Amazon Kendra (Enterprise Search Assistant) Amazon Q Business
Generative AI-powered enterprise assistant for answering questions, summarizing content, and automating workflows across company data sources with permissions-aware retrieval.
Naming timeline
- Amazon Kendra
Launched as a managed intelligent enterprise search service using natural language processing (adding Kendra GenAI Enterprise Edition Index in December 2024).
- Amazon Q BusinessCurrent name
Introduced as a generative AI enterprise chat and actions assistant with native and Kendra retriever support; entered maintenance mode in July 2026 with migration paths to Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases and Amazon Quick.
Is Amazon Kendra (Enterprise Search Assistant) the same as Amazon Q Business?
Generative AI-powered enterprise assistant for answering questions, summarizing content, and automating workflows across company data sources with permissions-aware retrieval. Amazon Kendra (kendra:*) launched in December 2019 as an ML-powered enterprise search engine, whereas Amazon Q Business (qbusiness:*) launched in November 2023 (GA April 2024) as a generative AI assistant and workflow automation platform that can use either its native index or an Amazon Kendra index as a retriever.
Also known as
- Amazon Kendra GenAI Index
- Amazon Quick
- Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases
Technical identifiers
Technical identifiers unchanged. This entry clarifies scope and naming rather than documenting a rename; the APIs, CLI commands, IAM roles and Terraform resources below are the current identifiers.
| AWS Service APIs / SDKs | qbusiness kendra bedrock-agent-runtime |
|---|---|
| AWS CLI Commands | aws qbusiness aws kendra |
| IAM Actions & Policies | qbusiness:* kendra:* |
| Terraform Resources (aws_*) | aws_qbusiness_application aws_kendra_index aws_kendra_data_source |
Amazon Q Business (qbusiness) and Amazon Kendra (kendra) operate on distinct API namespaces; both remain supported for existing customers in Maintenance Mode while new deployments transition to Amazon Quick and Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases.
Notes & disambiguation
- Amazon Kendra (kendra:*) launched in December 2019 as an ML-powered enterprise search engine, whereas Amazon Q Business (qbusiness:*) launched in November 2023 (GA April 2024) as a generative AI assistant and workflow automation platform that can use either its native index or an Amazon Kendra index as a retriever.
- In December 2024, AWS introduced the Amazon Kendra GenAI Enterprise Edition index specifically optimized to power high-accuracy retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) for Amazon Q Business and Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases.
- Effective June 30, 2026 (closed to new customers July 30–31, 2026), both Amazon Kendra and Amazon Q Business entered Maintenance Mode for existing customers, with AWS directing new enterprise RAG search workloads to Amazon Bedrock Managed Knowledge Bases and new enterprise AI assistant workloads to Amazon Quick.
Sources & official documentation
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