The third day of AWS re:Invent 2021 kicked off with a two-hour presentation on the company’s initiatives in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

In typical style for the public cloud giant, the approach taken by presenting executives, including Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Amazon AI, was to level-set customer expectations and then show precisely how Amazon Web Services Inc. intends meet them.

“In the keynote this morning, it felt like they were very careful to set up the pins and then knock them all down,” said David Nicholson, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “They are not talking about technology first, but about the requirements that customers have. It’s where customers say what they want to be, where they need to be, and then proving out that AWS does in fact have the entire toolkit. I wouldn’t want to be another cloud this morning, waking up and looking like I fell months behind while I was sleeping.”

Nicholson spoke with co-host Lisa Martin, during theCUBE’s day three keynote analysis for AWS re:Invent. They discussed major themes from the third day of the conference and how AWS may reshape the definition of cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

Harnessing data value

Presentations on the third day focused on the importance of data in the enterprise and how harnessing insight would be key to any company’s success going forward.

“The theme was if you are not a data-driven company at your core, you are going to be left behind,” Martin said. “Data is so scattered these days, and one of the things we saw in the pandemic was people scattered. We’re still scattered, and data sources are only proliferating. Customers need to be able to harness the value of it in real time.”

AWS’ work in providing a continuous stream of new tools for managing data may also be reshaping how enterprises view the cloud as well. Tools such as AWS Outposts are enabling cloud infrastructure in on-premises environments, blurring the lines between cloud operations and in-house data centers.

“I think the definition of cloud, which is different in a lot of people’s minds already, is increasingly going to be broadened out to include what AWS said at a certain period of time didn’t matter — what’s going on on-premises,” Nicholson said. “The stickiness of on-premises has caused them to change direction over time in a very smart way. My prediction is that in five years we might not be using the term cloud at all. We might be back to just calling it IT.”

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: This is an unsponsored editorial segment. However, theCUBE is a paid media partner for AWS re:Invent. AWS and other sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage have no editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: AWS re:Invent