It’s been a year since AWS re:Invent 2023 and a lot has happened at the firm during this period of deep, transformational change in the tech industry. Generative AI has continued to gather pace, while new demands are being made of the major cloud providers by customers.
Increasingly, customers are looking to their cloud provider to support a new era – geopolitical tensions and regulatory scrutiny are pushing sovereign cloud demand, increasing multi-cloud adoption needs a response from providers, and generative AI is on everyone's mind.
To stay agile and to stay relevant major cloud firms are looking at meeting these demands, and AWS is no different. AWS has unveiled plenty of announcements over the last 12 months, ranging from more sustainable energy-sourcing projects to updated generative AI capabilities built into its cloud offerings.
With a 31% share in the global cloud infrastructure market according to Statista, AWS commands the largest chunk of the cloud marketplace and the firm shows no sign of letting that lead slip. Here are the three things I expect to see at AWS re:Invent 2024 as the firm looks to stay ahead of the pack.
Sovereign cloud capabilities
One of the biggest conversations in cloud computing over the last few months has been around sovereign cloud. This refers to cloud environments that ensure data is processed within specific geographical regions to help maintain regulatory compliance and national security.
Most of the big firms have announced some sort of sovereign cloud offering. Oracle has released a sovereign cloud region in Europe and has been vocal about its ability to deliver on sovereignty. Both Microsoft and Google have announced similar initiatives around sovereignty and data residency.
With one analyst telling ITPro that sovereignty capabilities are now the “bare minimum” expected by customers, it’s little wonder that it’s high on the agenda for the hyperscalers – and AWS is no exception.
AWS announced it would be investing €7.8 billion into AWS Sovereign Cloud in Europe in May 2024, committing to the creation of sovereign cloud infrastructure within the German state of Brandenburg.
Considering its consistent investment in the region and the popularity of sovereignty within Europe, expect to see sovereign cloud rank in the announcements at re:Invent 2024 as AWS pushes to capitalize on growing demand.
Multi-cloud integrations
The flagship announcement at Oracle’s most recent event in Las Vegas was a new partnership with AWS which focused on allowing integration between the two cloud platforms.
Oracle CTO Larry Ellison invited AWS CEO Matt Garman up on stage during Oracle CloudWorld 2024 to discuss the partnership, with both execs discussing the partnership and its intended benefits.
While multi-cloud may not be as central a theme at re:Invent 2024, there’s a good chance it will form part of some of the firm’s key announcements as AWS looks to hammer home its commitment to cloud customers.
AWS has also championed multi-cloud of its own in recent months. Speaking to ITPro earlier this year, AWS CISO Chris Betz described cross-environment collaboration as crucial to cybersecurity in the multi-cloud era.
“The partnership between the clouds remains incredibly important because we recognize that customers operate in that space – we recognize that adversaries are outside,” Betz said, alluding to the firm’s multi-cloud ethos.
Generative AI developments
It wouldn’t be a tech conference in 2024 without some mention of AI and, more specifically, generative AI. There’s been no shortage of announcements from AWS already over the past year, and re:Invent will no doubt put the technology high on the agenda.
At AWS Summit London earlier this year, the firm gave some sense of what its game plan on AI might be over the coming months – enabling easy AI adoption for enterprises via its Amazon Bedrock platform.
By hosting big-name foundation models and large language models (LLMs) on Bedrock, AWS has positioned itself as the reliable middleman in generative AI, giving its customers access to models from Mistral, Meta, and Anthropic.
Having just recently doubled down on its original $4 billion investment into Anthropic earlier this month, AWS is likely to flex its AI muscles even harder at re:Invent, with a greater level of AI integrations and functionality on Amazon Bedrock.
AWS has its own AI tool as well, Amazon Q, which was first unveiled this time last year at re:Invent 2023. Amazon Q is an enterprise-grade AI assistant built to provide assistance and responses to business queries based on natural language prompts.
We heard a lot about this tool last year and it’s likely to be a talking point at this year's event as well, as AWS continues to shore up its own, homegrown AI offerings for enterprise use.
Whatever the firm rolls out, AWS is heading strong into its flagship event. It posted a 19% increase in sales year-on-year to $27.5 billion at its most recent earnings call, clocking an operating income of $10.4 billion, up from $7 billion last year. With the right mix of updates and announcements at re:Invent 2024, AWS can keep up this momentum into 2025.
George Fitzmaurice will be covering Dell Technologies World 2024 between 2 and 6 December. Stay up-to-date with live coverage of all the announcements and more on ITPro.
