Category Archives: Cloud Computing
Gray Skies Ahead? 3 Cloud Stocks That Will Be Gone in 10 Years – InvestorPlace
Investors have made a ton of money in cloud computing stocks over the past 15 years. The transformation from on-premise to off-premise software, data storage, and security has been truly revolutionary for the technology industry.
But at some point, a concept may get played out. And it seems like were reaching that point with cloud computing. The concept is hardly novel at this point, and a great deal of software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors have already fully adopted cloud solutions into their product ecosystems.
In other words, while cloud computing was a megatrend that delivered huge profits for early adopters, there are no guarantees that newer firms will be able to find similar success in coming years. These are three cloud computing stocks to avoid that dont seem like they have found the recipe for long-term success in the industry.
Source: shutterstock.com/Leonid Sorokin
Hub Cyber Security (NASDAQ:HUBC) is a small Israeli company focused on cybersecurity and quality and reliability systems. It operates the following segments: Consulting, software, training, and software testing and outsourcing.
The company was flying under the radar until October 2023. On October 9th, 2023 shares more than doubled in a single day following the Hamas attacks in Israel. Traders seemingly concluded that Hub Cyber Security would see an influx of new business as the Israeli government and businesses responded to the geopolitical unrest.
Since then, however, HUBC shares have lost most of their value. In fact, the stock is now down 95% over the past year. It has also replaced its CFO and CEO in short order. The company is also enacted a reverse stock split to get back in-line with Nasdaq listing compliance late last year. But with the stock already back in penny stock territory, HUBC stock may have to take more actions to get its share price back above a dollar.
All this looks like a typical SPAC deal gone bad; a fledging cloud technology company with a small revenue base and sizable operating losses that will struggle to stick around for the long haul.
Source: Al Serov / Shutterstock.com
Rekor Systems (NASDAQ:REKR) is a small business that has been involved in a variety of different undertakings in recent years. The company at one point was involved in crisis management, consulting, traffic solutions, secure education, and strategic back office services among others. There was a push for AI-driven machine learning at another point.
Not surprisingly, REKR stock attracted trader interest as an AI penny stock in 2023. However, Rekor Systems was unable to convert the visibility into any lasting momentum in the business operations or share price.
Rekors most recent earnings report once again fell short of expectations. Despite all the mergers and acquisitions and numerous press releases, Rekor has struggled to demonstrate much progress.
As such, its hard to imagine the company will still be in business a decade from now unless its products find much more commercial traction in the market.
Source: Shutterstock
Consensus Cloud Solutions (NASDAQ:CCSI) provides digital cloud fax technology. This allows companies, particularly in the healthcare space, to secure their digital communications.
While faxes (digital or otherwise) are hardly the latest communications technology, there is still some demand here, at least for the time being. In certain fields, clients opt for the traditional secure and proven communications channel rather than a newer and more flexible but potentially more vulnerable option.
That said, Consensus Cloud is not firing on all cylinders right now. Revenues were up only marginally year-over-year, and other metrics such as total client figures were around flat as well. Its tough to gain much growth in what seems like a structurally declining industry. As the companys risk factors disclosure notes, there is risk of: Reduced use of fax services due to increased use of email, scanning or widespread adoption of digital signatures or otherwise.
Over the next decade, that seems likely to be the case, in fact. CCSI stock seems cheap on an earnings basis. But the company has debt, and a negative book value per share figure. Its far from certain this business will still be around in 2034, at least as an independent public entity.
On the date of publication, Ian Bezek did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines.
Ian Bezek has written more than 1,000 articles for InvestorPlace.com and Seeking Alpha. He also worked as a Junior Analyst for Kerrisdale Capital, a $300 million New York City-based hedge fund. You can reach him on Twitter at @irbezek.
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Gray Skies Ahead? 3 Cloud Stocks That Will Be Gone in 10 Years - InvestorPlace
Kingswood Wealth Advisors LLC Invests $264000 in First Trust Cloud Computing ETF (NASDAQ:SKYY) – Defense World
Kingswood Wealth Advisors LLC bought a new position in shares of First Trust Cloud Computing ETF (NASDAQ:SKYY Free Report) in the fourth quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The fund bought 3,013 shares of the companys stock, valued at approximately $264,000.
