The turkey has been eaten and the low cost TVs have been bought, which alerts that it’s time to partake of the following time-honored custom within the vacation schedule: Attending AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas.
In 2023, Roughly 65,000 folks attended re:Invent, making it one of many largest expertise conferences on the schedule. The convention this yr is anticipated to draw the same variety of folks for about 2,500 classes unfold throughout a dozen or so casinos alongside the Strip.
AWS’s annual shindig just isn’t solely an important place to find out about easy methods to maximize the general public cloud service, but additionally to find out about vendor options. About 2,000 corporations exhibited within the expo final yr, together with a whole bunch of distributors hawking numerous large knowledge administration, superior analytics, and AI choices.
As re:Invent 2024 will get going, listed below are 5 issues to maintain an eye fixed out for.
1. New AWS CEO Matt Garman
New AWS CEO Matt Garman
This would be the first re:Invent as CEO for Matt Garman, who was employed to switch Adam Selipsky in June. But it surely’s not the primary re:Invent for Garman, who has labored for AWS since 2006. As an AWS insider and an AWS lifer, Garman is being counted upon to ship a brand new section of development for AWS in ways in which Selipsky didn’t.
As is customized, Garman will ship the primary government keynote, scheduled for Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. PT; you’ll be able to watch livestreams of all the keynotes right here. This would be the first time that many AWS prospects and companions get to listen to from Garman himself, and so it will likely be the primary impression for a lot of.
What kind of model does Garman have? Earlier than he left for the highest job in 2021, Andy Jassy was well-known for delivering lengthy, enjoyable keynote addresses. In his quick three-year tenure as AWS CEO, Adam Selipsky, who was employed from Salesforce and Tableau (though he labored at AWS earlier than), delivered keynotes that had been kind of forgettable.
Garman, who Jassy reportedly thought of for the highest job earlier than selecting the outsider Selipsky to primarily maintain down the fort throughout Covid, has been described as a “wartime CEO” for AWS. It is going to be fascinating to see how this performs in entrance of the troops in Vegas.
2. Low-Stage Providers or Excessive-Stage Apps?
AWS is famously tight-lipped about merchandise beneath growth, so there’s no telling what the tri of high AWS executives–Garman on Tuesday, VP of AI Swami Sivasubramanian on Wednesday, and CTO Werner Vogels on Thursday–have up their collective sleeves. Undoubtedly, there will likely be surprises.
CTO Werner Vogels in entrance of the 200+ plus AWS providers
One necessary query is whether or not AWS’s technique will shift beneath Garman. The corporate at present gives about 200 low-level providers, based on this AWS white paper. Will Garman proceed that technique, or maybe his ascension alerts a sea-change at AWS and a transfer towards delivering extra full-fledged purposes?
AWS does ship some purposes, after all, but it surely has appeared been reluctant to roll out extra SaaS purposes that may compete with its companions. Nonetheless, income development has been a priority over the previous three years beneath Selpisky, so maybe there will likely be some adjustments (or maybe not).
3. Present Progress in GenAI
Ever since OpenAI dropped ChatGPT on the world smack dab within the center of re:Invent 2022, the momentum behind generative AI has been rising. AWS has responded to this market shift in a number of methods, together with by ramping up availability of Nvidia GPU situations in addition to its personal Inferentia and Trainium chips; launching Amazon Q, its GenAI-powered AI assistant; and delivering LLM checkpointing for PyTorch, amongst many different strikes.
Will AWS unveil a local vector database?
On the vector database entrance, AWS has added vector capabilities to lots of its databases, enabling them to play roles in retrieval-augmented technology (RAG) GenAI workflows. It has additionally mixed vector search and graph capabilities. What AWS lacks is its personal native vector database, which we identified final yr. AWS up to now has caught with hybrid vector capabilities in current databases, however will that reduce the mustard as GenAI workloads scale up? Solely time will inform.
Extra broadly, AWS wants to point out that it’s shifting shortly and decisively in GenAI because it fights a notion that it trails its two public cloud opponents, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, by way of GenAI capabilities. The corporate has invested thousands and thousands in an bold plan to coach its personal massive language mannequin (LLM), referred to as Olympus, which can reportedly transcend its present Titan line of LLMs, however up to now, Olympus hasn’t been launched. The departure of Matt Wooden, the previous VP of AI, to PwC final month additionally doesn’t assist.
4. Show Management in Agentic AI
The AI house has moved shortly from the chatbot and copilot section instantly into semi- or fully-autonomous brokers, or agentic AI. This represents a possibility for AWS to point out market management.
We at the moment are within the period of Agentic AI (Creativa-Photos/Shutterstock)
AWS gives some semi-autonomous brokers through Amazon Q, which it unveiled final yr. In Might, the corporate bolstered Q with new Developer Brokers, which may primarily operate as junior-level programmers or enterprise analysts. The corporate has been vocal concerning the potential for Q to automate rote duties, reminiscent of writing boilerplate Java code, and now it might want to take it to the following degree.
As opponents Salesforce, Microsoft, and Anthropic make inroads into agentic AI, AWS will likely be beneath the gun to maintain in entrance of this subsequent wave of AI. With the world’s largest cloud platform and among the finest AI builders on the earth, the potential for nice issues is there, however it will likely be as much as AWS management to make it occur.
5. Influence of Return-to-Workplace
There will likely be one large wild card looming just like the Sphere in Vegas? How will Andy Jassy’s company-wide return-to-office requirement impression morale and productiveness on the largest cloud computing firm?
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy desires all staff again within the workplace beginning in January 2025
Jassy, who in 2021 went from AWS CEO to succeeding Jeff Bezos within the high job on the on-line bookseller, issued his edict in September that each one Amazon staff return to the workplace 5 days every week beginning in 2025.
That requirement has not been sitting effectively with a few of Amazon’s 1.5 million staff. Fortune reported that Amazon staff are “rage making use of” for different jobs, and speculated that Jassy’s requirement might have the identical impression as layoffs. AWS has let 27,000 staff go over the previous three years beneath two rounds of layoffs beneath Selipsky, and this may very well be in impact the third spherical.
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