The conference was kicked off with a keynote from Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, who presented some impressive growth numbers and announced host of new updates to AWS portfolio of services. Biggest announcements were around new Artificial Intelligence (AI) services called Lex, Rekognition and Polly and data migrations appliances Snowmobile and Snowball Edge. He also launched Amazon Lightsail, which allows developers to setup a virtual private server (VPS) with just a few clicks.

The second keynote, presented by Amazon Web Services CTO Werner Vogels, was more focused on new development tools, Big Data, Security and Mobile services.

Here’s a rundown of the key announcements coming out of re:Invent this year.

Amazon AI

One of the most significant announcement from Andy Jassy’s keynote was the launch of Amazon Lex, Amazon’s first AI service. Amazon Lex is a service for building conversational interfaces into any application using voice and text. It’s the technology that’s at the heart of the Amazon Alexa platform. This chat bot-friendly service is in preview.

Another AI service launched was Amazon Rekognition. Rekognition allows developers to add image analysis to applications.  It can analyze and detect facial features and objects such as cars and furniture. Jassy also announced launch of Amazon Polly, which converts text into speech. Polly is a fully managed service and you can even cache responses making it cost efficient. It is available in 47 voices and 27 languages.

Data storage and Services

Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) using SQL. It is a great addition since it allows developers to use standard SQL syntax to query data that’s stored in S3 without setting up the infrastructure for it. This service works with CSV, JSON, log files, delimited files, and more.

Amazon Aurora, cloud-based relational database, now supports PostgreSQL. It’s already compatible with open source standards such as MySQL and MariaDB.

Internet of Things (IoT)

AWS Greengrass, is another interesting service launched at re:Invent. AWS Greengrass lets you run local compute, messaging & data caching for connected devices in a secure way. Greengrass seamlessly extends AWS to devices so they can act locally on the data they generate, while still using the cloud for management, analytics, and durable storage. It allows IoT devices to respond quickly to local events, operate with intermittent connections, and minimize the cost of transmitting IoT data to the cloud.

Compute

As is tradition at re:Invent, Amazon announced a series of new core computing capabilities for its cloud. It launched F1 instances that support programmable hardware, R4 memory optimized instances, T2 burstable performance instances, compute-optimized C5 and I/O intensive I3 instances. Andy Jassy also announced Amazon EC2 Elastic GPUs, a way for people to attach GPU resources to EC2 instances. With Elastic GPUs for EC2 you can easily attach low-cost graphics acceleration to current generation EC2 instances.

Another important compute service launched is Amazon Lightsail. It allows developers to launch a virtual private server with just a few clicks. I think it is great addition to the portfolio as it allows small business owner and blogger to host their websites on AWS.

Serverless

AWS Lambda, a serverless computing service, got a couple of updates as well. Amazon announced Lambda@Edge, the new Lambda-based processing model allows you to write code that runs within AWS edge locations. This lightweight request processing logic will handle requests and responses that flow through a CloudFront distribution. It is great for developers who need to automate simple tasks in their CDN deployment so that traffic does not have to be routed back to a server.

Lambda functions now includes support for the Microsoft’s C# programming language. It already supports Node.js, Python and Java. Amazon also unveiled AWS Step Functions as a way to create a visual state machine workflow out of your functions.

Migration/ Data Transfer

Expanding on the scope of the Snowball which was launched last year, AWS added Snowball Edge and Snowmobile to the lineup. While Snowball provided 50TB of storage, each Snowball Edge appliance has 100TB of storage and offers more connectivity protocols than the previous version. Now you have also have Snowmobile to meet the needs of the customers with petabytes of data. Snowmobile is a 45-foot container that is delivered to customers on a trailer truck. This secure data truck stores up to 100 PB of data and can help companies move Exabyte of data to AWS in a matter of weeks instead of years. Snowmobile attaches to the clients network and appears as a local, NFS-mounted volume.

Development Tools

Amazon added AWS CodeBuild to the existing suite of developer tools like Code Commit, Code Deploy and Code Pipeline. AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed build service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to deploy. CodeBuild can be a cost effective and scalable alternative to running a dedicated Jenkins instance.

AWS X-Ray helps developers analyze and debug production, distributed applications, such as those built using a micro services architecture. X-Ray provides an end-to-end view of requests as they travel through the application and helps developers identify and troubleshoot the root cause of performance issues and errors. AWS X-Ray is in preview.