A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. raised its position in shares of First Trust Cloud Computing ETF by 21.4% during the fourth quarter. Raymond James Financial Services Advisors Inc. now owns 138,730 shares of the companys stock worth $12,162,000 after acquiring an additional 24,473 shares during the last quarter. Raymond James & Associates raised its position in shares of First Trust Cloud Computing ETF by 5.7% during the fourth quarter. Raymond James & Associates now owns 147,672 shares of the companys stock worth $12,946,000 after acquiring an additional 7,914 shares during the last quarter. Premier Path Wealth Partners LLC acquired a new stake in shares of First Trust Cloud Computing ETF during the fourth quarter worth $244,000. City Holding Co. grew its stake in shares of First Trust Cloud Computing ETF by 4.2% during the fourth quarter. City Holding Co. now owns 15,875 shares of the companys stock worth $1,392,000 after purchasing an additional 635 shares during the period. Finally, Quad Cities Investment Group LLC acquired a new stake in shares of First Trust Cloud Computing ETF during the fourth quarter worth $220,000.
Shares of First Trust Cloud Computing ETF stock opened at $95.60 on Friday. First Trust Cloud Computing ETF has a 12 month low of $60.65 and a 12 month high of $97.78. The business has a fifty day simple moving average of $93.85 and a 200 day simple moving average of $85.01. The stock has a market cap of $3.18 billion, a PE ratio of 20.90 and a beta of 1.06.
The First Trust Cloud Computing ETF (SKYY) is an exchange-traded fund that is based on the ISE Cloud Computing index. The fund tracks an index of companies involved in the cloud computing industry. Stocks are modified-equally-weighted capped at 4.5%. SKYY was launched on Jul 5, 2011 and is managed by First Trust.
Want to see what other hedge funds are holding SKYY? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for First Trust Cloud Computing ETF (NASDAQ:SKYY Free Report).
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Deciphering Cloud Signals: 2024 Cloud Trends Report – InformationWeek
In 2024, not all cloud computing professionals see the cloud shaping up in the same way, but all want more than rising costs.
Most respondents, from IT leaders to cybersecurity experts, are running a hybrid cloud environment but there is a clear leader in providers. The majority, 61%, are using Azure, which just inched out AWS (60%) in a surprising reversal from last year's survey.
Otherwise, the cloud mix in hybrid arrangements was a bit of potluck. Respondents were allowed to make multiple choices, and they chose a wide variety of public cloud vendors, including quite a long list of write-ins, revealing a complicated cloud ecosystem.
However, there is little to no consensus in cloud usage strategies despite general unity in priorities. For example, there were just as many people saying they use over 100 cloud services as there were using only one.
Download this free report to learn about the cloud trends impacting your business!
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Deciphering Cloud Signals: 2024 Cloud Trends Report - InformationWeek
The Essential Role of Data Privacy in Secure Cloud Migration – ITPro Today
Over the past decade, enterprises have increasingly shifted their operations to the cloud for enhanced efficiency, scalability, and cost savings. Gartner predicts that by 2025, over 85% of organizations will embrace a cloud-first principle, and cloud spending will surpass 45% of all enterprise IT spending. When implementing cloud solutions, ensuring regulatory compliance and establishing a strong data privacy and security framework are critical to help prevent breaches and maintain customer trust.
The cloud ecosystem encompasses major players like Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, along with niche services catering to specific business needs. Many organizations also leverage consulting partners to inform cloud strategies tailored to their unique objectives, resources, and constraints. Hybrid and multi-cloud approaches allow businesses to mitigate risks, prevent vendor lock-in, and enable portability should providers unexpectedly cease services. Scalability on demand makes cloud solutions appealing from sustainability and cost optimization standpoints.
