A 14-year-old built an Alexa skill for checking the status of AWS

If you rely on public cloud infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) to run your website or app, every now and then you may encounter a technical issue. Usually, if you suspect that it’s at the AWS level, you’ll end up checking the AWS Service Health Dashboard, which shows the status of AWS’ many individual services in different data center regions. But now, for those who have an Amazon Echo or any other device that uses Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, there’s another way to check AWS status.

The CloudStatus skill will give you a quick summary of how everything is working on AWS. And after you’ve set it up, by saying, “Alexa, enable the CloudStatus skill,” you can get answers to questions about specific regions, too.

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The technology, which has been available for several weeks now, was developed by Kira Hammond, the 14-year-old daughter of Eric Hammond, an AWS “Community Hero” and longtime customer, according to a post today on Amazon’s mobile app distribution blog. Kira’s father simply wanted an easier way to find out how AWS is doing, Amazon’s Zoey Collier wrote.

It’s a cute anecdote, but it suggests that making Alexa skills is so easy that a kid can do it. And that’s important. More than 1,500 Alexa skills are available now, and that number stands to keep growing, largely because of the apparent simplicity of the development process. Plus, Alexa has the lead, in a sense — even as other device makers rush out Echo-killers — just as AWS has long had the lead in the public cloud business.

If you want to give CloudStatus a try but don’t have an Alexa-compatible device, visit the Echosim online Alexa simulator. The skill will work just fine.