Amazon is forging a walled garden for enterprise AI

"During his keynote at Amazon Web Services' annual re:Invent conference, CEO Matt Garman laid out the cloud titan's vision for lowering the barriers to enterprise AI adoption, spanning infrastructure to custom models and pre-baked agents. "When I speak to customers and many of you out there, you haven't yet seen the returns that match up to the promise of AI. The true value of AI has not yet been unlocked," Garman said."

"Garman's comments broadly align with the results of an MIT study from August which found enterprises had invested between $35 and $40 billion in generative AI initiatives and, so far, have almost nothing to show for it. As damning as that appears, it suggests there's still plenty of hot air left to pump into the AI bubble if Amazon and others can demonstrate the technology's value to enterprises."

"To do that, AWS has reprised the same strategy it used to popularize cloud computing more than two decades ago: Start with the hardware and build layer upon layer of abstraction that lowers barriers to entry. The further the hardware and the more specialized the service becomes, the tighter AWS's grip becomes. The price of that easy button is lack of portability."

AWS seeks to lower enterprise AI barriers by providing end-to-end offerings from infrastructure to custom models and pre-baked agents. The company emphasizes integrated hardware and layered abstractions to simplify deployment and create proprietary models that integrate customer data during training. Large enterprise spending on generative AI has produced limited returns, creating demand for demonstrable value. The strategic approach mirrors past cloud adoption tactics that trade portability for convenience and tighter vendor control. New platforms such as Nova Forge aim to make domain-specific models easier to build while creating potential lock-in through specialization.

Read at Theregister