Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), the original cloud computing platform, is fiercely fighting off cloud competitors. At its recent summit in San Francisco, the company made a slew of announcements about machine learning, storage, desktop apps, and more. These moves are a testament to how serious the company takes the threat from main rivals IBM and Google, particularly in light of recent reports like:

• IBM Continues to Rise to the Clouds
• Google Challenges AWS With Nearline Storage
• Study: Microsoft Challenges AWS’ Domination of Public Clouds

These top challengers have outperformed a host of smaller niche players like Rackspace, HP, and VMware. Studies, surveys, and pundits all point to these gains. Microsoft is the most prominent contender, appearing in informal polls about cloud usage as a serious threat for AWS. AWS addressed its critics on many fronts at last week’s summit. [Click on the image to see a larger view.] AWS Highlighted its Innovations at San Francisco Summit (source: AWS). AWS announced new enterprise software vendors that have “all in” on Amazon’s cloud service. This was to highlight its customer story, and strengthen its position as the big guy on the block. It provided supporting statements from MicroStrategy Software AG, TIBCO, Onshape, and Software AG. The company stated that AWS continues to expand its range of AWS services and the depth of their features so that all-in ISV partners can focus on providing innovative solutions to customers, rather than managing infrastructure. The company launched its “simplified” machine-learning service in direct response to Microsoft Azure Machine Learning and IBM Watson. Amazon has a long history in machine learning. It powers product recommendations customers get on Amazon.com. It is also what makes Amazon Echo respond to your voice. It is also what allows us unload entire trucks of products and make them available for sale in as little as 30 seconds,” stated Jeff Bilger, a company executive. “We recognized early on that machine learning was only possible if it was made available to all Amazon developers. Amazon Machine Learning is the culmination of all the lessons we’ve learned while enabling thousands upon thousands of Amazon developers to quickly create models, test, and scale to power world-scale predictive applications. AWS has announced the upcoming Amazon Elastic File System, (EFS) on the storage front. Jeff Barr, a company executive, stated that EFS is designed to meet the security needs of large, complex organizations. You’ll be able use [AWS Identity and Access Management [IAM]] to grant access the EFS APIs. Security groups [Amazon Virtual Private Cloud [Amazon VPC]] can also be used to restrict network access to file system. Standard file and directory permissions (good ol’ chown, chmod) will be available to restrict access to directories, files, links, and files on your file system. AWS has made the desktop obsolete. According to some pundits, it introduced enhancements to its desktop service. These include an AWS Marketplace for Desktop apps where enterprises can select ready-to-go line of business apps or post their own. Additionally, the Amazon WorkSpaces Application Manager is available to manage app deployments and other administrative details. AWS also offered improvements to its Lambda service. This allows coders to provide code in the form a Lambda function that is called in response to all types of events. According to the service’s Web page, “AWS Lambda usually runs your code within milliseconds after an event.” “The service automatically manages compute capacity