AWS re:Invent: Channel News from Oracle, VMware, More

AWS RE:INVENT — As Amazon Web Services prepares to kick off its latest annual gathering in Las Vegas, all eyes are trained on the company’s developments in AI. 

These days, the hyperscalers are in a race for technological and customer dominance as organizations worldwide are expected to spend billions each year on AI. That race, though, has no finish line, according to AWS CEO Matt Garman in a new interview with the Wall Street Journal. Garman calls AI “foundational,” such that it’s “going to happen forever,” per the WSJ.

Garman will take the stage at AWS re:Invent for the first time as head of the world’s largest cloud computing provider. He assumed the top job this past June after Adam Selipsky stepped down. 

And, as the WSJ aptly noted, AWS has some work to do to convince users and partners that the vendor isn’t falling behind in the AI race. 

While the announcements coming out of AWS re:Invent can seem important simply because of their volume, many often end up being arcane or insignificantin terms of channel relevance. Indeed, earlier this year, several analysts told Channel Futures that AWS needs to “catch up” on AI to keep pace with the likes of Google Cloud, the creator of Gemini, and Microsoft Azure, which relies on and invests in OpenAI, the ChatGPT creator. AWS followed suit in late November with a new $4 billion investment − for a total of $8 billion − in Anthropic, an AI startup that competes against OpenAI. 

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As such, Garman assured the WSJ that this week’s AI news out of AWS re:Invent will feature “real, needle-moving changes.”

We think channel partners stand to serve as the best judges of such assertions. After all, managed service providers, system integrators, consultancies and other such indirect experts are the ones doing much of the heavy lifting when it comes to AI, and most work with a range of cloud providers with AI capabilities.

So, with that in mind, we’ve cherry-picked some of the more partner-applicable news emerging from AWS re:Invent so far this week. What might come as a welcome surprise is that, at this point, the news is not all about AI. Expect some variation with names including Databricks, Oracle and VMware as cloud computing continues to do more than just serve as a platform for artificial intelligence.

Also, to be clear, we are not covering every release. Already there are dozens of announcements. We’re paring them down to what seems most applicable to the partner channel as AWS re:Invent kicks off with Garman’s keynote on Dec. 3. 

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