Cloud Technology News of the Month: August 2023

TL;DR

• Where do you run large AI models when the public cloud isn’t enough?
• Nvidia is diverting its 🤖AI chip supply away from the biggest cloud providers.
• Microsoft makes ☁️ cloud security logs free.

Keep reading to discover what happened in the cloud last month.

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Story of the Month

Is The Cloud Ready For Gen AI Boom?

Training and running massive AI applications in the cloud sounds like a no-brainer. But only a small chunk of the existing cloud infrastructure can actually support that. 

A minority of today’s cloud footprint runs on chips optimized for AI (GPUs) and has servers that work in collaborative clusters to help teams run bigger workloads like large AI models. 

Battling the GPU shortage, cloud giants are busy developing technology that would make AI infrastructure a greater part of their overall stack. 

Others expect that sky-high cloud costs may inspire some teams to consider on-premises deployments and have the tech ready.

Which way will the AI boom take the cloud industry? Only time will tell.

But there’s one thing we know for sure.

Teams on the lookout for the right cloud services won’t be able to rely on manual virtual machine selection much longer as new GPU-powered instances like AWS P5 keep popping up.

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The Cloud in Numbers

All About AI 

32% – this is how much an average SaaS portfolio grew between 2021 and 2023, despite staffing reductions and tighter budgets. 

$34 billion – Azure’s less-than-expected revenue in 2022, roughly half of what AWS made for the same period. 

$11 million – this is how much DigitalOcean spent on Paperspace, an AI-focused cloud computing startup (in cash).

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The Business of Cloud

Chip Stories

The US has all kinds of export controls to stop China from getting chips, especially for AI. The same regulations may soon apply to cloud services like AWS and others. Link

Nvidia has been diverting some of the AI chip supply away from the biggest cloud providers and towards smaller ones like CoreWeave. Meanwhile, the cloud giants are rushing to develop their own AI chips to decrease their reliance on Nvidia. Link

TSMC has been investing heavily in chip manufacturing in the US, but apparently, it has also been struggling to adjust to the local market conditions and get enough skilled workforce. Link

Akamai acquired Linode and announced the expansion of its cloud computing services to five new locations: Paris, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Seattle, and Chennai. Link

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Security & Outages

Free Cloud Security Logs For All

Microsoft will provide all its customers with free access to cloud security logs, a service that comes as part of a premium package. This is happening just weeks after US government officials’ cloud-based emails turned out to have been targeted by an alleged China-based hack. Link

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This series explores the most attention-grabbing cloud technology news, bringing you up to speed with the latest releases, acquisitions, research, and hidden gems in cloud computing – the stuff actually worth reading.