'AWS is fast, punches above its weight, stings Oracle, but no knockout'

AWS re:Invent Amazon made news in a big way this week, kicking out more than a dozen new features and services for the AWS cloud at its annual re:Invent conference.

The Bezos money machine announced products ranging from database offerings to DDoS protection and developer tools at its annual cloud compute summit.

While industry analysts believe most of those moves were a natural progression and expansion for AWS, the sheer scale of the rollouts raised eyebrows among the analysts charged with making sense of the whole affair.

Among the big stories was the push into the database market, an expansion that led AWS boss Andy Jassy to take shots at Larry Ellison. Consensus seems to be that the big talk is probably just that, and Amazon will not be coming to blows with Oracle any time soon.

"I believe that AWS is quick on its feet and often punches above its weight in ways that can harass and sting Oracle," said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT Inc.

"But at this point, there's little evidence that AWS is capable of seriously hurting Oracle, let alone putting it on the ropes or threatening a knockout."

King also downplayed the idea that Ellison will be taking Jassy's slights personally, predicting that the sailboat tycoon will take the comments in stride.

"Larry Ellison's public statements make him an easy target but something I've noticed about him and similarly outspoken senior execs is that the ones who can throw decent punches can also take them," King told El Reg.

"In other words, Jassy's feints at Oracle made good theater for the re:Invent crowd but I doubt they left much of a mark. It's also unlikely that they damaged the AWS/Oracle relationship in any substantive way."

The expansion of the Lambda platform also caught the attention of industry pundits. Al Hilwa of IDC pointed out to El Reg that the serverless code platform has gone from a side project to a central feature in AWS.

"They have Lambda everywhere right now, that is going to be an interesting opportunity," Hilwa said. "The technology has really come a long way in terms of maturity."

Hilwa also notes the move into FPGA devices with the launch of F1 instances as a surprise. Hilwa said that Amazon, a noted proponent of custom silicon, is commoditizing a once-obscure technology that has found a waiting audience in areas such as neural networks and software-defined networking.

For those who have had to wade through the massive gathering of humanity that re:Invent has become, Hilwa has a welcome prediction.

"They will probably break it into a couple of different conferences."

We can only hope. ®