At the end of a three-hour keynote address for Amazon's annual re:Invent conference, which is taking place virtually this year, Amazon Web Services chief executive Andy Jassy wrapped up with an extended discussion about edge computing and its role in hybrid computing.

"Hybrid is not just about whether its on-premise or in the cloud," said Jassy. Instead, IT needs "the same APIs, the same control plane, the same tools, the same hardware they get in AWS regions," said Jassy. He was referring to Amazon's AWS Outposts[1], a rack of equipment deployed at a customer facility that is a fully-managed service from Amazon. 

Jassy said Amazon has made the Outposts offering easier to purchase now with new form factors, 1U and 2U rack units, versus an entire rack-size deployment.

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"Hybrid is not just about whether its on-premise or in the cloud," said AWS lead executive Andy Jassy in his keynote Tuesday, seeking to redefine how customers view the hybrid cloud computing landscape. Amazon AWS

In addition to Outposts, Jassy discussed AWS Wavelength[2], the mobile infrastructure service that Amazon is rolling out in various U.S. cities with Verizon Communications, as part of the 5G infrastructure roll-out. The service had been unveiled last year, and is currently available in eight U.S. cities. Later this year, Amazon will be collaborating with Japanese telco KDDI in Tokyo and with South Korea's SK Telecom. Next year, the Wavelength infrastructure will be coming to Vodafone's market in London.

To provide for lower-latency access to AWS, Amazon is adding more Local Zones, data centers in U.S. cities that provide the same compute and storage to end users with care for latency. The sole Local Zone to date had been L.A. but now the service is available

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