Can AWS live up to the GenAI Hype? Partners react to AWS re: Invent 2023

CRN canvassed six channel partners for their thoughts on the week long cloud event

Generative AI dominated this year's AWS re: Invent with announcements coming thick and fast throughout, but partners are more curious about how much the ‘hype cycle' will have an impact.

One of the event's top announcements was its new GenAI workplace tool, Amazon Q.

With promises to solve problems, generate content, gain insights and more, some partners questioned whether it will be able to move into general availability quickly to capitalise on the hype.

To find out what else channel partners thought of the AWS conference, CRN spoke with six to hear more.

Steve Wilson, head of AWS technologies, BJSS

What were some of your biggest takeaways from the event?

"The biggest takeaway for me was the domineering theme of Generative AI. In previous years we've seen a much more balanced agenda in the key notes with announcements of new services and maturity of existing services whilst this year the GenAI Q platform seemed to creep in at every opportunity.

"This wasn't completely surprising as the year has overall been about AWS trying to catch up with Microsoft, at least perception-wise, in this area.

"One of the major disappointments though was the amount of Preview features that were announced. Whilst it's great to get an early view of things as a partner, it's disappointing that most of our client's will be constrained in their ability to leverage Q in production environments until a level of General Availability confidence is in place."

What did you think of re: Invent's announcements from an AWS partner perspective?

"Apart from the previously mentioned ‘abundant preview' issue there were some useful announcements within the partner keynote. Better integrations into Salesforce and announcements around API integrations for partner tooling were good to hear.

"It's good to see AWS taking note of previous feedback on the usability of the partner tooling suite and it'll be interesting to see if the improvements remove some of the pain in trying to live with ACE."

Was there anything left out that you were expecting to hear about?

"I think this was very much a ‘catch up' re:Invent for AWS in the GenAI space. Q as a cohesive offering should give them a brand they can build awareness around in the fight for market-share with Microsoft if they can move out of preview with some urgency.

"One of the things I expected to see more of was around the cohesion of data platform services in light of Microsoft's launch of Fabric. Whilst AWS generally brings services for partners to build solutions out of, I was surprised to not see more in this area, even if it was more to highlight partner enabling programmes like D2E. There were a couple of Red Shift integration announcements in the Data and AI keynote but they were very much at the technical level with the potential business impact very much left to the viewer to determine."

Can AWS live up to the GenAI Hype? Partners react to AWS re: Invent 2023

CRN canvassed six channel partners for their thoughts on the week long cloud event

Michael Cade, global field CTO, lead technologist cloud-native & OSS, Veeam

What were some of your biggest takeaways from the event?

"Generative AI and LLMs were front and centre, and both start-up and existing vendors are using that in their messaging and trying to get in on the action. My take on this is that where there are large language models there is data and that data will need a level of resilience and protection, which is where Veeam comes in - regardless of platform.

"It was also very apparent that serverless functions are top of mind. We have seen an increase in requests from customers to support PaaS-based services such as EFS, RDS and DynamoDB, but this is not exclusive to serverless. We also see requests related to other data requirements including Kubernetes, where data resides out of the cluster, and we have been able to protect these external services for a while now.

"All in all, it seemed that the responsibility for data is landing on more personas not just a backup team or admin. As data becomes more important to the business then more people are concerned with how it's looked after."

Can AWS live up to the GenAI Hype? Partners react to AWS re: Invent 2023

CRN canvassed six channel partners for their thoughts on the week long cloud event

Piyush Patil, senior cloud architect, DoiT

What were some of your biggest takeaways from the event?

"One of the biggest takeaways from the event was the launch of Amazon Q. Amazon Q is designed to be easy to use, secure, and scalable, and can integrate with various AWS services and third-party applications.

"Another major takeaway was the announcement of several new, enhanced AWS services and features that aim to provide a strong bedrock for cloud computing, such as AWS Nitro Enclave and AWS Graviton4 processors. These offerings can help customers improve their performance, security, reliability, and cost efficiency in the cloud."

What did you think of re: Invent's announcements from an AWS partner perspective?

"The event's announcements were both exciting and promising, as they showcased AWS' innovation and leadership within the cloud industry. The new and enhanced services and features will provide opportunities for AWS partners to deliver value-added solutions and services to their customers, and to differentiate themselves from the competition.

"For example, AWS partners can leverage Amazon Q to create custom skills and integrations that can enhance their customers' productivity and collaboration. AWS partners can also take advantage of the new services and features to optimise their customers' cloud infrastructure and applications and enable them to adopt and scale machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions."

Were there any announcements that surprised you?

"I was surprised by the announcement of new diagnostic tools for AWS Partner-Led Support participants. These tools are enabled by a set of IAM roles set up by the customer and can access and organise metadata and CloudWatch metrics. However, they cannot access customer data or make any changes to any of the customer's AWS resources. This will make it easy for partners to provide more precise support to their customers without having to fall back to the AWS support team to get the diagnostic data."

Can AWS live up to the GenAI Hype? Partners react to AWS re: Invent 2023

CRN canvassed six channel partners for their thoughts on the week long cloud event

Josh Boer, director at tech consultancy VeUP

"The introduction of Q, the new Amazon AI assistant, is particularly exciting for the AWS partner network, with the ability to be tailored to every business to save hours of work with just one simple prompt. GenAI is fast becoming the most decisive factor in cloud computing and the ability for the partner network to add new integrations and capabilities with Amazon's AI services can prove to be a real game-changing for fast-growing businesses.

