At the end of 2025 I was happy to take a long break to enjoy the incredible summers that the southern hemisphere provides. I’m back and writing my first post in 2026 which also happens to be my last post for the AWS News Blog (more on this later).

The AWS community is starting the year strong with various AWS re:invent re:Caps being hosted around the globe, with some communities already hosting their AWS Community Day events, the AWS Community Day Tel Aviv 2026 was hosted last week.

Last week’s launches
Here are last week’s launches that caught my attention:

• Kiro CLI latest features – Kiro CLI now has granular controls for web fetch URLs, keyboard shortcuts for your custom agents, enhanced diff views, and much more. With these enhancements, you can now use allowlists or blocklists to restrict which URLs the agent can access, ensure a frictionless experience when working with multiple specialized agents in a single session, to name a few.
• AWS European Sovereign Cloud – Following an announcement in 2023 of plans to build a new, independent cloud infrastructure, last week we announced the general availability of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud to all customers. The cloud is ready to meet the most stringent sovereignty requirements of European customers with a comprehensive set of AWS services.
• Amazon EC2 X8i instances – Previously launched in preview at AWS re:Invent 2025, last week we announced the general availability of new memory-optimized Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) X8i instances. These instances are powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors with a sustained all-core turbo frequency of 3.9 GHz, available only on AWS. These SAP certified instances deliver the highest performance and fastest memory bandwidth among comparable Intel processors in the cloud.

For a full list of AWS announcements, be sure to keep an eye on the What’s New with AWS? page.

Additional updates
These projects, blog posts, and news articles also caught my attention:

• 5 core features in Amazon Quick Suite – AWS VP Agentic AI Swami Sivasubramanian talks about how he uses Amazon Quick Suite for just about everything. In October 2025 we announced Amazon Quick Suite, a new agentic teammate that quickly answers your questions at work and turns insights into actions for you. Amazon Quick Suite has become one of my favorite productivity tools, helping me with my research on various topics in addition to providing me with multiple perspectives on a topic.
• Deploy AI agents on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore using GitHub Actions – Last year we announced Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, a flexible service that helps you seamlessly create and manage AI agents across different frameworks and models, whether hosted on Amazon Bedrock or other environments. Learn how to use a GitHub Actions workflow to automate the deployment of AI agents on AgentCore Runtime. This approach delivers a scalable solution with enterprise-level security controls, providing complete continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) automation.

Upcoming AWS events
Join us January 28 or 29 (depending on your time zone) for Best of AWS re:Invent, a free virtual event where we bring you the most impactful announcements and top sessions from AWS re:Invent. Jeff Barr, AWS VP and Chief Evangelist, will share his highlights during the opening session.

There is still time until January 21 to compete for $250,000 in prizes and AWS credits in the Global 10,000 AIdeas Competition (yes, the second letter is an I as in Idea, not an L as in like). No code required yet: simply submit your idea, and if you’re selected as a semifinalist, you’ll build your app using Kiro within AWS Free Tier limits. Beyond the cash prizes and potential featured placement at AWS re:Invent 2026, you’ll gain hands-on experience with next-generation AI tools and connect with innovators globally.

Earlier this month, the 2026 application for the Community Builders program launched. The application is open until January 21st, midnight PST so here’s your last chance to ensure that you don’t miss out.

If you’re interested in these opportunities, join the AWS Builder Center to learn with builders in the AWS community.

With that, I close one of my most meaningful chapters here at AWS. It’s been an absolute pleasure to write for you and I thank you for taking the time to read the work that my team and I pour our absolute hearts into. I’ve grown from the close collaborations with the launch teams and the feedback from all of you. The Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) community has grown significantly, and I want to dedicate more time focused on this community, I’m still at AWS and I look forward to meeting at an event near you!

Check back next Monday for another Weekly Roundup!

– Veliswa Boya

Today, we’re announcing the ability to access your data in Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). With this capability, you can use your enterprise file data to augment generative AI applications with Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), train machine learning (ML) models with Amazon SageMaker, generate insights with Amazon S3 integrated third-party services, use comprehensive research capabilities in AI-powered business intelligence (BI) tools such as Amazon Quick Suite, and run analyses using Amazon S3 based cloud-native applications, all while your file data continues to reside in your FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is the first and only fully AWS managed NetApp ONTAP file system in the cloud to migrate on-premises applications that rely on NetApp ONTAP or other network-attached storage (NAS) appliances to AWS without having to change how you manage your data. FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides the popular capabilities, high performance, and data management APIs of ONTAP file systems with the added benefits of the AWS Cloud, such as simplified management, on-demand scaling, and seamless integration with other AWS services.