Related: Top Tech Trends and Predictions 2024 From Industry Insiders
Netflix offers a case study on successful cloud migration. Due to a failure in its data centers, Netflix migrated to AWS, restructuring its infrastructure to utilize microservices architectures. Because of Netflix's global user base, the company was faced with managing adherence to data protection regulations across regions. By prioritizing compliance and utilizing advanced key-leveraging cryptography, Netflix could take advantage of the cloud's scalable, resilient nature without sacrificing the security of user data.
When organizations adopt cloud storage, they relinquish direct control over data to external providers, necessitating greater trust and more stringent governance strategies. Restrictions on cross-border data transfers to prevent breaches across jurisdictions can present a challenge, as can scalable implementations of compliance controls across hybrid multi-cloud environments and securing legacy platform integration with modern cloud infrastructure. In cloud architectures, security is handled under the "shared responsibility" model. Though delineating the specific boundaries of data security management responsibilities between internal teams and external cloud providers can be complex, it is essential to a robust cloud migration strategy (Figure 1).
Related: 2024 Cloud Computing Trends To Watch (Video)
Figure 1: Cloud migration strategy
Organizations are required to continually monitor and integrate various data protection regulations into their policies and processes. Relevant regulations vary by region and sector and include:
It is vital for organizations to foster expertise for protecting data, including on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, and create robust data privacy frameworks for assessments and audits. For example, the NIST Framework offers a structured approach to identifying and mitigating risks. The 5 Rs of Cloud Migration (rehost, refactor, revise, rebuild, replace) also guide strategic planning.
Privacy impact assessments (PIAs) systematically evaluate how organizations collect, use, share, and maintain personally identifiable information. Technical measures, like encryption and access control, alongside organizational measures, such as policy development and employee training, form the crux of a comprehensive data privacy strategy.
IT departments can instill comprehensive cloud and compliance training programs to uphold security priorities. Meanwhile, it is crucial for legal and compliance partners to conduct ongoing risk surveillance, advise on regulatory shifts, and delineate appropriate data usage policies across business units.
User-focused change management tactics further facilitate secure cloud adoption. Migrating from legacy to modern systems can present a learning curve and create potential resistance among employees accustomed to previous workflows. Proactive communications that detail migration timelines and access to training resources help ease uncertainties during transitions.
Regular data privacy awareness workshops contribute to a culture of organizational security, significantly reducing the risk of data breaches. Focused sessions on understanding potential vulnerabilities and recognizing phishing attempts empower employees with the knowledge to safeguard sensitive information.
Staying ahead of emerging technologies requires companies to continuously monitor and thoughtfully integrate new advancements. Cloud solutions, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and blockchain serve as platforms for innovation. AI automates privacy compliance processes such as risk analysis, while blockchain decentralizes storage to mitigate breach impacts.
Additionally, quantum computing may challenge current encryption, but post-quantum solutions are in development. Building competencies and allocating resources to pilot projects allow for testing innovations without significant infrastructure investments. This proactive approach ensures data privacy, with blockchain enhancing security and privacy by design. Its immutable ledger protects data integrity, significantly reducing breach risks.
Organizations can develop guidelines, system monitoring procedures, and employee training programs surrounding the responsible development and deployment of new technologies like AI. By embedding social responsibility into business priorities related to sustainability, accessibility, diversity, and governance, organizations can further ensure that cloud adoption creates shared value, laying the foundation for equitable digital transformation. Examples like Google's AI for Social Good program illustrate how cloud computing can drive societal benefits. Creating a transparency report outlining user data collection, use, and protection demonstrates an organization's commitment to data privacy. Such reports provide stakeholders with clear insights into privacy practices, reinforcing trust.
It's imperative for organizations to foster a culture of collaboration when it comes to implementing tailored data governance for cloud compliance and security. By doing so, they ensure their privacy protections will continually evolve with emerging technologies to prevent failure. Businesses can foster progress and trust with ethical AI and proactive innovation investments. As the landscape matures, organizations that prioritize user-centric privacy will be better able to capitalize on cloud opportunities while mitigating risks.
