AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides numerous services, including networking, computing, storage, and process capacity. This branch of Amazon was established in 2002, and in 2006, it was redirected to deal with cloud computing solutions. The various available services from AWS are distributed to customers through a network of worldwide server farms where consumer costs are relative to usage, software, hardware, and other features utilized. AWS can offer clients a cheaper and quicker way to achieve large-scale computing capacity without the more considerable expense and necessity of maintaining their own server farm. AWS clients include multiple U.S. and U.K. government organizations, Netflix, and Reddit.
RPA
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a growing concept that accomplishes business process automation. Today, RPA systems can observe digital actions taken by a business’s employees, learn the steps, and automatically complete those tasks. These systems can complete these tasks faster and more accurately than humans while seamlessly syncing data from multiple applications. RPA hosts design software robots to complete specific tasks and provide an interface for managing automation and data collected. API integration, system connections, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) are all tools that can be employed through the use of RPA technology.
AWS Step Functions
AWS has used its abundance of infrastructure to create its own RPA service, AWS Step Functions. The name, Step Functions, derives from mathematical functions written as a finite linear combination of indicator functions. The function implies that each input value coincides with a specific output. Automations work similarly, receiving input and completing specific steps to arrive at the intended output.
The result of this venture is creating a visual workflow service that helps developers automate processes, deliver microservices, build distributed applications, and create opportunities to utilize data analysis and machine learning. Businesses can use this service to perform extract, transform, and load (ETL) processes (process scalable parallel workloads) and even to automate security. Use of this platform does not require coding knowledge but can be an advanced tool for developers to innovate. Overall, AWS Step Functions can offer business clients numerous tools that promote efficiency and safely consolidate data, which could save time and money. Any organization interested in Step Functions's benefits can use the free version to try it out. The cost-free service allows 4,000 state transition processes per month.
State Machines, ETL, and Microservices
AWS Step Functions is a tool for creating coordinated and sequenced state machines that run in response to events such as changes in the availability of an Amazon S3 object or changes in the value of an Amazon DynamoDB table. By using Step Functions, businesses can coordinate the steps to automate manual operations, perform scheduled tasks regularly, or react to new data arriving at regular intervals.
Step Functions is a managed service that can create state machines. State machines are specialized RPA “bots” that can be programmed to complete complex tasks. Utilizing the Amazon S3 console or an AWS CLI command can create a state machine to be uploaded to Step Functions. Step Functions also provides a web-based platform (AWS Management Console) that can be used to monitor, manage, and debug your state machines. The console can be deployed to view the current status of state machines, create new ones, edit existing ones, and run them asynchronously.
Step Functions support flexibility to create state machines with a starting point and one or more transitions. Each transition has an associated action, which is the code that runs when the state machine reaches that point in its execution. One can also employ a retry policy for each transition where necessary. State machines are a powerful but simple way to make model workflows span multiple services. You can use state machines to create applications to respond to events from other resources, such as an S3 bucket or DynamoDB table.
Security and IT
Step Functions can be used to create workflows that automatically respond to security incidents with a manual approval safeguard. Developers can customize a list of restricted actions taken by the automation that require an employee to choose how the automation is to continue. Using this component can limit viewing potentially sensitive data while expediting the time needed to process.
Responding to operational events automatically is another example of how Step Functions can assist with data security. When data is pooled using AWS, systems can detect when sensitive information has been exposed on commonly used code repository sites. An AWS Eventbridge rule can be set, which triggers Step Functions and AWS Lambda Functions to react with a specific workflow regarding the exposed data. These automations can then delete the exposed information and summarize the API activity for the subscriber to review or act.
Machine Learning
AWS Step Functions Data Science SDK is a library businesses can use to create workflows that process and publish machine learning models. Combining this with Amazon Sagemaker and Lambda Functions, creating, training, tuning, and establishing endpoints for the machine learning model is possible. Once the machine learning model is correctly tuned, ETL processes can be completed that trigger Sagemaker to run the machine learning model. Machine learning models like these can use automated ETL process data to make relevant future predictions.
Step Functions can be combined with AWS Lambda and Amazon Textract to create workflows to scan and extract text data in PDFs. If the information gathered represents invoices, it can go through another automated process to check if the payment can be processed. If payment cannot be processed, the automation can move the information so an employee can handle the issue manually.
Step Functions can handle automated processes to achieve video-on-demand for organizations that provide cloud-based source video content. Video source files can be placed into Amazon S3, which will automatically start a workflow to ingest the file. This step is followed by an automation that creates an encoding profile for the video file. AWS Elemental MediaConvert is available to encode the videos after processing is complete. To publish the video content, the workflow will check that the encoded video is available in the intended S3 bucket and can notify administrators of final publishing confirmation.
The Dura Digital Takeaway
AWS Step Functions is a powerful tool that helps developers automate processes, deliver microservices, build distributed applications, and create opportunities to utilize data analysis and machine learning. AWS Step Functions is the perfect tool if you’re looking for a way to automate your business processes and build distributed applications. Contact us today to learn how AWS Step Functions can help your organization.
