The Impending Cloud Reshuffle
> What if cloud vendors focus on the lowest layer, and other (pure software) vendors on the layer above?<p>I'm at AWS re:Invent this week and I can tell you this absolutely <i>not</i> what Amazon is doing. Two themes really stand out in the keynotes and associated presentations:<p>1.) Becoming a home for data and ML services backed by hardware technologies like Graviton, Trainium, and stupid fast network connectivity. Amazon has dozens of value-added services from S3 to analytic databases. By my count they have at least 16 managed data services.<p>2.) Extend Amazon cloud wherever possible into non-cloud environments. Specifically: push to on-prem through technologies like AWS Outposts and Container Marketplace Anywhere as well as integrate with IoT.<p>#2 looks like a pump fake to defuse customer lock-in concerns. The real play is #1, which is to become the preferred home for data, taking the maximum possible share of revenue in the market. Taken as a whole, Amazon has the best data story of any company I know of.