With the SaaS market valued at around $300 billion, AWS is positioning itself to compete with Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp. and Salesforce Inc. using AI agents that automate tasks like hiring and demand forecasting.
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BENOIT TESSIER
Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit, best known for providing technology infrastructure to corporations, is looking to sell AI-powered productivity software for the office.
Amazon Web Services on Tuesday announced a set of tools – aimed at logistics workers and recruiters – called Amazon Connect Decisions and Amazon Connect Talent. Together with a suite of health applications introduced last month, the products telegraph Amazon’s determination to use its artificial intelligence technology to break into the business software market.
Gartner, the technology researcher, estimates that companies spent roughly $300 billion on software-as-a-service products in 2025, a category that includes products to help track and manage sales, personnel and planning. Amazon, the largest seller of web infrastructure including rented data storage and processing power, barely registers in that market.
But the advent of AI models has given the company an opportunity to offer something new, said AWS Chief Marketing Officer Julia White. The products announced this week rely on AI agents, the industry term for tools that can take action on a user’s behalf, whether to conduct an automated interview with a job candidate or create a spreadsheet forecasting demand for a product.
“We don’t have a big legacy of SaaS or, frankly, a franchise to protect,” White said in an interview ahead of the product announcement on Tuesday at an event in San Francisco. “It allows us to really embrace this agentic-first approach in a way that is going to be harder for other people.”
The new products put Amazon into deeper competition with cloud rivals like Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp., as well as some of its biggest customers, including Salesforce Inc. That’s not a new position for Amazon, which has spent years assuring the likes of Netflix – built on AWS but a fierce rival of Amazon’s Prime Video – that it’s an ethical competitor.
AWS has been reluctant to commit to building a broad suite of business applications, occasionally spooking rivals with one-off products like email server management tools or supply-chain software, but stopping short of the sort of concerted push announced this week.
The company has said in the last few years that it would wind down document-sharing, email and video-calling services.
AWS’s biggest hit, Amazon Connect, a product for call center and support workers, last year was on track to reap $1 billion in sales over the course of a year. On Tuesday, Amazon renamed the product Amazon Customer Connect.
“We already have deep relationships with many people in these industries, so it’s a pretty natural fit,” White said.
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Published on April 28, 2026
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