AWS reInvent keynote analysis - AWS enters the hardware business
December 1, 2016
So for the impatient ones - take a look at the video...
Always tough to pick the key takeaways - but here you go - one slide summary:
Let's go through the details:
Lots of new Instance types - A little more than the usual innovation here, 4 brand new instance type family members. GPUs are becoming attachable, a good move but probably also making a virtue of a larger server install base that can be complemented by GPU capabilities. Also FPGAs, they can be programmed and the programs can be monetized on the marketplace. Not many enterprises will do that as Jassy admitted, still a good option.
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| New AWS Instances |
AI push - Lex most interesting - It's the fall of AI and AWS also announces new capabilities - on voice production and picture recognition. More interesting will be Amazon Lex - the Alexa toolkit made available to build bots. All good progress, but AWS is behind here and catching up.
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| Amazon Lex Capabilities |
Workday chooses AWS for production loads - The race for enterprise load is on amongst the IaaS vendors, and Workday is a prime target. Good for AWS to get the Workday production load, IBM was earlier the partner for development and production instances. May create some DevOps headaches. But overall a win for customers of both AWS and Workday: AWS customers get more scale, Workday customers see their vendor spending less on CAPEX, which now can go into product.
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| Workday Plans with AWS |
Greengrass and Edge Computing - AWS needs to bring its code closer to the end points, AWS Greengrass is a promising start for that. It needs to be in AWS Lambda, which allows to run on all Amazon S3 instances (see last year's event report on the kudos I gave for the wise foresight to make mini application servers out of 'dumb' storage servers. This is now a benefit from that decision.
And Snowball get smarter - hence my title with the hardware business. What AWS positioned last year as a portable disk storage to transfer data - is no becoming a server with compute (lambda) in the form of the AWS Snowball Edge.
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| AWS Greengrass Capabilites |
Snowmobile - AWS wants enterprise load and data, and transferring very large amounts of data takes time. The example was 1 Exebyte, that even through a speedy 10 GigaBit uplink would take 26 years to transfer. Enters AWS Snowmobile, a truck with a container that can store up to 100 PB. An interesting approach and a manifest of network speeds lacking industry progress that we see in compute and storage.
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| Enters the AWS Snowmobile |
MyPOV
A very good start for AWS for reInvent. The vendor keeps innovating, and growing way to beyond the Venetian / Palazzo. The conference at times felt like the VMworld of the past - the more or less formal get together of the IT industry. And in the overall grab for load across the IaaS vendors, AWS is doing well - with the Workday partnership it lands another vendor with homogeneous load that will give it more load. With Workday starting in the new region in Canada - it gives right away load to that region. And extending more code execution capabilities at the edges and on devices gives AWS centered enterprise more reach and value for its software. Lastly moving data remains a challenge, AWS Snowball has been a success for AWS, we will see how many Snowmobiles are hitting the road in the next 12 monhts.
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| AWS New Capability Growth |
On the concern side, AWS has an issue of riches. With growing new capabilities from 700 to 1000 year over year - it is a lot for customers, prospects and partners to digest. I asked Jassy in Q&A and it is clear that AWS - at least for now - is not concerned about this. Architects help customers to walk through the challenge to find the right services for their use case is the answer. That is a common and proven approach in the industry - but in the past we have seen the architects at some point risking / starting to argue in front of the customer... then it will be too late. Simplification, packaging, repeatability are some of the areas to watch.
For now a great start for AWS reInvent, stay tuned for more. The inflection point - as mentioned in the headline, is AWS now shipping a server - the Snowball Edge is nothing else but that.... and with that AWS enters the hardware business. Never a dull moment. Stay tuned from more from AWS reInvent.
Want to learn more? Checkout the Storify collection below (if it doesn’t show up – check here).
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
More on AWS:
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- First Take - SAP BW/4HANA - Data Gravity and Cloud win - read here
- Event report - AWS Enterprise Summit 2016 Frankfurt - The German Road to Cloud adoption is ... long - read here
- News Analysis - Amazon Web Services Cloud now speaks… Hindi - Indian AWS Data Centers available - read here
- News Analysis - Salesforce selects AWS as preferred Public Cloud Infrastructure Provider - Good move - read here
- Event Report - AWS re-Invent - AWS lobbies for the enterprise - DB and IoT are the cheese - read here
- First Take - AWS reInvent Wednesday Keynote - Good start & AWS is going for the enterprise read here
- Event Preview - AWS re-Invent 2015 - watch / read here
- Event Report - AWS Summit Berlin - AWS spricht Deutsch - but when will the Germans speak cloud? Read here
- News Analysis - AWS learns Hindi - Amazon Web Services announces 2016 India Expansion - read here
- Event Report - AWS Summit San Francisco - AWS pushes the platform with Analytics and Storage [From the Fences] read here
- Event Report - AWS re:invent - AWS becomes more about PaaS on inhouse IP - read here
- AWS gives infrastructure insights - and it is very passionate about it - read here
- News Analysis - AWS spricht Deutsch - the cloud wars reach Germany - read here
- Market Move - Infor runs CloudSuite on AWS - Inflection Point or hot air balloon? Read here
- Event Report - AWS Summit in SFO - AWS keeps doing what has been working in the last 8 years - read here
- AWS moves the yardstick - Day 2 reinvent takeaways - read here.
- AWS powers on, into new markets - Day 1 reinvent takeaways - read here.
- The Cloud is growing up - three signs in the News - read here.
- Amazon AWS powers on - read here.
Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.<br>
Coverage Areas:
Future of Work
Tech Optimization & Innovation<br>
Background:
Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business…
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Published
December 01, 2016
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