Giant technology companies including several startups are engaging in a race to add and improve Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their cloud platforms, making them easy to use as possible. One of them, is Amazon.
Known to casually launch new ways to build software, the technology giant introduces Amazon Cloud9, an integrated development environment (IDE) that plugs into its cloud computing platform.
It's Amazon's way to show that cloud computing can work in tandem with machine learning. And by having it as an extension to its existing cloud, Amazon wants to rewire how the economy works. One example is allowing developers to collaborate in real time where the cloud-based AI can be baked into their apps and web services.
What this means, Amazon is showing new ways for developers to think about software, making their products behave in a more intelligent way.
This is like a transition to the software world.
When Amazon acquired Cloud9, the company didn't confirm the deal. But with the launch of Cloud9 on AWS, Amazon is finally showing its intention.
The easy availability of on-demand machine learning, combined with tools to automate designing and training of AI models, Amazon's strategy is in line with the overall trend of AI demand which should impact the overall economic productivity.
Cloud9 isn’t that different from similar IDEs and editors like Sublime Text.
The main difference is that it allows collaborative editing with a deep integration with Amazon's AWS ecosystem. The tool comes with built-in support for languages like JavaScript, Python, PHP and others.
What's more, Cloud9 also includes pre-installed debugging tools, and allows debugging Lambda functions for those developers who have gone serverless.
While AWS argues that its Cloud9 product is the first "cloud native" IDE, some of its competitors are sure to think the exact opposite. For example, AWS competitors like Microsoft and Google, after all, also offer their own IDEs for cloud and mobile developers for exactly this reason.
But in any ways, the direct integration with AWS's services means that Cloud9 is having a main selling point.
And for developers using AWS, it's certainly a good thing because they can just open their browser and have their codes, data and a set of machine learning tools right within reach.