Amazon Web Services Inc. announces the general availability of AWS Greengrass, which extends cloud functionality for Internet of Things-connected devices. AWS Greengrass provides cloud programming and functionality to IoT devices. It allows them to react to events and communicate with each other even when there is no cloud connection. This service allows developers to use the onboard capabilities of local devices for instant processing. It also backs up that functionality with cloud resources for management and updates, elastic compute, storage, and management. AWS Greengrass allows us to extend AWS into customer system — from small devices up to racks of server — in a manner that makes it simple to do the things locally that work best, and to increase those workloads with cloud resources,” AWS CTO Werner Vogels stated in a blog yesterday. AWS Greengrass offers a variety of capabilities such as: – Architectural Scale Models

Some data can be collected and processed on local IoT devices, where latency is critical, or in offline situations.
Developers can create serverless AWS Lambda function functions in the cloud and then deploy them to local execution devices. This eliminates the need to communicate directly with the cloud for each task.
Local messaging between a group of devices
Secure communications between a Greengrass group of local devices and the cloud
To maintain state for stateless functions such as sync or conflict resolution, keep local device shadows.

AWS Greengrass requires two software distributions: AWS IoT Device SDK and a Greengrass Core. First, developers create a Greengrass cloud definition where Greengrass Core software can be established. Greengrass Core software can also be run on a local device such as a gateway, hub, or other device. AWS IoT Devices SDK allows you to add other devices to the group definition. AWS Lambda functions are simple programs that can process and respond to data. Once the definitions have been created and edited in cloud, they can be deployed to create a group functional. AWS Greengrass is required for devices that have it. AWS has partnered up with more than a dozen partners, including Samsung, Intel and Lenovo, to integrate AWS Greengrass into their platforms. “Many of AWS’s largest IoT implementations run in AWS, and customers from all industries — energy, mining, media, entertainment — have asked us if we could extend AWS’s industry-leading cloud capabilities to the edge,” Dirk Didascalou, AWS exec, stated in a statement. AWS Greengrass allows customers to use AWS Cloud for storage, management, analytics and management by embedding AWS Lambda or AWS IoT capabilities into connected devices. This gives them the flexibility to act locally on the data generated while still using AWS Cloud for management, analysis, and storage. All this using a single familiar AWS programming model. AWS Greengrass is now available to all AWS customers. AWS partners ship AWS Greengrass-capable devices, making it easy to create and run IoT apps that seamlessly span devices at the edge and in AWS Cloud. AWS Greengrass is now available to all customers in the US East (N. Virginia), and US West (Oregon). You can find pricing details, including three Greengrass Cores for free for a year, here.