"It was also good to see the emphasis on safety around GenAI, with references to responsible AI being AWS's ‘North Star'. Amid all of the exciting developments, it's important to ensure customer data remains protected.

"Another stand out theme was cost optimisation - ultimately the reason businesses use AWS is because it optimises costs. Amazon is betting big on the AWS marketplace with a series of developments and support networks through its partner scheme, limiting its pricing and upping its services. Keeping cost in mind at all times is especially important for fast-growing start-ups and they need to understand the applications and benefits of AWS, both from Amazon and from consultancy advice, in order to both save and make money."

Can AWS live up to the GenAI Hype? Partners react to AWS re: Invent 2023

CRN canvassed six channel partners for their thoughts on the week long cloud event

Michael Tarbet, global vice president of sales, channel, managed service providers, GSI, LogicMonitor

What were some of your biggest takeaways from the event?

"The hype surrounding AI is undeniable. How do businesses avoid the hype and find the reality? To realise and benefit from the true potential of AI, organisations need to invest in and prioritise their own underlying data quality and purpose-built infrastructure.

"Furthermore, we all know - and it was reiterated at re:Invent - that hybrid is here to stay. Hybrid and multi-cloud solutions like LogicMonitor continue to gain traction with nearly every organisation adopting a cloud-first but not a cloud-only approach. Additionally, full observability is crucial for rapid action, continuous availability, and resilience.

"FinOps is gaining prominence as organisations strive for optimal performance at the right cost. We noticed there was an increased focus on FinOps at AWS re:Invent this year, reiterating the importance of cost management, governance, and control."

What did you think of re: Invent's announcements from an AWS partner perspective?

"Going into AWS re:Invent, there was certainly a buzz around some of Amazon's recent investments. As such, it was expected that there would be more announcements around new partnerships, AI models and generative AI capabilities.

"From the slew of announcements made over the past week from Amazon's AI chip, Amazon Q, their expanded Nvidia partnership and their new transcription platform, it is great to see that AWS is continuously developing its cloud infrastructure and contributing to the widespread adoption of AI."

Was there anything left out that you were expecting to hear about?

"Whilst AWS spoke to chips and hardware, it was surprising that they did not touch on their datacentre build out much, outside of Selipsky's keynote in which he stated that AWS now offers three times the amount of datacentres compared to the next closest cloud provider and now extends to 32 regions around the world.

"Additionally, an update on the AWS Cloud infrastructure would have made for an interesting topic."

What do you make of their strategy around the cloud being one of the main cloud providers?

"With AWS being one of the leading cloud providers, it is no surprise their strategy is focused on finding ways to become more compelling and advantageous to their channel partners. Channel partners understand the growing complexity of IT environments and how technology can deliver real-time solutions to business problems which makes them an invaluable resource.

"Partners have the ability to transition their clients from a reactive mode to a proactive position. With AWS shifting their focus to their channel partners, they can tap into a source that is leveraging technology infrastructure to deliver full observability into their clients' IT systems and meaningful insights into their respective businesses. Observability done right isn't just about fixing problems in production, it's also about making good infrastructure engineering decisions that support the business.

"Additionally, they are also investing in developing AI-driven tools that are specifically designed for cloud builders. This two-pronged approach will help AWS continue to grow and attract new customers."

Did you hear about anything specific that affects your company?

"Amazon announced the release of Amazon Q. This new tool has the potential to significantly impact companies that are utilising chatbots by providing a more specific and tailored AI implementation. Users will be able to create bespoke chatbots that better meet their needs through tailored conversations, personalised interactions all whilst being aligned with your privacy and security policies."

Can AWS live up to the GenAI Hype? Partners react to AWS re: Invent 2023

CRN canvassed six channel partners for their thoughts on the week long cloud event

Raman Yousefi, SVP of AWS Practice, Lemongrass

What were some of your biggest takeaways from re:Invent 2023?

"The adoption of AWS continues to increase across both migrated workloads as well as Cloud native workloads, fuelled now largely by the need for AWS Services that enable innovation (rather than just cost savings or resource elasticity). The application of AI to old and new use cases was very prominent featured this year, often with the caveat that we are still in the early stages of this revolution."

What did you think of re: Invent's announcements from an AWS partner perspective?

"While we saw the usual array of technology announcements and new, more advanced, more efficient, and lower cost capabilities, there seemed to be greater emphasis on all the partners were doing to enable customers to adopt these services. This was even more the case with services that are inherently complex to consume for recent Cloud adopters."

Were there any announcements that surprised you?

"We were pleasantly surprised to see the CTO keynote focus on efficiency, cost savings, and by extension, sustainability. This reflects a maturing Cloud market and a more sophisticated customer base which now seeks to do more with what AWS offers rather than simply moving more workloads to Cloud. Of course the economic climate is also a driver as is the need for a tighter business case as AWS spend increases for large enterprises."

Did you want to hear about anything specific that affects Lemongrass?

"While SAP ERP is a small part of workloads covered in this conference, we would have liked to hear more prominent mention of the AWS SAP relationship which has improved significantly over the last year or two, especially the use of AWS Graviton processors in SAP HANA Cloud."