About the Author:
Gaurav Rathi is a visionary IT product strategist, with over 17 years of excellence in crafting top-tier digital products within B2B SaaS/DaaS models for influential Fortune 100 firms. Dedicated to driving innovative global IT product strategies, he is highly regarded for his adeptness in synergizing with UX and engineering teams and excels in steering digital transformation and elevating digital products across diverse sectors. Gaurav is an alumnus of Uttar Pradesh Technical University, India, where he earned his Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science. For more information, contact [emailprotected].
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The Essential Role of Data Privacy in Secure Cloud Migration - ITPro Today
Amazon pours $150B into data centers to handle expected AI boom – New York Post
Amazon is reportedly planning to spend a whopping $150 billion within the next 15 years on building data centers a move that will position the tech giant to be able to handle an expected explosion with artificial intelligence applications and other digital services.
The spending spree, earlier reported on by Bloomberg, will also allow Amazon to maintain its top spot in the cloud services market, where it holds roughly twice the share of No. 2 player Microsoft.
Were expanding capacity quite significantly, said Kevin Miller, a vice president at AWS, or Amazon Web Services, Amazons cloud computing subsidiary used by upwards of 1.45 million businesses, according to an internal report.
I think that just gives us the ability to get closer to customers, Miller added of the Seattle-based firms investment in more data centers, according to Bloomberg.
Amazon has already committed to spending $148 billion over the past two years to build and operate data centers globally in new regions like Mississippi, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Thailand.
It will also use that hoard of funds to expand existing server farm hubs adjacent to a Washington metro in Virginia as well as in rural Oregon, which offers cheap hydroelectric power and appealing tax breaks, Bloomberg reported.
As it stands, Virginia and Oregon receive roughly $4 of every $5 AWS spends on US infrastructure.
But earlier this month, the Jeff Bezos-founded firm bought a site in northeast Pennsylvania in the shadow of a nuclear power plant that the forthcoming data center will use as a source of carbon-free energy for the digital hub to help the tech giant meet its emission goals, according to commercial property company CoStar.
Amazon bought the 1,200-acre property for $650 million, making it the largest individual US commercial sale so far this year, CoStar reported.
When AWS is done with construction, the data centers campus will have the capacity to power the equivalent of the energy consumption of nearly 900,000 houses, or as much as 960 megawatts.
It also revealed a roughly $10 billion spend to acquire two data center campuses in Mississippi last month, considered the largest corporate project in state history, according to Bloomberg.
Theres also rumblings of yet another AWS data center in Round Rock, Texas, as the company won zoning approval to build a data center and electrical substationnext to a former ranch it already owns, which it bought as part of a similar spending spree during the pandemic.
Still, Amazons anticipated spending on data centers dominates commitments from Microsoft which is entrenched in multiyear partnership with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Alphabets Google, according to Bloomberg, though neither company has disclosed server farm-related spending and spokespeople at each firm declined weighing in on the topic.
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In 2023, Microsoft boosted its spending on data centers by more than 50% while for the first time ever AWSs capital expenditures on data centers shrank 2%.
Most of the ramped-up data center-related expenses is intended to meet a rising demand among corporation for large-scale file storage and databases, per Bloomberg.
However, the hubs will have such massive computing power that, along with chips, will be able to lend some of it to whats required of AI-backed services.
To rival OpenAI, Amazon has been building out its own tools with the booming tech, including with a $4 billion in rival Anthropic, which was completed on Wednesday.
As part of the partnership, Amazon has said that it will deploy future AI models on AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips a diversion from most other AI applications, including the ones in OpenAIs portfolio and Googles Bard, whichrely on Nvidias pricey chips.
