While Amazon Web Services was making a lot of news last week at its re:Invent conference, solution provider behemoth Cognizant Technology Solutions faced pressure from an activist investor that's looking for a big surge in its stock price.

27 – Number of languages in which Amazon Polly, a text-to-speech deep learning service, one of three new services Amazon Web Services unveiled last week at its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Polly ingests written text, and returns an MP3 stream in natural sounding language.

More than 130 percent – Growth in AWS-related business among managed service provider partners, according to AWS channel chief Terry Wise. Amazon's ecosystem added more than 10,000 partners since its last annual conference. Partner-driven engagements are growing faster than the overall business, and the largest partners are growing the fastest – Premier Tier partners in the last year increased revenue four times faster than Advanced Tier partners, Wise said. Consulting partners, meanwhile. grew their engagements by more than 110 percent.

$1.49 – Monthly cost – for up to 10,000 devices – for AWS's GreenGrass Core, part of the new GreenGrass service Amazon says will bring better compute capabilities for Internet of Things devices. AWS last week launched a limited preview of GreenGrass for customers, and the vendor said each customer will be able to use up to three devices for one year at no charge. The cost will apply after that threshold is met. GreenGrass is made from two parts: the Core, designed to run on devices that have at least 128 MB of memory and an x86 or ARM CPU running at 1 GHz or better; and an IoT Device SDK that's used to build applications running on the devices.

90 percent – Approximate percentage of the roughly 200 U.S.-based Ingram Micro partners that have taken advantage of the distributor's commission-based cloud referral program by shifting from the discontinued Microsoft Advisor effort, according to Jason Bystrak, executive director of Ingram Micro Cloud for the Americas. Ingram launched its referral program at its 2016 Cloud Summit in April, offering 14 percent commissions on revenue brought in until June 2017 and 7 percent commissions thereafter, Bystrak told CRN.

$2.5 billion – Value of shares that activist investor Elliott Management has urged solution provider giant Cognizant Technology Systems to buy back as part of what Elliott called a value enhancement plan aimed at driving shares up 50 to 69 percent over the next year. In a letter to Cognizant's board of directors, Elliott called for a board shakeup.