Report: AWS Soon To Unveil Upgraded Artificial Intelligence Portfolio

Amazon Web Services will soon introduce new artificial intelligence products aimed at catching up in an increasingly hot market to hyperscale competitors Microsoft and Google, according to a report published Monday in The Information.

Engineers at the world's largest public cloud provider are working internally and partnering with startups to bulk up the providers AI portfolio through a program code-named "Ironman," the tech news site reported, anonymously citing two people with knowledge of the project.

Amazon sees advanced data capabilities, including machine and deep learning, as sources that will drive consumption of more compute power, boosting revenue derived from renting virtual machines.

[Related: The Race Is On: IBM, Google, Microsoft And AWS Aim To Deliver Machine Learning As A Cloud Service]

The Ironman program, in part, involves taking an AWS data warehousing service that's several years old and gearing it to organize data for workloads employing machine learning techniques.

The effort also involves partnerships with startups like DataRobot and Domino Data Lab to more comprehensively build out capabilities. The expanded portfolio will likely be unveiled in about two weeks at the annual re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, The Information reports.

There's been a major arms race in AI over the last year as the long-promised technology has finally matured to deliver to enterprises practical differentiating capabilities around business functions like sales, logistics, and customer service. Microsoft, Google, and IBM, despite all trailing AWS substantially in the overall public cloud market, have focused their investments on making the technology more powerful and easier to use.

Google's CEO Sundar Pichai describes artificial intelligence as a core capability. And Microsoft's "intelligent cloud" strategy is increasingly focused on shifting Azure customers up the stack to adopt "premium services" that include advanced analytics and AI.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly delivering value to enterprises running their businesses on Amazon's cloud, said Mick Bass, senior vice president of the big data practice at 47Lining, an AWS partner, recently acquired by REAN Cloud, that specializes in artificial intelligence.

While not commenting on the specific report of the Ironman program, Bass told CRN, "we are energized to partner with customers as they apply AI in AWS to optimize customer experiences, increase revenue, and improve their allocation of resources and operational costs."