Monitoring Operations and Security

Similar to AWS Services Health Dashboard, AWS now provides a Personal Heath Dashboard. As the name indicates, this dashboard gives you a personalized view into the performance and availability of the AWS services that you are using, along with alerts that are automatically triggered by changes in the health of the services.

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are one very common trouble spot. Amazon new offering is AWS Shield, a DDoS protection service that safeguards web applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection. It provides DDoS protection at the DNS, CDN, and load balancer tiers and is available in free and premium flavors.

Big Data and Compute

AWS Batch, a service for automating the deployment of batch processing jobs is released in preview. AWS Batch enables developers, administrators, and users to easily and efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs on AWS. With Batch users have access to the power of the cloud without having to provision, manage, monitor, or maintain clusters. No software to buy or install. AWS Glue a fully managed ETL service that makes it easy to move data between your data stores was also launched.

Mobile Services

Dr. Vogels also launched Amazon Pinpoint, a mobile analytics service. Amazon Pinpoint makes it easy to run targeted campaigns to drive user engagement in mobile apps through the use of targeted push notifications.

AWS refers to re:Invent as an educational event, and they were very successful in achieving this in 2016. You can find the recording of keynote and tech talks on YouTube.

'Highlights from AWS re:Invent 2016

AEM 5.6 and above ships with a SAML authentication handler. This handler provides support for the SAML 2.0 Authentication Request and acts as a SAML service provider.

If you have never heard of SAML before, I would suggest you to view the videos below. These SAML 101 videos beautifully explains the basics of SAML – what is SAML? how SAML works and why it is important?

SAML authentication handler in AEM provide support for:

• Signing and encryption of messages
• Automatic creation of CRX users and groups
• Service Provider and Identity Provider initiated authentication
• Stores the encrypted SAML response message in the user-node (usernode/samlResponse) to facilitate communication with a third-party Service Provider.

Shankar of AEM Club did a brilliant job step by step article on how to set up SAML Authentication on AEM.
http://adobeaemclub.com/setting-saml-authentication/

Here is an another great article on AEM 6 and SAML integration
https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/kb/saml-demo.html

If you want to dig deeper, please refer to the official documentation on how to implement SAML with AEM
https://docs.adobe.com/docs/en/aem/6-1/administer/security/saml-2-0-authenticationhandler.html

'Implementing Single Sign On in AEM using SAML

Out of curiosity, I checked the PageSpeed scores of other AEM/CQ implementation that I am aware of and compiled the list. The best performing AEM sites list below is based on PageSpeed score only.

PageSpeed Insights analyses and measures the performance of a web page for mobile and desktop devices by fetching the url twice, once with a mobile user-agent, and once with a desktop-user agent. Based on the analyses it assigns a score which ranges from 0 to 100 points. A higher score is better and a score of 85 or above indicates that the page is performing well.

Since the performance of a network connection varies considerably, Page Speed Insights only considers the network-independent aspects of page performance: the server configuration, the HTML structure of a page, and its use of external resources such as images, JavaScript, and CSS to calculate the score. The absolute performance of the page will still be dependent upon a user’s network connection.

Here are the Page Speed scores of the sites running on AEM/CQ:

Website	Industry	Mobile	Desktop	Updated
Ford Media	Auto	31	42	08/07/15
TW Cable	Telecommunications	33	55	07/08/15
Nascar	Sports	39	51	07/08/15
Intel	Technology	41	63	07/29/15
Philips	Electronics	41	55	07/08/15
Citrix	Technology	42	63	07/08/15
Kelloggs	Food	42	71	08/07/15
Motel 6	Hospitality	45	69	08/07/15
Morning Star	Financial Services	46	64	07/31/15
The Age	Publishing	47	51	07/08/15
Loblaws	Retail	53	61	07/29/15
Stanford Medicine	Education	53	63	07/08/15
CAT	Construction Machinery	54	69	07/08/15
Audi	Automobiles	58	75	08/07/15
La Quinta	Hospitality	60	61	08/07/15
AMS	Medical Systems	61	74	07/29/15
Cisco	Technology	61	73	07/08/15
TE Connectivity	Electronics	63	78	07/29/15
Corning	Technology	63	58	08/07/15
Crizal	Optical Solutions	64	78	07/20/15
Chase	Banking	64	79	07/21/15
XperioUV	Optical Solutions	65	79	07/20/15
Uniqlo	Retail	67	54	08/07/15
Varilux	Optical Solutions	68	85	07/20/15
BlackBerry	Telecommunications	70	60	07/08/15

These score are not permanent as Google continually add new rules to improve the analysis. Score will also change as companies pushes updates to their websites.

