Amazon Web Services (AWS) has made its Greengrass software available to customers in the US East and West regions.

AWS Greengrass is software that gives customers the ability to run AWS compute, messaging, data caching and sync capabilities on connected devices.

In a blog post, Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist, AWS said: “Greengrass allows them to extend the AWS programming model to small, simple, field-based devices.

“It builds on AWS IoT and AWS Lambda, and supports access to the ever-increasing variety of services that are available in the AWS Cloud.”

By using AWS Greengrass, connected devices will be run its Lambda functions to perform local tasks, keep device data in sync and also communicate with other devices while leveraging the processing, analytics and storage power of AWS Cloud.

Read more: Amazon Web Services launch AWS IoT

The Greengrass software is built to remove the need to carry out complex programming and updating of IoT devices, which means developers, can add AWS Lambda functions to the connected devices from the AWS Management Console while they execute the code and respond to events using near real-time action.

There are three distinct SDKs that are designed to deliver Lambda function using APIs. These include AWS SDK for Python, AWS IoT Device SDK and AWS Greengrass Core SDK.

The Greengrass Core especially can be run on x86 and ARM devices with Linux kernel versions 4.4.11 and above, while also being able to run on Raspberry Pi or any EC2 instance.

Dirk Didascalou, VP of IoT, AWS said: “Many of the world’s largest IoT implementations run on AWS and customers across industries- from energy to mining, to media and entertainment- have asked us whether we could extend AWS’s industry leading cloud capabilities to the edge.”

These customers include AWS partners such as Canonical, Intel, Lenovo, Qualcomm Technologies, Raspberry Pi and Samsung. All partners have been integrating Greengrass into their platforms, so their devices will have AWS Greengrass embedded.

Didascalou said: “We are excited to make AWS Greengrass available to all AWS customers, and with AWS partners shipping AWS Greengrass- capable devices it is now incredibly easy to build and run IoT applications that seamlessly span devices on the edge and in the AWS Cloud.”

AWS Greengrass is available for free for one year on three devices and for three to 10,000 devices there is a cost of either $0.16 per month per device or $1.49 per year per device.