Anthropics co-founders, brother-sister duo Dario and Daniela Amodei, are likely very familiar with those chips as they both previously held VP-level positions for ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
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Amazon pours $150B into data centers to handle expected AI boom - New York Post
Spending on Shared Cloud Infrastructure Continues to Lead the Way in Enterprise Infrastructure Investments … – IDC
NEEDHAM, Mass., March 28, 2024 According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment, spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments, including dedicated and shared IT environments, increased 18.5% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2023 (4Q23) to $31.8 billion. Spending on cloud infrastructure continues to outgrow the non-cloud segment with the latter growing 16.4% year over year in 4Q23 to $18.9 billion. The cloud infrastructure segment saw unit shipments decline 22.8% in the quarter with an increase in average selling prices (ASPs) mostly related to higher than usual GPU server shipments to hyperscalers.
"Cloud infrastructure spending continues to accelerate towards more robust configurations mainly fueled by the explosion of AI-related investments," said Juan Pablo Seminara, research director, Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers at IDC. "Even though some caution remains on the socio-political side, the improvement in economic prospects contribute to a very positive spending outlook for 2024 and 2025 where cloud-based spending is expected to rebound at double-digit growth rates."
Spending on shared cloud infrastructure reached $22.8 billion in the quarter, increasing 27.0% compared to a year ago. The shared cloud infrastructure category continues to capture the largest share of spending compared to dedicated deployments and non-cloud spending. In 4Q23, shared cloud accounted for 44.9% of total infrastructure spending. The dedicated cloud infrastructure segment saw modest growth of 1.4% year over year in 4Q23 to $9.0 billion.
For 2024, IDC is forecasting cloud infrastructure spending to grow 19.3% compared to 2023 to $129.9 billion. Non-cloud infrastructure is expected to decline 1.4% to $57.6 billion. Shared cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 21.6% year over year to $95.3 billion for the full year while spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is expected to have robust growth of 13.3% in 2024 to $34.6 billion for the full year. The subdued growth forecast for non-cloud infrastructure, which is forecast to decline 1.4% year over year in 2024, reflects the expectation that the market still faces some challenges. Cloud spending will remain very positive due to new and existing mission-critical workloads, which often require higher-end, performance-oriented systems.
IDC's service provider category includes cloud service providers, digital service providers, communications service providers, hyperscalers, and managed service providers. In 4Q23, service providers as a group spent $30.0 billion on compute and storage infrastructure, up 19.6% from the prior year. This spending accounted for 59.2% of the total market. Non-service providers (e.g., enterprises, government, etc.) also increased their spending to $20.7 billion, growing 15.2% year over year. IDC expects compute and storage spending by service providers to reach $124.3 billion in 2024, growing 21.8% year over year.
On a geographic basis, year-over-year spending on cloud infrastructure in 4Q23 showed mixed results, with China, the Middle East, and Canada showing negative growth led by China with a decline of 31.1%, mainly affected by an economy still under pressure in the fourth quarter of 2023. The Middle East & Africa saw spending decline 12.2% due to difficult year-over-year comparison that resulted from large projects at the end of the prior year. Spending in Canada declined 4.4% year over year. The regions with increased spending in 4Q23 were Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China), the United States, Central & Eastern Europe, Japan, Western Europe, and Latin America, where cloud spending grew at 48.2%, 40,6%, 11.3%, 10.5%, 2.7%, and 1.5% year over year, respectively. Most of this growth was related to large high-performance computing and AI-based projects.
Long term, IDC predicts spending on cloud infrastructure to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.8% over the 2023-2028 forecast period, reaching $199.1 billion in 2028 and accounting for 73.6% of total compute and storage infrastructure spend. Shared cloud infrastructure spending will account for 71.8% of the total cloud spending in 2028, growing at a 12.8% CAGR and reaching $143.0 billion. Spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure will grow at a CAGR of 12.9% to $56.1 billion. Spending on non-cloud infrastructure will also rebound with a 4.1% CAGR, reaching $71.4 billion in 2028. Spending by service providers on compute and storage infrastructure is expected to grow at a 13.1% CAGR, reaching $188.5 billion in 2028.
IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer and Cloud Deployment is designed to provide clients with a better understanding of what portion of the compute and storage hardware markets are being deployed in cloud environments. The Tracker breaks out each vendors' revenue into shared and dedicated cloud environments for historical data and provides a five-year forecast. This Tracker is part of the Worldwide Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker, which provides a holistic total addressable market view of the four key enabling infrastructure technologies for the datacenter (servers, external enterprise storage systems, and purpose-built appliances: HCI and PBBA).