Do you know any other public website running on AEM/CQ5? Please submit it using the comments section and I will update the table.

'Best Performing AEM Sites

Amazon RDS for Aurora

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL-compatible, relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. Amazon Aurora provides up to five times better performance than MySQL at a price point one tenth that of a commercial database while delivering similar performance and availability.
Learn more about Amazon RDS for Aurora »

AWS CodeDeploy

AWS CodeDeploy is a service that automates code deployments to Amazon EC2 instances. AWS CodeDeploy makes it easier for you to rapidly release new features, helps you avoid downtime during deployment, and handles the complexity of updating your applications. You can use AWS CodeDeploy to automate deployments, eliminating the need for error-prone manual operations, and the service scales with your infrastructure so you can easily deploy to one EC2 instance or thousands.
Learn more about AWS CodeDeploy »

AWS Config

AWS Config is a fully managed service that provides you with an AWS resource inventory, configuration history, and configuration change notifications to enable security and governance. With AWS Config you can discover existing AWS resources, export a complete inventory of your AWS resources with all configuration details, and determine how a resource was configured at any point in time. These capabilities enable compliance auditing, security analysis, resource change tracking, and troubleshooting.
Learn more about AWS Config »

AWS Key Management Service

AWS Key Management Service (KMS) is a managed service that makes it easy to create and control the keys used to encrypt data. KMS is integrated with other AWS services including Amazon EBS, Amazon S3, and Amazon Redshift, making it simple to encrypt your data with encryption keys that you manage and providing you an audit trail through AWS CloudTrail.
Learn more about AWS Key Management Service »

AWS CodePipeline

AWS CodePipeline is a continuous delivery and release automation service that aids smooth deployments. You can design your development workflow for checking in code, building the code, deploying your application into staging, testing it, and releasing it to production. You can integrate 3rd party tools into any step of your release process or you can use CodePipeline as an end-to-end solution. CodePipeline enables you to rapidly deliver features and updates with high quality through the automation of your build, test, and release process.
Learn more about AWS CodePipeline »

AWS CodeCommit

AWS CodeCommit is a secure, highly scalable, managed source control service that hosts private Git repositories. CodeCommit eliminates the need for you to operate your own source control system or worry about scaling its infrastructure. You can use CodeCommit to store anything from code to binaries, and it supports the standard functionality of Git allowing it to work seamlessly with your existing Git-based tools. Your team can also use CodeCommit’s online code tools to browse, edit, and collaborate on
projects.
Learn more about AWS CodeCommit »

'AWS Unveils Host Of New Tools and Services At re:Invent

MongoDB is an open source, high performance document-oriented database which powers big data as the leading NoSQL database.

Here is a great presentation from MongoDB World on running high performance MongoDB instances on Amazon EC2

Slides

Video

Mongo DB

'High Performance MongoDB on Storage-Optimized AWS EC2

Connect to AWS server

Connect to the server using Putty or similar software and navigate to the directory where you want to install your AEM instance. If the CQ jar and license properties file are not already available on the server, upload the files now.

Install Java 1.7

AEM 5.6.x required Java 1.7. Verify if the machine has the right version of Java

$java -version

If Java 1.7 is not available, you can install it using the following command

sudo yum install java-1.7.0-openjdk

Once the Java is install, configure it as a default version of Java for your instance:

sudo alternatives --config java

This will show all the version of Java on your instance, so choose Java 1.7.

Install the CQ jar file

Use the following command to install CQ Jar file:

$java -XX:MaxPermSize=512m -Xmx2048M -jar cq-author-4502.jar

Update the start script so it preserves the memory setting when you restart CQ next time

$vi /crx-quickstart/bin/start

Change the CQ_JVM_OPTS variable value to:

CQ_JVM_OPTS='-server -Xmx2048m -XX:MaxPermSize=512M'

Press ‘Esc’ and than type :wq to save the file.

Start CQ

Once the start script is updated, start the CQ server

$sudo ./start.sh

Keep an eye on the standard output while CQ is starting up. You can tail the output using:

$tail -f /crx-quickstart/logs/stdout.log

Check the error logs: /crx-quickstart/logs/error.log

It will take few minutes for CQ to come up.You can access the authoring console using http://localhost:4502/

Update: Make sure that you have updated the security group to allow inbound traffic to port 4502 else you will not be able to access CQ Administration console.

