Amazon re:Invent 2015 kicked off this evening at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas where hosts John Furrier, Stu Miniman and Brian Gracely of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, joined an estimated crowd of 18,500 people to cover the excitement of the event with the promise of great interviews to come.

Announcement anticipation

Furrier said he expects big announcements coming out of the show with the theme being that public cloud is moving into the enterprise space. Miniman agreed by pointing out that the announcements started last week and the continued buzz surrounds firewall services, dedicated host services, IoT analytics, and incremental and additional storage to compute.

Growth is the theme

Miniman said the high-level theme is the growth of the show,  as well as the broad portfolio and the huge ecosystem that has developed around Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) in a short couple of years. “Dave [Vellante, cohost of theCUBE] always talks about Amazon being the 800-pound gorilla, but I think Amazon is a cheetah moving fast,” he added.

Gracely is impressed with the 80 percent year-over-year growth that Amazon has seen and places them right behind Microsoft. “Amazon is dominating and scaring everyone in industry,” he said, adding that people are wondering how they can compete or partner with the budding leader in the enterprise space.

Where is AWS going?

When Furrier asked if Amazon hit the “big company” wall, Miniman was quick to point out that Andy Jassy, senior vice president of AWS, still says, ”We are still at day one.” Moreover, he does not see the innovation or growth petering out.

Gracely also believes that AWS has a six- to seven-year head start and tons of experience when it comes to the competition. “They have so much insight from their platform, and the competition is still so far away from customer,” he said.

According to Gracely, “Data is the currency … IoT is the next big thing, and data is the key.” He indicated that the enterprise is interested in how to get in and out. They want choices, flexibility and freedom from a parent ecosystem. Miniman added that the companies need to constantly earn the business; once you are committed, migration becomes heavy.

Ultimately, theCUBE panel expressed the customers’ requirements as being a hybrid solution with flexibility, but they state the tools are just not there y et.

Watch the full Amazon re:Invent 2015 kickoff below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Amazon re:Invent 2015. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE