Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) provides simple, cost-effective storage at large scale.

For a decade, Amazon has offered S3 as a web service, providing object storage with a simple API to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere on the web.  S3 is used as a bulk repository, or "data lake," for analytics; for backup & recovery; for disaster recovery; and for archiving.  Many cloud-based applications use S3 as primary storage.

S3 is sometimes referred to as “Amazon Buckets” because in order to upload your data (photos, videos, documents etc.), you first create a bucket in one of the AWS Regions. You can then upload any number of objects to the bucket.

The BAI Amazon S3 connector makes it possible to surface content from S3 using Elasticsearch, Elastic Cloud or Elastic Cloud Enterprise, enabling users to get integrated search results that include files stored in S3. This eliminates the need to do multiple searches, which can often cause inconsistent results and decreased productivity.

A single consolidated search index referencing S3, along with content from other repositories, is surfaced as a single unified result set, giving users a single access point for searching across the enterprise.

Connectors for SharePoint

Organizations who leverage Amazon S3 can now extend the reach of this data into their existing search indexes via the BA Insight ConnectivityHub and our Amazon S3 Connector.

The key capabilities of the Amazon S3 Connector for Elasticsearch, Elastic Cloud, and Elastic Cloud Enterprise are:

  • Provides both full and incremental ingestion of content into the index of your choice
  • Provides all management of security, role, and access list management, requiring no specialized security software or search index add-ons
  • Supports all document types within S3
  • Supports filtering of the S3 content, allowing administrators to define specifically which data is sent for ingestion into the search index
  • Brings all associated metadata into the search index to drive refinement and relevancy
  • All content remains safely in S3. The portal has only a searchable representation of documents – pointers – and users are directed back to S3 to launch documents found in their search result.

The benefits of including Amazon S3 data within your Elasticsearch, Elastic Cloud, or Elastic Cloud Enterprise are:

  • Provides enhanced search capabilities into your existing search application while ensuring the source system retains the master information
  • Indexes with a very high throughput
  • Requires no custom code, with full support and enhancements

Future-proof Your Investment

As new versions of Elasticsearch, Elastic Cloud, and Elastic Cloud Enterprise are released, new features and functionality are introduced. BA Insight takes on the burden of keeping the connector up to date for both S3 APIs and the Elastic search engine. The upgrades are easy to do and can be done by your IT organization. It is simply a matter of accessing the BA Insight customer portal, downloading the latest release, and installing and configuring it. If desired, our professional services team can handle the upgrades.

Drive Productivity

By connecting Amazon S3 to your Elastic search engine, you increase adoption of your intranet, improving organizational efficiency and productivity.