Adam Selipsky’s decision to relinquish his role as the chief executive officer of Amazon’s AWS cloud computing sector was an unexpected development. However, an equally surprising development was the appointment of Matt Garman as his successor. Garman, who started his career at Amazon as an intern in 2005 and took on a full-time role in 2006, has been instrumental in shaping the initial AWS products. His impressive understanding of the business, honed through his previous role as the senior vice president for AWS sales, marketing, and global services, makes him an ideal fit for the CEO position.

During a recent interview, Garman shared that he has not introduced any significant changes to the organization as of yet. He mentioned, “The business is performing exceptionally well, so there’s no requirement for a drastic shift in our focus.” He did, however, highlight a few areas where he believes AWS needs to concentrate its efforts and where he identifies potential opportunities.

Prioritizing Startups and Rapid Innovation

Startups, interestingly enough, are one of these areas. “As our organization has evolved, we initially devoted a lot of effort to attracting developers and startups, and we gained significant traction in this area,” he noted. “We then began to explore ways to attract larger enterprises, governments, and regulated sectors globally. One of the things I have emphasized is the importance of not losing sight of startups and developers. We must continue to cater to all these sectors.”

The other significant area he wants the team to concentrate on is remaining abreast of the rapid changes currently occurring in the industry.

“I’ve been emphasizing to the team just how important it is for us to continue to build on our lead in terms of the services, capabilities, features, and functions we offer. I believe the reason customers choose AWS is because we offer the best and broadest range of services. People rely on us because we consistently provide the industry’s best security and operational performance, and we help them innovate and accelerate their operations. It’s not so much a change, but rather a reiteration of the importance of maintaining our innovative edge and delivering at a rapid pace.”

Generative AI at AWS

As generative AI and technological advancements continue to evolve at a rapid pace, AWS must stay at the forefront of these developments, Garman stated.

Following the launch of ChatGPT, many began to question if AWS had been too slow in introducing its own generative AI tools, providing an advantage to its rivals such as Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Garman, however, believes this perception is not entirely accurate. He pointed out that AWS has long provided successful machine learning services, like SageMaker, even before generative AI became a buzzword. He also noted that the company took a more measured approach to generative AI than perhaps some of its competitors.

For AWS, the Bedrock platform is where it provides access to a wide variety of open and proprietary models, allowing users to link different models together. Garman believes that everyone will want customized models and bring their own data to them.

One challenge around generative AI that Garman is keen to address is the cost. “A significant part of that is doubling down on our custom silicon and making some other model changes to make the inference that you’re going to be building into your applications much more affordable.”

Q, AWS’ AI-Powered Chatbot

At its most recent re:Invent conference, AWS launched Q, its AI-powered assistant. Q is available in two versions: Q Developer and Q Business.

Q Developer integrates with many of the most widely used development environments and offers various features, including code completion and tools to modernize legacy Java apps.

“We conceptualize Q Developer as a tool that aids across the developer lifecycle,” Garman explained. “I think many of the initial developer tools have been focused solely on coding, but we think more about how we can assist across all aspects of the developer experience.”

On the other hand, Q Business uses similar underlying technologies but focuses on aggregating internal company data from various sources and making it searchable through a ChatGPT-like question-and-answer service.

Discontinuing Services

While not much has changed under Garman’s leadership, one recent development at AWS is the company’s decision to discontinue some of its services. This summer, it announced plans to shut down services like the web-based Cloud9 IDE, CodeCommit, CloudSearch, and others.

AWS’ Relationship with the Open Source Ecosystem

AWS’ relationship with the open-source ecosystem has often been perceived as challenging. This perception has been changing in recent times, with AWS contributing its OpenSearch code to the Linux Foundation and the newly formed OpenSearch Foundation a few weeks ago.

“Our stance on this matter is quite straightforward,” Garman said when asked about the future relationship between AWS and open source. “We are passionate about open source. We actively participate in open source. We seek to both benefit from and contribute significantly to the open source community.”