Why use Q Developer when Claude Code & Copilot exist?

In my last two blog posts I've shared my thoughts on Claude Code from Anthropic, and why agentic AI tools are the next logical evolution in the world of GenAI. 

Not to be outdone by their partner Anthropic, creators of Claude Code, AWS recently announced an all-new agentic CLI for Amazon Q Developer, nee CodeWhisperer. 

Like Claude Code, Q Developer's CLI enables a much richer experience for developers by going beyond assistive code generation to fully agentic developer assistance. 

I have been testing Q Developer for quite a while, and its been an extremely useful tool in my toolbox. Adding an agentic CLI makes Q Developer an even stronger proposition.

Q is Amazon's overarching brand for their suite of GenAI services and features. Think of Q as analagous to Alexa, but for public cloud services. Q Developer is specifically a collection of tools for software development, powered by Generative AI and now agents.

The announcement of Q's agentic CLI functionality is a useful catalyst for this week's "Big Idea," and it all starts with the question: "Why should I use Q Developer when Claude Code and Copilot exist?"

Key Players in the AI Gold Rush

Over the last few years, several businesses have gained a significant foothold in the nascent Generative AI market. Upstarts like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity have taken advantage of the AI Gold Rush to cement their reputations as titans of the AI industry.

Hyperscalers, meanwhile, have played to their strengths. 

Look no further than AWS, who has been systematically integrating GenAI throughout their large catalog of services for builders. While AWS has released its own models in Titan and Nova, they also are partnered with Anthropic and other vendors, creating Bedrock as a fully-managed execution environment for GenAI workloads.

AWS' Tactical Advantage

AWS is the leading public cloud provider for many reasons, one of which is their identity as the pioneer of public cloud itself. Since July of 2002, AWS has been constantly iterating, announcing hundreds of services and thousands of features, purpose built to rock the IT world. 

As of today, AWS has over 200 products and services, and over 4 million customers. AWS hosts business critical infrastructure for the majority of the Fortune 500, where many workloads architected and optimized specifically for AWS.

AWS' footprint, history, and industry position represent a significant tactical advantage. Instead of creating standalone tools and services, AWS can layer GenAI throughout their service catalog, and create new services that boast tight integration with the entire breadth and depth of AWS. 

Why does this matter?

"You Got AI in my Cloud! You Got Cloud in my AI!"

Do you remember the classic TV ads for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups?  While these ads feature a bizzarely far-fetched notion that a person would walk the streets snacking on an open vat of peanut butter, the ads do make their point -- chocolate and peanut butter are great on their own, but they're even better together.

Cloud and AI are the chocolate and peanut butter of IT. 

While standalone AI tools can be exceptionally useful, agentic AI that tightly integrates with the entirity of your cloud infrastructure represent an unparalleled opportunity for disruption. Sweet, savory, and delicious disruption. While the upstarts can integrate with hyperscaler APIs, they are still fundamentally separated from your cloud infrastructure.

AWS' Peanut Butter Cups

If you're an AWS customer that has been hesitant to work with third parties like OpenAI, you're in good company. 

AWS has an entire suite of Amazon Q powered services that blur the line between Cloud and AI, representing AWS' own Peanut Butter Cups:

• Amazon Q for Business is a point-and-click product for creating, hosting, and publishing Enterprise AI-powered assistants that are connected to your backend business systems like ServiceNow, JIRA, GSuite, and more.
• Amazon QuickSight Q is an AI-powered feature for Amazon's excellent QuickSight BI platform. It allows users to create sophisticated dashboards, visualizations, and reports using natural language, completely democratizing business intelligence.
• Amazon Q in Connect enhances the capabilities of Amazon Connect, a cloud contact center solution, enabling real-time personalization for reponses and recommendations, fully integrated with knowledge repositories and external websites.
• Finally, Amazon Q Developer is a powerful generative AI-powered assistant for building, operating, and transforming software.

As the landscape continues to evolve, I expect AWS to keep pace, leaning fully into their core strengths and providing customer-obsessed solutions that make their already industry leading infrastructure services smarter, more capable, and more efficient through AI. 

I can't wait to see where Q goes next!