Amazon Web Services unveils Sumerian: AWS re:Invent, which kicks off this week in Las Vegas, is a big highlight of an otherwise slow time for tech conferences. In its first group of announcements at the event, AWS launched Sumerian, a new service for building virtual reality, augmented reality and 3-D applications. Here are the key details from AWS's announcement:
VR and AR apps created in Amazon Sumerian will run in any browser that supports WebGL or WebVR graphics rendering, including Daydream, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and iOS mobile devices. Getting started with Amazon Sumerian is as simple as logging into the AWS Management Console. There is no software to install or upfront costs—customers pay only for the storage used for 3D assets and the volume of traffic generated to access the virtual scenes they create. To learn more about Amazon Sumerian, visit: http://aws.amazon.com/sumerian.
POV: Sumerian has stiff competition out of the gate from well-established development platforms such as Unreal Engine and Unity, and to a lesser extent with emerging 3-D image services, which include Google Poly. AWS is betting Sumerian can gain a foothold based on factors like ease of use—it claims developers with no relevant experience can use Sumerian's drag-and-drop editor to build immersive experiences in just a few hours—pricing, cloud-based delivery, and the ability to build other AWS services into applications, such as the Lex chatbot engine or AWS IoT.
Dedicated AR/VR development firms, in contrast, already have deep investments in the likes of Unity and while you can expect some tire-kicking from those circles, Sumerian has an uphill battle to win serious amounts of their business. Amazon's entry in that market has been Lumberyard, a desktop-based development engine with heavier-duty capabilities than Sumerian (but which is also integrated with AWS services). Lumberyard is geared for native applications that run on iOS, Android, PCs and gaming consoles.
When it comes to enterprise applications, the 3-D/AR/VR space is in its early days, but the technologies show promise for quite a number of use cases beyond the likes of customer support. If Sumerian lives up to its billing, it's not difficult to imagine enterprises, ISVs systems integrators taking a look at it.
"I think training and education will be the first to embrace AR," says Constellation VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky. "Then we'll see engineering—product design and manufacturing."
For regular day-to-day workers, it will be about creating new ways to display information, both in context—right in the flow of work— as well as peripheral information that will help support the current process, he adds. "The meeting experience is ripe for innovation."
Cybersecurity consolidation continues: The post-U.S. holiday news cycle began with a pair of acquisitions in the cybersecurity arena, with private equity firm Thoma Bravo paying $1.6 billion for Barracuda Networks and McAfee buying Skyhigh Networks for an undisclosed amount.
Barracuda competes with the likes of Palo Alto Networks with its family of network appliances and cloud security products. It went public only several years ago, in 2013, but has struggled a bit of late. The purchase price works out to $27.55 a share, slightly over its $23.69 close at the end of last week, but Barracuda was trading just over $40 in 2015. Part of Barracuda's challenge has been transitioning to be more of a cloud subscription-based business, and less reliant on sales of its on-premises, physical appliances.
Going private again will give Barracuda a way to duck the pressures of the public market, but customers can expect Thoma Bravo, like most private equity concerns, to look for operational cost savings. Thoma Bravo has been spending big on tech companies in recent years, paying $3 billion for Qlik last year in one notable deal.
Meanwhile, McAfee is buying Skyhigh about eight months after being spun out from former parent Intel. Skyhigh is known for its cloud access security broker technology, which will work in concert with McAfee's endpoint security products. Generally speaking, CASBs serve as gatekeepers between cloud services and on-premises environments, giving companies the means to monitor and control employee access to SaaS, PaaS and IaaS offerings in a unified manner. Skyhigh also offers threat detection and protection and the ability to provide access controls for custom-built apps.
POV: This past year has seen a notable amount of security vendor consolidation. Vendors and investors see a market opportunity in an environment where damaging, extremely high-profile hacks such as the Equifax breach have heightened enterprise anxieties over cyberattacks. It's in turn a response to many years of best-of-breed security purchases by enterprises over the years; the pendulum may be swinging in a different direction, under the notion that consolidation—assuming the proper investments in integration are made—can present a more unified line of defense.
