Believers in the power of cloud computing have gathered by the tens of thousands in Las Vegas to hear from Amazon Web Services’ top executives.
LAS VEGAS — More than 32,000 software developers, entrepreneurs and business people have descended on Las Vegas to attend Amazon Web Services’ annual conference, dubbed “re:Invent,” possibly the world’s largest gathering of believers in the power of cloud computing.
They’re here to listen to highly technical presentations from peers about new opportunities from the mass migration of data and computing power from separately run servers to huge server farms operated by third-party cloud providers, an evolution that Amazon has led since pioneering the approach a decade ago.
But the crowds have also flocked to hear the big-picture thoughts of some of Amazon.com’s superstars. In a cavernous meeting room with seating for thousands at the Sands Expo and Convention Center, James Hamilton, one of AWS’ top technical gurus, focused Tuesday evening on the impact of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Both disciplines are enabled by cloud computing and are destined to become a hugely significant part of all the computing that’s done in the cloud, he said.
“Machine learning is going to be fundamentally important across the industry,” Hamilton said.
AWS CEO Andy Jassy is speaking to attendees Wednesday morning, and Werner Vogels, Amazon’s chief technology officer, will do so on Thursday.
In a recent interview with The Seattle Times, Jassy said re:Invent, which has grown sixfold since it first took place in 2012, showcases how cloud computing has become a “movement.”
It can certainly be seen here in the multitudes that have taken over some of Las Vegas’ poshest hotels. Also underscoring the impact: Hundreds of attendees were sporting the black AWS hoodies the company’s reps handed out as swag.