other devices, according to Amazon. The service enables developers to upload apps and run tests simultaneously across a fleet of commonly used devices.

The farm offers a faster way to test apps than manual testing using emulators or a developer’s personal collection of local devices, AWS said. There is no set-up fee, and developers pay as they go.

“For mobile app developers, delivering high-quality apps across all of the different device and OS combinations is a major effort — it’s time consuming, complicated, and expensive,” said AWS Vice President Marco Argenti. “AWS Device Farm gives developers a very simple and cost-effective way to test the real user experience of their apps across multiple device types at scale.”

Pay-As-You-Go API Management

Using the new Amazon API Gateway, AWS customers can access a management console to create API “front doors” for applications that access back-end services such as workloads running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. The new gateway, “handles all of the tasks associated with accepting and processing billions of daily API calls,” Amazon said.

“Building and running rock-solid APIs at massive scale is a significant challenge for customers,” said AWS Vice President Marco Argenti. “The Amazon API Gateway takes this learning and makes it available to customers as a pay-as-you-go service that eliminates the cost and complexity of managing APIs so that developers can focus on building great apps.”

There are no minimum fees or start-up costs for the Amazon API Gateway, according to AWS. Developers pay only for the API calls they receive and the amount of data transferred out.

Going ‘All-In’ with AWS

AWS said its expanded SaaS partner program offers ISV partners best practices, training and other resources that have proved successful in other SaaS deployments.

Developed based on partner feedback, the new program provides “architecture best practices, cost optimization, deep technical training, product development credits, and go-to-market support to make it even easier for the next generation of enterprise software innovators to build and grow their businesses on AWS,” said Terry Wise, vice president for the Worldwide Partner Ecosystem at AWS.

The program is aimed at the growing number of customers who are going “all-in” on AWS, said APN Content Manager Kate Miller on the AWS Partner Network Blog.

“[M]ore and more companies look to go ‘all-in’ on AWS and treat AWS as a priority platform for customers to run their software, and we strive to provide the resources needed to support the growth of their SaaS-based businesses on the AWS platform,” Miller said, adding that the analyst firm IDC predicted that by 2018 20.5 percent of all software delivery will be SaaS.

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