Amazon Web Services Inc. today announced a new, no-code service called AWS AppFabric that’s designed to tame the complexity of software-as-a-service application sprawl.

With AWS AppFabric, companies can connect multiple SaaS applications into a single console to improve security, management and productivity. It was announced today at AWS Applications Innovation Day. It helps integrate multiple SaaS apps, providing a unified view of application use, eliminating the need to build customized integrations.

The Amazon.com Inc. cloud unit explained that it has become common among enterprises to use dozens, and in some cases even hundreds, of different SaaS applications, for myriad tasks such as communications, content management, finance and customer relations. The issue with this is that these SaaS apps are rarely compatible with one another, and that results in lots of challenges around security and productivity. For instance, each SaaS app has its own distinct controls, logs and interface.

To get around this, many enterprise teams build point-to-point integrations for every SaaS application they use, but this work can take many months. Some of the integration challenges include the jumble of application programming interfaces and data formats used by each app. All that makes it difficult to analyze SaaS data to track how those apps are used.

With AppFabric, AWS is hoping to change that. At launch it connects 12 third-party SaaS apps, including popular offerings such as Asana, Atlassian, Dropbox, Okta, Slack, Smartsheet, Webex and Zoom, enabling companies to manage them from one location within the AWS Management Console. The list of supported apps will expand as more are added over time, AWS said.

The advantage of doing this is that AppFabric can create a standardized set of security and operational data for every connected SaaS app, improving visibility into how those apps are used. In this way, organizations can garner insights to boost productivity, reduce operational costs and beef up security, AWS said.

AppFabric is launching today, and soon it will benefit from additional generative artificial intelligence capabilities powered by Amazon Bedrock, a service that makes popular foundational models available and customizable through an API.

The idea is that generative AI can help reduce the time it takes for employees to switch among different applications to source information or complete certain tasks. For instance, employees often find themselves switching between multiple apps to copy and paste data from various sources to compile reports. AppFabric’s generative AI is aimed at making it easier to complete tasks such as creating meeting notes, drafting update emails and writing project updates.

The content it generates can then be delivered in the right format of the specific app being used. As an example, AWS said a user could prompt the AI to create a task in Asana that pulls details from sources such as email threads, Slack conversations and word-processing documents. AppFabric’s AI assistant will then take advantage of its integrations with those apps to complete the task for the user.

AppFabric can also aggregate and normalize SaaS apps’ data through the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework and make it accessible to security tools such as Logz.io, Netskope, Netwitness, Rapid7 and Splunk.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said AppFabric can be thought of as a “cross-SaaS domain service” that will enable much closer integration of SaaS software products, bringing users some interesting new capabilities.

“It allows users to automate the way SaaS products are used and governed in some interesting ways, and because it’s low-code it will be very simple to do this,” the analyst said. “AWS is empowering more businesses to become masters of their automation destiny, and with this being 2023, of course it will soon come with a generative AI-based assistant to make life even easier for users.”

AWS Vice President of Applications Dilip Kumar said AppFabric is solving a major pain point for information technology and security teams. “With AppFabric, customers and partners now have a simple solution to deploy and scale the world’s most widely used applications in a way that helps organizations save money, increase productivity, and improve security,” he said.

AWS AppFabric is currently generally available in Amazon’s US East (N. Virginia), Europe (Ireland) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) regions, and will launch in additional locations soon.

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