Hulu Contract, Macie Launch Support Bullish View On Amazon's Cloud Market Opportunity

Amazon.com, Inc.AMZNcloud business called AWS continues to impress Wall Street's top analysts, including Baird Equity Research's Colin Sebastian. The analyst maintains an Outperform rating on Amazon's stock with an unchanged $1,100 price target, partly due to its "robust portfolio of cloud services." Amazon announced this week the launch of Macie, a machine-learning-based tool that can discover, classify and protect sensitive data, Sebastian noted in a research report (see Sebastian's track record here). The technology can support more than 800 file types and can automatically detect and implement protections, and identify anomalies in data access to prevent unauthorized access. This is particularly relevant in an era where data security is paramount and bodes well for Amazon's SaaS applications.

As Amazon continues to introduce new tools, services, and computing instances, we note a continued emphasis on scalability across the company's portfolio," Sebastian wrote. "The on-demand nature of Amazon's cloud tools enable customers to rapidly scale up or down depending on their individual requirements, allowing the majority of the company's new product offerings to provide value to small businesses and enterprise-scale customers alike."

The Macie launch supports Amazon's status as being a leader in the cloud services market, despite strong competitive pressure from competing offerings like Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL's Google Cloud and Microsoft Corporation MSFT's Azure, the analyst added. Looking forward, Amazon's rapid pace of innovation along with a competitive price offering will help the company continue to hold on to its dominant market position.

Finally, Amazon's recent deal with the streaming video provider Hulu represents a "key win" for the AWS segment and comes at a time when it is looking to expand its support for enterprise-level clients.

Related Links: Fun Fact: Amazon's AWS Contributes More Than 100% Of Its Total Operating Profit Cloud Computing ETF Reaches For The Sky ________ Image Credit: By Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons