That was quite a deluge of announcements this week at the AWS:reinvent customer conference in Las Vegas. The pace left journalists covering the event dripping in sweat as they put us through our paces like a trainer at a brutal workout with one announcement after another. To give you a sense of the breadth of coverage, we had 25 stories on TechCrunch this week just related to this event -- and we didn't cover everything by any means. It certainly shows that in spite of its commanding lead in the infrastructure market, AWS has no intention of sitting still and waiting for the competition to catch up. As the Seattle Times put it, Amazon unveils new cloud services at the pace of a startup.

Significant capital will continue to enter the market for insurance startups -- from insurers and MGAs to technology providers. At Majesco's recent customer conference, Convergence 2016, we developed a Jeopardy! The focus was to discuss what we see unfolding in 2017 regarding competition, technology, innovation, new products and services, as well as what will emerge as the hot areas of focus for insurance in 2017. It was an engaging, provocative and intriguing set of topics that underscore the pace and level of change and disruption within the industry…as a new renaissance in insurance. There were six areas of focus with four topics.

"Software eating the world" is the basic philosophy behind all of Andreessen Horowitz's investments. But the Silicon Valley VC firm has a few specific areas of tech that are lighting up its radar right now. With 1.5 billion in a new fund to invest in startups, managing partner Scott Kupor told Business Insider about a few areas that the firm is super excited about: While Kupor called out these four areas specifically, it doesn't mean that the firm is not interested in any company that falls outside the categories. The firm is still looking for entrepreneurs with big ideas that have the software to back it. "For us, we're always looking for companies where software is the differentiating factor of the business," Kupor said.