Taxonomy Notes
IDC defines cloud services more formally through a checklist of key attributes that an offering must manifest to end users of the service.
Shared cloud services are shared among unrelated enterprises and consumers; open to a largely unrestricted universe of potential users; and designed for a market, not a single enterprise. The shared cloud market includes a variety of services designed to extend or, in some cases, replace IT infrastructure deployed in corporate datacenters; these services in total are called public cloud services. The shared cloud market also includes digital services such as media/content distribution, sharing and search, social media, and e-commerce.
Dedicated cloud services are shared within a single enterprise or an extended enterprise with restrictions on access and level of resource dedication and defined/controlled by the enterprise (and beyond the control available in public cloud offerings); can be onsite or offsite; and can be managed by a third-party or in-house staff. In dedicated cloud that is managed by in-house staff, "vendors (cloud service providers)" are equivalent to the IT departments/shared service departments within enterprises/groups. In this utilization model, where standardized services are jointly used within the enterprise/group, business departments, offices, and employees are the "service users."
For more information about IDC's Quarterly Enterprise Infrastructure Tracker: Buyer & Cloud Deployment, please contact Lidice Fernandez at lfernandez@idc.com.
About IDC Trackers
IDC Tracker products provide accurate and timely market size, vendor share, and forecasts for hundreds of technology markets from more than 100 countries around the globe. Using proprietary tools and research processes, IDC's Trackers are updated on a semiannual, quarterly, and monthly basis. Tracker results are delivered to clients in user-friendly Excel deliverables and on-line query tools.
Click here to learn about IDCs full suite of data products and how you can leverage them to grow your business.
About IDC
International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,300 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit http://www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights.
All product and company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
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Spending on Shared Cloud Infrastructure Continues to Lead the Way in Enterprise Infrastructure Investments ... - IDC
Amazon to ‘invest $150bn in data centers’ for AI growth – ReadWrite
Amazon is reportedly gearing up to invest nearly $150 billion over the next 15 years in data centers. This substantial financial commitment will equip the cloud-computing giant with the necessary resources to manage a projected rise in demand for AI applications and various digital services.
Bloomberg reports that this investment is a strategic display of dominance, to preserve Amazons leading position in the cloud services sector. Amazon currently holds about twice the market share of its closest competitor, Microsoft Corp.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to ReadWrite that the figures were based on its recent infrastructure announcements found on its website.
However, Amazon Web Services experienced its slowest sales growth on record last year, as corporate clients reduced expenses and postponed upgrades. Now, as spending begins to rebound, Amazon is eagerly securing land and energy for its energy-intensive operations.
In the last two years, Bloomberg said its calculations indicate that Amazon has pledged $148 billion towards the building and operation of data centers globally. The company aims to expand its server farm locations in northern Virginia and Oregon, and venture into new areas such as Mississippi, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia.
Despite the expansion, AWS saw a 2% decrease in its data center investments in 2023, marking its first reduction, even as Microsoft ramped up its expenditures by over 50%, as reported by DellOro Group. However, Amazons Chief Financial Officer announced last month that there would be an uptick in capital investments this year to fuel AWSs expansion, encompassing projects related to artificial intelligence.
As we look forward to 2024, we anticipate capex to increase year over year, primarily driven by increased infrastructure capex to support growth of our AWS business, including additional investments in generative AI and large language models, said CFO Brian Olsavsky.
While Amazons expansion of its data centers aims to cater to the growing need for corporate services, its focus on sophisticated, high-cost chips will provide the substantial computing power needed for the predicted increase in generative AI.
Reports suggest that Amazon is developing proprietary tools to compete with OpenAIs ChatGPT, and has developed partnerships with various companies to enhance its AI services using its servers. As a result, Amazon expects to generate AI-related revenue amounting to tens of billions of dollars.
