Analysis: Artificial intelligence the new battleground for AWS

IN A bid to further demarcate the battle lines between the world's largest cloud behemoths, Amazon Web Services Inc is betting big on artificial intelligence (AI) in the coming years, a strategy that is aimed at extending its already considerable lead in the industry. At the recently concluded re:Invent 2017 annual conference held at the Sands Convention Centre in Las Vegas in November for customers, partners, analysts and press, the one unequivocal thing on AWS' chief executive officer (CEO) Andy Jassy's (pic, above) mind was this: We have always led in the cloud and will continue our leadership through AI and machine learning. Jassy, who was promoted from senior vice president to CEO of AWS in 2016, said AWS continues to lead the market as an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) player. Citing numbers from research firm Gartner, Jassy said AWS has captured 44% of the cloud market share in 2016, up year-over-year from 39%. The world's leading and largest cloud computing player was in a buoyant mood as Jassy set the tone of the conference by thanking all the attendees at re:invent 2017 – some 43,000 people, up 9,000 from last year's event – for keeping faith with the company and growing its user base further.