AWS: AI is the new low-code dev tool

Welcome to Runtime! Today: AWS outlines its vision of how generative AI tools could finally deliver on the promise of low-code development, Microsoft cuts a deal with its European cloud rivals, and the latest enterprise moves.

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Automatic for the people

Long before the debut of ChatGPT, enterprise tech companies were searching for a way to help businesses build simple internal apps without creating more work for their expensive software development teams. So-called "low code" development tools promised to help somewhat-technical employees design and build apps that required only a minimal amount of work from the development team to get them up and running in production, but they never seemed to achieve escape velocity.

AWS took a stab at this idea several years ago with a project that evolved into the 2020 launch of Amazon Honeycode, but in a rarity for AWS, that product was quickly shut down three years later. But now that generative AI technologies have overturned every product road map in enterprise tech, AWS rolled out new AI-adjacent services for automating application development at an event this week in New York.

Its newest product is called AWS App Studio, which is available as a public preview.

• AWS App Studio "is a generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered service that uses natural language to create enterprise-grade applications in minutes, without requiring software development skills," the company said in a blog post.
• Older low-code development tools often relied on drag-and-drop user interfaces as the basic composition tool.
• But App Studio allows users to type a description of what they want the app to accomplish in a text box, and it also provides template prompts to help people refine their ideas.
• “App Studio is for technical folks who have technical expertise but are not professional developers, and we’re enabling them to build enterprise-grade apps,” said Sriram Devanathan, general manager of Amazon Q Apps and AWS App Studio, in an interview with TechCrunch.

Among the AI-pilled, agents are another way of automating simple user-facing business processes with little to no human intervention. AWS introduced several enhancements to the agents it makes available through Amazon Bedrock, which executives told The Information were perhaps the most significant additions of the week.

• Agents for Amazon Bedrock can now remember previous interactions with end users, which should make them faster and (theoretically) more accurate.
• Agents built through Bedrock can also now run code snippets — which would allow them to analyze documents uploaded to the agent — and "each user session is provided with an isolated, sandboxed code runtime environment," which should protect against the types of security threats long associated with macros in Office files.
• Both of those new additions are available as previews and in limited regions.

AWS spent the past year fending off charges that it was late to the generative AI party, and that's true if you believe that owning and controlling high-performance large-language models is the competitive advantage that will dictate the future. But as the early frenzy dies down, it's becoming clear that the models themselves matter less to the average enterprise than the tools they can use to start interacting with those models.

• Microsoft has also recognized this shift, spending a great deal of time during Microsoft Build in May showing off platform-level tools that help companies interact with LLMs.
• One of the most promising aspects of generative AI (assuming it becomes reliable) is that it could expand the number of people who can manipulate powerful computers.
• Earlier low-code tools promised to do just that, but it's hard to beat natural language as a user interface when trying to get non-technical people up and running on a new tool.
• Tools like agents, low-code tools, and managed AI app development platforms could be where the most opportunity lies for cloud providers in the generative AI boom, and given that few enterprises are running AI in production there's still a lot of opportunity ahead.

Stacking up

Microsoft promised Thursday to build a special version of Azure HCI Stack for European cloud providers as part of a settlement with CISPE, a coalition of cloud providers that has been a thorn in Microsoft's side all year. However, the settlement excludes AWS and Google Cloud, which suggests the matter is not over.

CISPE has complained for years that Microsoft charges customers who want to run software they purchased from Microsoft on other cloud providers far more than it does customers who want to run that software on Azure. The new version of Azure HCI Stack will allow European cloud providers to offer their customers the same access to virtualized Windows desktops, security updates, and pay-as-you-go SQL Server pricing that Azure customers enjoy.

Microsoft will also compensate those cloud providers for lost revenue as well as pick up CISPE's legal bills with 20 million euros (about $21 million), according to Reuters. Microsoft has nine months to release the European flavor of Azure HCI Stack or CISPE will re-file its complaint.

Enterprise moves

Douglas Gourlay is the new president and CEO at Qumulo, joining the data-storage company after more than a decade at Arista Networks.

Jennifer DiRico is the new chief financial officer at Commvault, replacing Gary Merrill, who will become chief commercial officer at the data-protection vendor.

Rachel Sheriff is the new chief customer officer at Recurly, following similar roles at Eptura and LogicMonitor.

Wade Wegner is the new chief ecosystem and growth officer at DigitalOcean, joining the boutique cloud provider following product leadership roles at Foursquare, Rapid, and Twilio.

The Runtime roundup

Google no longer plans to acquire Hubspot, abandoning a very leaky deal process that could have seen it pay as much as $34 billion to get into the CRM market.

Advance Auto Parts is the latest Snowflake customer to announce that hackers stole personal data belonging to as many as 2.3 million customers.

Salesforce lured Elton John out of retirement to play Dreamforce 2024, which says a lot about its events marketing budget and the type of customer that attends Dreamforce these days.

Thanks for reading — see you Tuesday!