Featured image: Canva / Web Summit Rio
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Amazon to 'invest $150bn in data centers' for AI growth - ReadWrite
Enter the Cloud Excellence Awards 2024 – Computing
The cloud paradigm enables organisations to respond rapidly to changing market conditions and to experiment with new ideas, products and tools. It can be an incredibly efficient way to set up new infrastructure and platforms, or to share the management of parts of the IT estate the business would prefer not to keep in-house.
And like its aerial namesake, cloud computing is changing all the time, offering new opportunities to forward-looking organisations, teams and individuals.
With categories covering all aspects of the cloud from vendor, partner and customer angles, there will surely be something for every organisation. And with these awards covered in Computing itself, your success is shared not just with those present on the awards night itself but with the entirety of the brand's audience.
Our 2024 winners will be announced at an exclusive awards ceremony in London on 18th September, the perfect opportunity to celebrate your success and reward your teams for their hard work.
Entries for the awards are now open and will close on 14th June, so make sure to get our entries in on time to be celebrated as an industry-leading cloud innovator.
Click here to visit the awards website and here to start your entries.
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Enter the Cloud Excellence Awards 2024 - Computing
Why Amazon’s multi-billion dollar AI alliance with Anthropic isn’t the game-changer it needs to remain king of the cloud – Fortune
When Amazon announced Wednesday that it had showered the hot AI startup Anthropic with an additional $2.75 billion to complete the $4 billion investment it had announced last fall, the company positioned the news as a royal win.
Amazons AWS, the king of cloud computing (with nearly a third of global market share), was deepening its partnership with Anthropic, the number two prince (Harry, not William) of generative AI foundation models. Under the pact, Anthropic will use AWS as its primary cloud provider for mission critical workloads, and train and deploy its future AI models on Amazons homegrown chips, while AWS customers get access to future generations of Anthropics AI technology.
Look more closely however, and the deal seems less like a sign of Amazon perpetuating its cloud dominance into the Gen AI era, and more like a hint at how vulnerable the company has become in a shifting landscape.
Amazon, considered a laggard in the race to deploy generative AI technology,reallyneeds Anthropics highly-touted models, including the most recent Claude 3. At the same time though, Amazon is hitching its cart to an AI startup that, while boasting impressive technology, will not instantly distinguish or differentiate Amazon from the competition since Google is also an Anthropic partner.
Pairing up with Anthropic is a necessary and beneficial move for Amazon. But with the AWS empire under siege, the question is whether the deal is too little too late.
AWS continues to be the reigning champion of the cloud business, with 31% global market share in 2023s fourth quarter. But the race is getting tighter. Microsoft Azure, AWSs biggest cloud competitor, has edged closer with 24%, while Google Cloud has 11%. Both Microsoft and Google have seen cloud growth thanks to their Gen AI offerings the former with its powerhouse partnership with OpenAI, and the latter with its Bard and Gemini AI momentum.
According to Forrester principal analyst Tracy Woo, Amazons Gen AI efforts have not been very impressive. It took three, four months [for Amazon] to come up with any sort of generative AI-specific announcements [in 2023], Woo told Fortune, adding that the results were really lackluster.
The announcements at Amazons Re:invent conference in December 2023 including Amazon Q, a generative AI work assistant, and next generation AWS-designed chips should have been a resounding response to show that youre firmly back as the number one cloud provider that everyone looks to, Woo said. Instead, it was underwhelming especially given the competition with Microsoft, and its alliance with OpenAI.
Amazon announced the equivalent of a shiny engine, wheel and pane of glass for the windows, while Microsoft came out with a Rolls Royce marketing its Copilot offering for Azure and OpenAI models like a car that flies, it goes in the water, it is incredible.
Microsofts bread-and-butter has always been software packages and solutions that slot perfectly into the enterprise workflow, so its not surprising that the company made such a strong showing. But Amazons underwhelming announcements underscored how mismatched the cloud competitors remain when it comes to the software side of things.
