When milliseconds matter, every improvement counts. Amazon EventBridge just announced a staggering 94% reduction in end-to-end latency for Event Buses, now as low as 129ms at the 99th percentile. For developers and organizations building latency-sensitive, mission-critical applications, this change opens the door to even more responsive and efficient event-driven architectures.

In this post, I'll explore why latency improvements like these are game-changers, demonstrate how you can test and monitor this performance, and highlight the benefits for real-world use cases.

Why Latency Matters

In event-driven systems, delays, however small, can create bottlenecks. Consider applications like:

• Fraud detection: A delay in processing transaction data could allow fraudulent activity to slip through.
• Industrial automation: Late responses to sensor events might disrupt production or reduce operational efficiency.
• Gaming applications: High latency can ruin player experiences in real-time multiplayer environments.

By reducing average latency from 2235ms in January 2023 to just 129ms in August 2024 (P99), Amazon EventBridge empowers developers to react to critical events faster than ever. This improvement translates to better customer experiences, more agile business processes, and the potential for innovation in real-time systems.

Testing the Promise: Real-World Observations from CloudPing.co

To validate Amazon EventBridge’s latency improvements, I turned to a real-world application: CloudPing.co, which uses EventBridge and AWS Lambda functions to handle event-driven workflows. By analyzing the IngestionToInvocationStartLatency metric from one of our backend data-collection Lambda functions, I observed a clear and dramatic improvement in latency trends starting July 31, 2024.

Insights from the Data:

• Before July 31, 2024: The latency was more variable and consistently higher, with peaks near the upper end of the range (~141ms).
• After July 31, 2024: There’s a noticeable and sustained drop in average latency, aligning with Amazon EventBridge’s announcement of up to a 94% reduction. The trendline shows a much lower and stable average, making event handling significantly faster.

Impact Observed:

This reduction in latency directly translates into faster invocation of Lambda functions, ensuring more responsive event-driven workflows. Applications that rely on timely processing of events benefit from this improvement by delivering results more quickly and reliably to their users.

Visualization:

The graph below illustrates this trend clearly:

Key Benefits of Lower Latency

These performance gains unlock a host of benefits for businesses:

• Real-time insights and decisions: Detect and respond to events faster, enabling agility in decision-making.
• Seamless scaling: Handle latency-sensitive applications without re-engineering your infrastructure.
• Cost efficiency: Latency improvements are applied by default across all AWS regions, at no additional cost.

How to Monitor and Test Latency

EventBridge provides built-in tools to help you measure and optimize event latency:

1. Metrics: Use the CloudWatch metrics IngestionToInvocationStartLatency and IngestionToInvocationSuccessLatency.
2. Console Dashboards: Monitor latency trends directly in the EventBridge console.
3. Real-world Scenarios: Test specific workflows like order processing, data pipelines, or gaming events to see the performance impact.

Take Advantage of EventBridge’s Performance Gains

Whether you’re building a fraud detection system, optimizing industrial automation, or creating immersive gaming experiences, Amazon EventBridge’s latency improvements can help you achieve new levels of performance.

Getting started is simple! Check out the documentation and spin up your first Event Bus in the AWS Console. By taking advantage of EventBridge’s improvements, you can ensure your applications are faster, more reliable, and ready for the demands of real-time processing.