Last week, AWS held their “What’s next with AWS” event in San Francisco. The event brought together a group of analysts, media and customers to view their new launches firsthand. In addition, the event keynote was livestreamed for those who couldn’t be there in person. The event billed as ‘what’s next’ really showed how AWS is making significant inroads into new areas. Let’s dig into the key announcements.
Amazon Quick
First up is Amazon Quick. When I first saw Quick, two thoughts went through my mind. First, this is the replacement for what the former Q for Business and Quicksight products were to become. Second, the initial demo gave strong ‘copilot style’ vibes. Quick is so much more.
Quick is more like OpenClaw than it is a copilot. However, unlike OpenClaw, Quick brings the enterprise guardrails that OpenClaw lacks. It is the lack of these very guardrails in OpenClaw and similar products that has raised incredible concern among CIOs.
Quick provides a controlled environment where users can create their own personal agentic experience. One standout feature is that Quick can self-optimize and use whichever models it views as best. The user does not have to specify which model to use. That’s a dynamic change and brings a degree of automation. Enterprise CIOs will find relief in the ability to engage the guardrails to protect their corporate data while giving users the innovation they crave.
Quick is also reaching into new areas with the ability to login via social media logins. That is an interesting step beyond AWS’ classic enterprise-focused identity management.
Quick is available today to both enterprises and individual users. Individuals can get started for $25/ month.
Amazon Connect
Amazon Connect originally referred to AWS’ contact center solution. As AWS VP Amazon Connect Pasquale DeMaio once said (paraphrased), ‘Connect is really built on agents that happen to do contact center well’. Now, Amazon Connect has rebranded to refer to an entire family of end-user focused products. The original Connect is now officially called Amazon Connect Customer.
At the event, AWS launched Amazon Connect Decisions, Amazon Connect Health and Amazon Connect Talent to the Connect family. As AWS SVP of Applied AI Solutions Colleen Aubrey noted, there were several situations internally at AWS where the off-the-shelf solutions simply could not keep up and broke under AWS’ needs.
Amazon Connect Decisions
AWS is leaning heavily into their Amazon.com roots with Connect Decisions. Connect Decisions is focused on the supply chain and, more specifically, focused today on solving issues for supply chain planner. Decisions manages the finished goods supply and demand accordingly. The interface, similar to Connect Customer is delightfully easy to navigate and leverages a strong AI background to power the product.
Today, Connect Decisions is focused on the finished goods aspects of the supply chain. It does not manage the entire supply chain such as raw materials, manufacturing and capacity planning. AWS is also planning to sunset AWS Supply Chain in favor of Connect Decisions.
Amazon Connect Health
I’ll be honest, this one surprised me at first. I spent time with the team to better understand the problem AWS is solving with this product. Connect Health is meant to streamline the experience for both patient and provider. The key here is AWS leveraging both AI and Connect Customer. Connect Health is, as one AWS team leader stated, a ‘collection of agents that provides the connective tissue between Connect Customer, Connect Health and the customer’s EHR’. Similar to my conversations in the past with AWS’ DeMaio about Connect Customer, Connect Health also is an agentic solution that happens to provide the health functions very well.
In one example for patients, customers can leverage Connect Customer to create a pathway into the customer’s EHR solution. Patients can get information about their appointments, test results and more via a call into their provider via Connect Customer and Connect Health that then connects to their EHR solution. For providers, Connect Health leverages AI to summarize patient information, which then can be presented in an easy to view way within their existing EHR solution. Similar to Connect Decisions, the interface and presentation was very straightforward. The point AWS was making is that Connect Health is meant to augment the customer’s existing EHR solution and create both new value and functionality, not replace it.
Amazon Connect Talent
Connect Talent is designed for high-volume recruiting and talent acquisition. Good talent acquisition takes time to maintain quality. High-volume recruiting brings additional complexities around increasing speed and volume while keeping quality of candidates high. Amazon has this problem in spades by hiring hundreds of thousands of people in a relatively short period of time.
This is where Connect Talent comes in. Connect Talent, like its siblings in the Connect family, leverages agents and Connect Customer to provide screening and evaluation of candidates based on criteria that the customer sets. By moving the screening process to a digital agent based process, it opens the door to relatively unlimited scale overnight.
Similar to the other Connect products announced last week, the interface is refreshingly straightforward to use.
While AWS did not discuss nor announce this, one can also see how the technology could be used in a reverse manner to assist job hunters with finding the best fit job based on their skills and abilities rather than applying to a myriad of jobs hoping one will hit.
Is AWS taking on ERP, EHR and HCM?
It may seem on the surface that AWS is putting a target on their back from the likes of other ERP/ supply chain, EHR/ health, or HCM solutions. That’s not the case…at least not today. The current suite of Connect solutions is meant to augment existing solutions, not replace them. The exception, of course, is Connect Customer which is currently a fully-fledged contact center solution.
However, when Connect Customer first started out, it took a similar path to the new Connect solutions and eventually built out additional functionality to where it is today. It is entirely plausible that AWS may take a similar path with the new solutions over time.
AWS is clearly leaning into their own experience and needs with the launch of these new Connect family products. They are also leveraging their own tooling and AI experience to bring value to these functions. Like their successful Connect Customer product, AWS is starting with AI agents at the core and looking at ways to solve big problems using an agentic approach. That’s 180 degrees from where many incumbent enterprise software companies are. With traditional enterprise solutions, they are looking at how to augment their existing solutions with AI and agents.
In addition. Each of the new solutions leverages AWS’ existing Connect Customer product and/or the learnings from using AI at the core. This provides new opportunities where customer engagement is heavily involved such as healthcare and talent.
CIO Perspective
AWS has a long and incredibly successful history of addressing the builder persona through cloud and now AI. On the other hand, AWS has attempted to build end-user focused products in the past with limited success and a number of failures.
It seems that AWS has been learning from those failures while exploring new ways to leverage their solutions to solve big problems. When I first saw Q for Business and Quicksight several years ago, I saw the potential for AWS to solve really big problems for both CIOs and LoB leaders. Today, Quick is taking the place of that opportunity.
Like Quick, the new Connect family of products leans heavily into both AWS AI tooling, but also their own experience. Stepping into the supply chain/ ERP (Connect Decisions), EHR/ healthcare (Connect Health) and HCM (Connect Talent) spaces is a bold move for AWS. The interesting part is that they are coming from an AI-intelligence perspective and solving their own internal challenges. That gives AWS a fresh set of eyes looking at these big problems.
While AWS is not taking on these broader spaces nor competing directly with these customers, that may change one day similar to how Connect Customer’s path took them. CIOs would be wise to keep an eye on each of these and future launches that align with their own path. Having spent time with both AWS’ Aubrey and DiMaio, AWS is thinking big…really big on how to solve enterprise problems.
Lastly, this also signifies a marked shift in the persona that AWS is going after. By focusing on solving more end-user focused problems that involve high degrees of customer engagement, they have opened the door to new conversations and new opportunities for both customers and AWS’ business alike.
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