The AWS strong suit has always been infrastructure. And leveraging that skillset to differentiate is one way Amazon could try to get an edge. But theres danger there too, thanks to the rise of Nvidia, whose GPUs rule the roost, and are only getting better with Blackwell, the new Nvidia AI chip announced at its GTC conference.
While its possible for Amazon to pull off an infrastructure cloud play, said Woo, the company would have to do things differently.
Everyone builds on CUDA, she said. So to ask everyone to rearrange their software architecture so they can cater to these AI-based TPUs that AWS has come up with is a huge ask.
At this point, AWS is arguably behind in both AI infrastructure and AI software, but no one should count out the cloud king, Woo emphasized. While Amazon missed the boat on recognizing that the cloud race was no longer at the infrastructure but had moved up the stack to AI-powered software solutions she added that with AWS, anything is possible.
I see this as a little bit of a desperation call from [Amazon CEO Andy] Jassy responding to his shareholders, she said. [AWS CEO] Adam Selipskyreally understands the market and so I have a lot of confidence that he can steer the ship in the right direction. Of course, Amazon has never been identified as the AI cloud king so they have a huge uphill battle ahead of them, she added. But I think they are resilient. They are an aggressive company that moves aggressively they are not fat and happy.
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Why Amazon's multi-billion dollar AI alliance with Anthropic isn't the game-changer it needs to remain king of the cloud - Fortune
How AI Is Poised to Upend Cloud Networking – Data Center Knowledge
Much has been said about how AI will accelerate the growth of cloud platforms and enable a new generation of AI-powered tools for managing cloud environments.
But here's another facet of the cloud that AI is likely to upend: networking. As more and more AI workloads enter the cloud, the ability to deliver better cloud networking solutions will become a key priority.
Related: Why AI Workloads Probably Won't Transform the Data Center Industry
Here's why, and what the future of cloud networking may look like in the age of AI.
The reason why AI will place new demands on cloud networks is simple enough: To work well at scale, AI workloads will require unprecedented levels of performance from cloud networks.
Related: Explosion of Data in the Cloud Era Leading to Observability Complexity
That's because the data that AI workloads need to access will reside in many cases on remote servers located either within the same cloud platform where the workloads live or in a different cloud. (In some cases, the data could also live on-prem while the workloads reside in the cloud, or vice versa.)
Cloud networks will provide the essential link that connects AI workloads to data. The volumes of data will be vast in many cases (even training a simple AI model could require many terabytes' worth of information), and models will need to access the data at low latency rates. Thus, networks will need to be able to support very high bandwidth with very high levels of performance.
To be sure, AI is not the only type of cloud workload that requires great network performance. The ability to deliver low-latency, high-bandwidth networking has long been important for use cases like cloud desktops and video streaming.
Cloud vendors have also long offered solutions to help meet these network performance needs. All of the major clouds provide "direct connect" networking services that can dramatically boost network speed and reliability, especially when moving data between clouds in a multicloud architecture, or between a private data center and the public cloud as part of a hybrid cloud model.
But for AI workloads with truly exceptional network performance needs, direct connect services may not suffice. Workloads may also require optimizations at the hardware level in the form of solutions such as data processing units (DPUs), which can help process network traffic hyper-efficiently. Indeed, vendors like Nvidia, which has unveiled an Ethernet platform tailored for generative AI, are already investing in this area and it says a lot that a company mostly known for selling video cards is also recognizing that unlocking the full potential of AI requires networking hardware innovations, too.
For now, it remains to be seen exactly how cloud vendors, hardware vendors, and AI developers will respond to the special challenges that AI brings to the realm of cloud networking. But in general, it's likely that we'll see changes such as the following:
There's no way around it: If you want to take full advantage of the cloud to help host AI workloads, you need to optimize your cloud networking strategy a move that requires taking advantage of advanced networking services and hardware, while also adjusting cloud cost optimization and network performance management strategies.
For now, the solutions available to help with these goals are still evolving, but this is a space to follow closely for any business seeking to deploy AI workloads in the cloud.
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How AI Is Poised to Upend Cloud Networking - Data Center Knowledge