If you have any questions, add them to the comments and I will respond as soon as I can.

'Steps to install Adobe AEM (CQ) 5.6 on Amazon AWS

A Template is a basis of a page and it defines which components can be used within the selected scope. Its the hierarchy of nodes that has the same structure as the page to be created, but without any actual content.

Templates point to a page component which read the information from the JCR repository. Building components that reads content from the JCR and rendering content on a page is one of the primary task in any CQ developer’s day to day job.

Here are the steps to create the Page template:

1. Login to your CQ environment and go to CRXDE Lite (Ex: www.your-domain.com/crxde)
2. Right click on /apps/templates folder and select Create –> ‘Create Template’
3. Fill out the information in the dialog fields as shown in image below and then select ‘Next’

   Label – Name of the template (node) as identified in JCR repository
   Title – Template title as visible to the authors
   Description – Description of the template to help authors identify the right template
   Resource Type – the component page that will be assign to the Template and copied on all the pages using this Template. We will create this component in the next article.
   Ranking – Order in which the template will appear in the list of templates. Ranking 1 will list the Template at the top

4. Enter “/content(/.*)? in the Allowed Paths input box and select next until you an option to save the changes.

CQ Template is successfully created.

Test your Template

Although we still need to create a component to render this page, we should still verify if the template is showing up for authors.

1. From your CQ Welcome page select ‘Websites’
2. Select the ‘Websites’ folder and then click ‘New’
3. Select New Page from the dropdown
4. You will notice that your Template “Two Column Black Body Template” appears on the top

So far we have discussed how to set up a new CQ application and how to create a CQ Page Template. Next we will create a component to render this page.

'CQ5 Development – How to Build a CQ5 Page Template

• Setup a new CQ application/site
• Create a CQ Template
• Create a Page rendering Component
• Create Pages in CQ

Setup a new CQ application/projects

CQ application comprises of elements like Templates, Components, OSGi bundles and static files. All these elements are grouped together to form a application or a project and are stored at a specific location with in JCR repository. Most often, new projects are created under the /apps directory. Adobe suggests to set up a following folder structure:

/apps/ – Contains for your application
/apps//components – Container for all the components in a CQ application. Create child folders to organise the components further.
/apps//templates – Container for all the templates in a CQ application
/apps//src – OSGi bundle build structure
/apps//install – Compiled OSGi bundle container

Here are the steps to create the recommended folder structure:

1. Login to your CQ environment and go to CRXDE Lite (Ex: www.your-domain.com/crxde)
2. Right click on /apps folder and select “Create Folder”
2. Enter the name of your application/project “awesomeapp” in create folder dialog.
3. Create child folders under “awesomeapp” and name them as “components”, “templates”, “src” and “install”.

Final folder structure should look like the one shown in the image below:

Always organize your components and templates in a way that that best suited for your project and most importantly allows you to easily maintain them.

'CQ5 Development – How to setup a new CQ application/project

Watch this video to get a better understanding of AMC.

Adobe Marketing Cloud includes following services:

Adobe SiteCatalyst Analytics – enables data-driven, multi-channel marketing by combining the power of actionable analytics and audience segmentation with the sharing of key business analysis.

Adobe Target – provides highly personalized experiences through dynamic testing; creating better brand experiences and driving higher conversion rates.

Adobe Media Optimizer – enables data-optimized advertising through best-in-class portfolio and rules-based ad management, intelligent campaign forecasting, and targeted ad delivery solutions.

Adobe Social – assists marketers in measuring and managing social marketing across owned, earned and paid media – ensuring the impact of social is attributed correctly for maximum impact.

Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) or Adobe Day CQ5 – enables digital marketers to create, manage, and optimize multi-channel customer experiences that build brand and drive demand.

Adobe Campaign – formerly Neolane, lets marketers orchestrate personalized experiences determined by the customer’s habits and preferences.

Adobe Mobile Services – provides mobile teams a powerful, intuitive way to understand and improve app engagement.

'Quick Overview of Adobe Marketing Cloud

AngularJS is a JavaScript framework for creating single page web applications. However, a lot of times when you hear about it, there’s a lot of technical jargon associated with the framework. So let’s take a minute to understand some of the main concepts behind AngularJS. So, first of all, AngularJS is a framework. A framework implies that instead of writing code however you want, you change the way you write your applications and follow the standards set by the framework. By doing this, you can take advantage of some of the built-in features and with AngularJS that means templating, filters, two-way data-binding and more.

'What is Angular JS