Microsoft vs AWS: AI-Deployment Names Show Different AI Visions

**Bob Evans** (0:00)
Hello, my friends, and welcome back to Cloud Wars Minute. We see here in the unfolding AI deployment wars, some interesting naming conventions from Microsoft and AWS. And if you look at the comparison of these two, I wonder what they were hoping to achieve by this. I mean, I'm sure they wanted to have these names resonate clearly with people, but they picked wildly different names, couldn't get two more different approaches to this. And I think as customers see the names of these companies and see the promise behind them, the big thing they're going to be interested in, what can these deployment companies do for me? But the names are sitting out there and will surely create an impression among customers. So I wanted to take a look at this here a little bit.
AWS calls it forward deployed engineering. Now that is wildly unimaginative, but it's very clear this is what you're going to get, forward deployed engineers, that's the heart of it. It will be both AWS's own FDEs and also some partners that will do. They have three different tiers of services that customers can tap into. And the farther up the sort of the premium chain you go, it starts with partners at the bottom, but the farther you go up, then it becomes AWS only. Microsoft is calling its company Microsoft Frontier Company. And I think in a way, that's a little bit of a cross between Star Trek and Little House on the Prairie. Remember, you know, Star Trek episodes would start off with the voice over, you know, space, the final frontier, you know, quite out there. It's the thing where everybody wants to go. It's the cool place, but nobody's been there. So you hope it's cool. And Little House on the Prairie, it's the notion of, oh, we're gonna be the first out there. Microsoft is sort of positioning this like what companies really want to be in the first in their field out on the frontier. I hope they're not trying to say that what businesses want to be like are frontier models and they put frontier out there. Oh, because, you know, we're gonna be playing with these really cool models. The technology changes so incredibly fast that, you know, what's the cool frontier model of today is gonna be, you know, totally forgotten six months from now.
The other thing about it is, you know, this whole FDE term, the same thing, it's gonna be about six months early 2027, when people are gonna start to say, what is the big deal about FDE? I mean, that's just the normal way business is done around technology. I think everybody's gonna be doing it. At that point, it's not gonna be so cool. So we've got this AWS, I think, has like a six month run here, until the bloom is off the FDE rose, to try to really get going with its business. Microsoft, I think in spite of this frontier name, the Microsoft brand will draw some people. I think they'll be successful with this. Well, at least so I'm not sure. I think they really missed it with this frontier thing. It's sort of aspirational and too much in the sort of artsy fartsy way of doing things. I think what business leaders are looking for isn't so much about frontier. What they want is let's make this stuff work. Let's make it work clearly. Let's show quantifiable results. Let's get our culture right. Let's get our processes optimized. Let's get not only cost taken out of the company, but let's get new revenue streams building here. I just think that the one term is wildly unimaginative, the other is just a little bit too out there, if you'd ask me. Again, I think this FDE craze will cool within the next six to eight months. I don't mean that it's going to go away. It's going to be everywhere and it's going to be just the way things are done. It isn't going to be this defining, highly differentiated approach.
I don't believe that at all.
The frontier isn't going to be wide open and undeveloped, the aspirational thing that Microsoft is doing. So I guess of the two, if I had to pick one that I think was better, I'd have to give the nod to AWS.
I've said this wildly and imagined a couple of times, it just, I guess that terrible phrase, it is what it is. They decided to go with that. They're not going to try to impress anybody, they're not going to try to confuse anybody. You want this? This is what it is. It's like a little kid, give him a pet fish and the name is Fishy. Cat's name is Kitty. Their new AI deployment company is called Ford Deployed Engineering.