Amazon Web Services fires back at rivals with new cloud AI and database features
Firing new shots at cloud computing rivals such as Oracle Corp. and Microsoft Corp., Amazon Web Services today checked off more boxes to make it easier for large enterprises to develop cutting-edge applications and move them to its cloud.
Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing operationunveiled a raft of new services, including faster access to data in databases and ways to create applications using machine learning, at its two-day AWS Summit conference Wednesday in San Francisco. They’re fairly geeky, befitting the audience of software developers, but they’re intended to help it stay ahead of fast-charging rivals such as Microsoft Azure and Google Inc.’s Cloud Platform.
More generally, though, Amazon sought to emphasize both its current dominance and its vision of cloud computing for the next few years. In particular, AWS acknowledged that many companies still want to run at least some operations inside their own data centers and that AWS would look for new ways to accommodate them, such as the deal it announced last fall to allow VMware Inc. virtual machines, which are ubiquitous in corporate data centers, to run on its cloud.
“We will see most enterprises operate in some kind of hybrid mode for some number of years,” AWS Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy (pictured) said in a fireside chat at the conference. “It’s not a binary decision. We will allow customers to run in the mode they want to run.”
At the same time, Amazon continued its competitive attack on rivals, especially Oracle, which in turn has made AWS a prime target for its own cloud push. Specifically, Jassy contended in response to a question from moderator Ariel Kelman, AWS’s vice president of worldwide marketing, that AWS’s services have much less ability to lock in customers, a concern that has risen along with AWS’s momentum.
“It’s a question we get a lot, and Oracle has sure made people think a lot about that issue,” Jassy said. “The reality is, when you look at the cloud, it really is nothing like being locked into Oracle. It is much easier to move away from something like the cloud.”
However, Jassy took issue with another purported trend among companies to use multiple clouds as a hedge against both lock-in and potential performance issues, following an AWS outage for a few hours last fall.
“Most CIOs start off thinking they might split their workloads across multiple cloud providers. Most don’t do that,” Jassy said. He made the case that multi-cloud environments force users to choose the “lowest common denominator” in cloud technologies to ensure compatibility. Moreover, he said, “you effectively diminish your buying power” because cloud providers offer volume discounts.
