Kicking off today at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas is AWS re:Invent 2013.  We’re here all week, broadcasting live interviews and analysis from the top executives in the industry.  Watch our live stream here on SiliconANGLE or our webTV station, and catch all the replays on our YouTube channel.   The event will run through until Thursday, November 14, 2013.

Watch Live : AWS re:Invent 2013

Event details

AWS re:Invent is the largest gathering of developers and technical leaders from the AWS community.  Attendees will find over 175+ sessions, training bootcamps, hands-on labs, and a Hackathon, all designed to provide them deeper skills and knowledge of the AWS Cloud.

Over 230 session speakers will impart their knowledge and tips during the event.  Speakers include AWS Principal Solution Architect Simon Elisha, AWS Software Development Engineer James Saryerwinnie, Comcast Corporation Infrastructure Lead Jacques Louvet, AWS Sr. Product Manager Nihar Bihani, and AWS Product Manager ajith Kuttai Venkatraman, among others.

Follow Online

If you can’t attend the conference, you can check out the latest buzz on Twitter @AWSreInvent, #reinvent, or check out theCUBE’s live coverage of the event at SiliconANGLE.tv.  You can also follow us on Twitter @SiliconANGLE, along with theCUBE hosts John Furrier @furrier and Dave Vellante @dvellante for the latest news on the event.

theCUBE will feature guests from the conference who will discuss how AWS has benefited their company, or how they are utilizing the service to benefit clients.  But aside from that, what other topics can we expect on theCUBE?

What to expect

• AWS vs OpenStack

Since OpenStack debuted, it has been viewed as a viable, open source alternative to vendor-specific solutions, and many of Amazon’s rivals have joined this club.  But Randy Bias, the CEO of Cloudscaling, stated that OpenStack cannot compete with the likes of Amazon and Google when public cloud is concerned. However, all is not lost – Bias still believes that this market competition will give OpenStack the opportunity to carve out its own niche.

“It is clear that AWS (and quite likely GCE) will utterly dominate the public cloud race. But more importantly, who cares? Dominance by AWS and GCE does not mean that OpenStack fails. In fact, OpenStack is clearly on a trajectory to ‘win’ the private cloud race, and a rapid embracing of Amazon will put OpenStack in the pole position to dominate hybrid cloud,” Bias stated in a previous interview.

• AWS vs Google

Earlier this year, Google Compute Engine debuted its entry into the public cloud, in the hope of competing with AWS.  Unfortunately, CIOs don’t see GCE as a platform quite ready to compete with AWS due to its lack of market maturity.  Other marks against GCE include its outage clause buried in its SLA, and the slightly slower response time to notify customers of a breach.  GCE has also been tagged as less than stellar for those seeking a platform with a clear product roadmap.

However, as GCE addresses these remaining discrepancies, AWS faces growing competition on the customer service side.  Google and Amazon have both been building infrastructure designed for consumer-centric products for well over a decade, and both recognize the importance of customer service as they roll out public cloud platforms.  This will be a key distinction for any cloud provider, and between AWS and GCE, the stakes are high.

• AWS Services

In October, Amazon gave back to the community when it launched the AWS Activate bundle, which comes in two editions: the generally available Self-Starter package that can only be applied for by firms in select accelerator, incubator, venture capital seed funds or entrepreneur organizations; and the more exclusive Portfolio bundle which adds credits for four self-paced tracks, an instructor-led course, expanded forum privileges and a wider selection of partner solutions, and features AWS credits that can be redeemed against fees for more than half a dozen services.

Services is a strong seller for AWS, leading to profits.  Every major player in this market is looking for the best margins on added Services, helping customers to maintain the infrastructure and software solutions over the long-term.  Layering in more Services means AWS is serious about commercializing its infrastructure acumen,  sending a clear message to rivals but also developing an ecosystem for partners.

• AWS Efficiency

Back in August, Newvem and Visual.ly released an infographic that reveals how AWS is working more efficiently than others in the public cloud space.  The report revealed that AWS currently operates a whopping 450,000 physical servers, but even if Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances allow you to retain the benefit of elastic computing while reducing costs and maintaining your reserve capacity. Newvem’s Reserved Instance Decision Making Tool analyzed AWS usage and found that significant amount of instances are not being used and remain idle.

This is another nod to AWS, distinguishing its infrastructure amongst a bevy of competitors all striving towards the same goal of efficiency.  Those that can streamline energy usage can provide more potential savings, and that’s a boon for Amazon, which already offers comparable cloud services more affordably than IBM, Oracle and others.