"This is a really interesting time in IT where we have more transformation occurring than ever in the history of IT," says Mike Clayville, vicepresident global sales, Amazon Web Services.

Speaking at the keynote presentation for Splunk's .conf 2016, Clayville said "This is a once in a generation transformation. I believe 10 years from now we will look back at this time and recognise not only is cloud creating an unprecedented level of transformation, but we will look back and recognise 2016 was a transformational time for cloud, and that the digital transformation of companies, a lot of innovation, really emerged at this time."

"One advice I'd give to all customers is now is the time to get started. If you haven't begun the journey now is the time."

"With great partners like Splunk you can begin a journey that will create long-term sustainable strategic advantages."

"The cloud in many ways is the new normal. Most customers have decided they don't want to own data centres but to leverage the undifferentiated heavy lifting of a cloud provider like AWS and build their infrastructure on top of that."

Clayville detailed patterns of innovation he has observed as customers come onboard with Amazon Web Services.

1. Accomplish more by using the cloud.

The cloud allows the creation of entirely new markets and. For example, NetFlix created a full online-only, on-demand movie distribution platform, and Amazon.com created a global e-commerce platform.

"People see new opportunities and create an entirely new market space," Clayville says.

2. Move data to the cloud and connect with customers wherever they are

People are taking the cloud and extending their current market products and creating entirely new revenue engines. For example, General Electric with their precision medicine, John Deere with precision farming, and Samsung with its smart hub TV which runs on AWS and created an entirely new revenue stream around their TV platform.

3. Transform the back end infrastructure to make companies more nimble and agile

Clayville states General Electric saved 52% and turned new product innovation from six weeks to six hours, via cloud transformation.

How do you get started on your journey?

Clayville says if you are in a business not yet in the cloud then begin with experimentation: get a use case, and get to know how to use the cloud platform on your digital journey. Get more and more experience and gain the confidence you need to drive your company to a digital transformation.

Pretty soon, Clayville states, you'll realise there is a lot more you can do. Not only can you create experiments but you can drive real business value for your customers. Then you'll say "the sky is the limit, we can open this up to really broad usage."

Clayville continued to state that some companies change their product every two weeks, some change it a couple of times a day. Amazon releases a change every quarter of a second, he says.

Clayville states this is only possible if you listen to that data, can collect and store and analyse and share and interoperate on that data reliably and efficiently. You need a robust Enterprise Machine Data Fabric. Clayville states the key for Amazon Web Services is their use of Splunk.

"Splunk's scale and efficiency are unparalleled. The key differentiator is its late-binding schema, allowing different people to ask different questions of the same data, tuned to their use cases and business needs," he says.