Over the years, AWS has developed a broad range of industry-leading AI, ML, and analytics services and applications that work with data in Amazon S3 that organizations use to innovate faster, discover new insights, and make even better data-driven decisions. However, some organizations want to use these services with their enterprise file data stored in NetApp ONTAP or other NAS appliances.

How to get started
You can create and attach an S3 Access Point to your FSx for ONTAP file system using the Amazon FSx console, the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), or the AWS SDK.

I have an existing FSx for ONTAP file system demo-create-s3access which I created by following the steps in the Creating file systems in the FSx for ONTAP documentation. Using the Amazon FSx console I now choose the file system ID fs-0c45b011a7f071d70 to access the full details of the file system.

I’ll attach the access point to the volume of the file system. I choose the volume vol1 and then select Create S3 Access Point from the Actions dropdown menu.

I enter details such as the access point name, the type of file system user identity and the network configuration, then choose Create s3 Access Point to finalize the process.

After it’s created, the access point my-s3-accesspoint is ready to allow access to the file data stored in my file system demo-create-s3access from Amazon S3. Amazon Access Points are S3 endpoints that can be attached to Amazon FSx volumes and used to perform Amazon S3 object operations.

I can now bring proprietary data stored in the file system demo-create-s3access to Amazon S3 for use in applications that work with Amazon S3 while my file data continues to reside in the FSx for NetApp ONTAP file system using the access point my-s3-accesspoint (this data remains accessible through the file protocols).

For the walkthrough in this post, I’ll integrate with Quick Suite.

Integrating decades of enterprise file data with the latest AI powered BI tools on AWS
In the Quick Suite Console, in the left navigation pane, I choose Connections, then select Integrations. Before you begin, make sure that you have the correct permissions to the Amazon S3 AWS resource. You can control the AWS resources that Quick Suite can access by following the Amazon Quick Suite user guide.

After I’ve selected the Amazon S3 integration I enter my Amazon S3 Access Point alias as the S3 bucket URL, leave the rest of the information as default, then choose Create and continue.

I finalize the process by providing the Name of the knowledge base, the Description, then choose Create.

After the knowledge base has been created it’s automatically synchronized, it’s now available for interaction.

I want to learn more about the AWS European Sovereign Cloud so I’ve updated the file system (accessed through the S3 Access Point my-s3-accesspoin-iyytkgz83djdjj7abn3u711supfgkuse1b-ext-s3alias) with the AWS whitepaper on this topic. In the chat in Amazon Quick Suite. I start asking the first question “do we have any documentation on the europe sovereignty cloud?“. To answer my question, the chat agent accesses and analyzes various types of data sources I have permission to use, including uploaded files in my current conversation, spaces I have access to, knowledge bases from my integrations, and more.

When I verify the source, I see that the document I uploaded to my file system is listed as one of the sources.

Other use cases of Amazon S3 Access Points for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP
Earlier, we looked at use cases such as connecting an organization’s proprietary file data to Amazon Quick Suite for advanced business intelligence. Additionally, Amazon S3 Access Points for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP can be used to seamlessly integrate enterprise file data with comprehensive analytics services, such as Amazon Athena for serverless SQL queries or AWS Glue for ETL processing, to name a few.

Amazon S3 Access Points for Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP are also suitable for data access from serverless compute workloads that are cloud-native with containerized microservices that require flexible access to shared enterprise datasets, such as configuration files, reference data, content libraries, model artifacts, and application assets.

Now available
You can get started today using the Amazon FSx console, AWS CLI, or AWS SDK to attach Amazon S3 Access Points to your Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP file systems. The feature is available in the following AWS Regions: Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Jakarta, Melbourne, Mumbai, Osaka, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Canada (Central, Calgary), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Milan, Paris, Spain, Stockholm, Zurich), Israel (Tel Aviv), Middle East (Bahrain, UAE), South America (Sao Paulo), US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), and US West (N. California Oregon). You’re billed by Amazon S3 for the requests and data transfer costs through your S3 Access Point, in addition to your standard Amazon FSx charges. Learn more on the Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP pricing page.

PS: Writing a blog post at AWS is always a team effort, even when you see only one name under the post title. In this case, I want to thank Luke Miller, for his expertise and generous help with technical guidance, which made this overview possible and comprehensive.

– Veliswa Boya.