AWS re:Invent 2023: Customer Deals Revealed

Let's confess we're still processing... AWS issued 25 press releases as part of its annual re:Invent customer event, which ran from November 27 through December 1. While keynote speeches attract the most attention, analyzing the details of the massive press release effort that accompanies events like re:Invent provides insights not only into company strategies but also into how well it is executing against them.

The main focus of the re:Invent announcements fell into two buckets - product development and commercial momentum. On the product development front, we wrote that AWS highlighted several enhancements to products aimed at making GenAI more robust, trainable, and safe to use. The company also highlighted a number of additional capabilities, which [spoiler alert] we covered in our AWS re:Invent Roundup note.

On the commercial development front, the vendor made 13 customer announcements, three major partnership announcements, and one announcement detailing progress on a smart meter roll-out in Australia and New Zealand.

What the Partnerships Tell Us

The first partnership announcement detailed a major expansion of GenAI work with Salesforce. As a side note, for Salesforce, this rounds out a major GenAI blitz where the SaaS vendor has committed significant work with all of the big 3 cloud providers. AWS also announced a partnership to use a raft of NVIDIA chips and software in its accelerating computing offers. While not unexpected, both are needed developments to counter the perception that AWS is trailing Microsoft in GenAI capabilities. Beyond the GenAI angle, beefing up its accelerated computing chops will be vital to keeping pace with many of its customers' evolving networking requirements.