Amazon’s cloud business is planning a major revamp of its AI application strategy, with a new bundled service, Business Insider has learned.
Internally called Q Business Suite (QBS), the new service is described as a “unified workspace” that combines business intelligence and generative AI capabilities from existing Amazon tools such as QuickSight, Q Business, and Q Apps, according to internal documents obtained by BI.
QuickSight is Amazon Web Services’s data visualization software, and Q Business is the company’s flagship AI chatbot service. Q Apps lets users create generative AI-powered apps, using natural language and company data.
Amazon even considered the option to “retire” the current standalone version of the Q Business chatbot once QBS launches, according to one of the documents and people familiar with the matter. These people asked not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak to the press.
The launch of QBS would mark a significant shift in AWS’s AI application strategy. Amazon rolled out Q Business last year as its premier AI assistant for professional users, but the product faced early challenges after a rushed debut, BI previously reported. Now, with the Q Business app falling short of internal sales targets, AWS is expected to prioritize QBS, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Amazon hasn’t decided on the external brand of QBS, but “Quick” is one of the names being considered, these people added.
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An Amazon spokesperson said the company is seeing “strong growth” for Q Business, with customers such as Nasdaq, Smartsheet, and the NFL.
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“If anything, we are investing even more in this area and expect to be delivering a ton of new features and capabilities over the coming year,” the spokesperson said.
‘Single entry point’
According to the internal documents, QBS aims to provide a “single interface” for accessing data across various business applications such as Asana and Microsoft Excel. It will be capable of responding to queries and automating tasks, such as closing a Salesforce ticket or sending an Outlook email, enabling “agentic” workflows, the documents explained.
One theoretical example outlined involves a business manager asking QBS for recent sales figures in a specific region. Drawing on Salesforce data, QBS can deliver insights on sales performance, top customers, and potential deals. The manager can then generate a report with this information and email it to their boss, all within the same application.
Amazon sees QBS as a solution to a widespread challenge faced by business users: securely connecting various tools with existing business data and automating tasks with AI. Companies can spend months setting up even basic integrations, often relying on external technical partners to get the job done.
Additionally, business users frequently waste time juggling multiple applications, manually building workflows, or copying and pasting information to complete tasks. This fragmented approach results in “duplicative work, inconsistent experiences, and errors,” one of the Amazon documents noted, making it difficult for teams to standardize and streamline new processes.
AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
‘Unify all products’
QBS is Amazon’s latest bid to break into the business application market, often referred to as software-as-a-service. While Amazon dominates cloud infrastructure, such as storage and compute, it has long struggled to gain traction in the SaaS space.
Amazon’s spokesperson told BI that AWS Connect, one of its business applications targeting customer support agents, has “tens of thousands” of customers and more than 10 million contact center interactions every day.
QBS isn’t the only business application Amazon is working on. The company is also looking to build a new AI coding assistant, internally codenamed “Kiro,” BI previously reported.
QBS also comes as AI increasingly lowers the barrier to building custom software. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a companywide email on Tuesday that the company intends to “make it much easier to build agents.”
AWS VP Dilip Kumar is overseeing the QBS project, the documents said. Kumar, who previously launched Amazon’s Just Walk Out cashierless technology, recently combined the Q and Quicksight teams under a single organization, the people familiar said.
Amazon has been targeting a July launch for QBS, but that timeline could change, these people said.
Amazon plans to make QBS accessible with existing user credentials for Q Business or QuickSight, one of the documents stated. The company expects users to “appreciate the consolidated onboarding and subscription management,” it explained.
In the long run, Amazon wants QBS to “unify all products” under one umbrella, featuring a shared identity and governance framework, along with seamless integration across its various capabilities, according to one of the documents obtained by BI .
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