Category: Cloud Enable

Cloud Enable examines the options available to IT departments considering adopting or managing cloud-based architectures in their business environment.

Peek Into the Future by Following Test and Measurement

Monday.com
by Steven J. Schuchart Jr., posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader
S. Schuchart

Summary Bullets:

• The impact of IT technologies that are growing beyond IT is staggering and shows the need for advanced test and measurement.

• According to the GlobalData Deal Trends database, there have been over 20 acquisitions in this space since 2020 and numerous asset purchases and partnerships.

For every technology product that comes to market, both hardware and software, there is testing. One of the best ways to see where a market is heading, and what technologies are coming up in the next 4+ years, is to watch the testing market. The software testing market for development and deployment gets a lot of press – mostly because that kind of software testing is part of the production chain both at independent software vendors (ISVs) and in enterprises. However, the broader testing market is where the latest technologies that are not even close to release are being evaluated, where chip designers, chip manufacturers, engineers, and product companies are doing cutting edge research. These test tools can be specialized hardware, software, or both. In addition, many of the largest multinational enterprises use testing tools to validate and tweak advanced designs in their own IT and OT environments. Much of this research is done hand in hand with the testing equipment companies. Keeping an eye on what’s happening in the testing/measurement market shows clearly the investments being made for the future.

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Google Cloud Next 2024: Google Under Pressure Leads with Engineering-Driven Reputation

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
C. DunlapResearch Director

Summary Bullets:

• Google leads mega developer conference with its engineering-driven developer reputation.

• Key dev tools include Google’s Gemini Code Assist and Vertex AI Agent Builder.

Google was heavily scrutinized during the Google Cloud Next conference, particularly after 2023’s fumble during its foray into the generative AI (GenAI) space when, during a public GenAI demo, Google Bard returned a highly publicized inappropriate response. The company’s clear directive during its mega developer conference, Google Cloud Next, was to demonstrate its key role in the industry’s hottest emerging technology alongside GenAI and hyperscaler leaders. Its strategy: appeal to its strong following of enterprise developers where it has long established an engineering-driven reputation (through innovations such as cloud-native’s greatest open-source software technology to date, Kubernetes). Its messaging was around a Google Gemini-backed development initiative to make coding, platforms, and operations superior.

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European Commission Agrees Data Center Emissions Reporting Act

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate, IT Leader
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• The European Commission (EC) continues to set the benchmark for sustainability reporting in technology as part of the European Energy Efficiency Directive (EEED).

• Signs of ongoing innovation to mitigate climate damage from data centers and use scarce resources as efficiently as possible as demand continues to grow.

The European Union’s climate goals aim to “enhance present and future energy security and affordability.” With the information and communication technology (ICT) sector as a focus for sustainability, the EC notes that in 2018, the energy consumption of data centers in the EU was 76.8 TWh. This is expected to rise by 28% to 98.5 TWh by 2030, with data centers accounting for 3.2% of energy demand by 2030 (2018: 2.7%). It notes that “these projections are expected to be revised upwards considering the strong growth of emerging services and technologies such as streaming, cloud gaming, blockchain, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality.”

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AI is Hot, but Data Center is Hotter  

by siowmeng, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader
S. Soh

Summary Bullets:

• While both generative AI (GenAI) is having widespread interests, and more use cases are emerging, companies need to ensure the infrastructure does not become a bottleneck.

• GenAI will need new approaches from the processors to data centers and cooling systems to ensure the development can be efficient and sustainable.

AI continues to be a hot topic moving into 2024. The technology has evolved from predictive AI to GenAI and multi-modal GenAI, over a relatively short period of time. This technology is creating endless possibilities, and various use cases have started to emerge. For example, GenAI/AI have been applied for disease diagnosis, application development (assisted code development), marketing content creation, and demand forecasting for retail businesses. Against this backdrop, it is no surprise to see many forecasters expecting a rapid growth of revenue related to GenAI. However, amid the excitement, there have been concerns, particularly the need to address ethical issues and responsible AI. One area that AI technology providers have not been highlighting is the infrastructure, including the physical facility required to host the hardware for AI workloads.

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OSS Projects to Help Spur GenAI Adoption

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable

C. Dunlap
Research Director

Summary Bullets:
• Developers naturally flock to familiar forums to collaborate and learn about new technologies
• Early open-source software (OSS) projects leading the industry include OpenLLaMA, PyTorch, Nvidia Triton, and Ray/KubeRay

Never before have enterprise developers needed more access to emerging and unfamiliar technologies then during this era of app modernization and generative AI (GenAI). The sea change that GenAI has imposed on the industry has prompted a resurgence in the importance of having OSS alternatives available to developers.
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Need For AI Data Center Efficiency Drives Innovation

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, Communicate
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• SKT is partnering to use targeted liquid cooling with thermal fluids to lower the temperature of the hottest server components in its AI data centers.

• Industry estimates indicate AI will accelerate data center power and water consumption to the equivalent of major developed countries – causing growing concern.

South Korea Telecom (SKT), the South Korean communications company that is positioning itself as ‘an AI company,’ has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Iceotope Technologies and SK Enmove to collaborate on the development of liquid cooling solutions to optimize the energy efficiency of its AI data centers because air conditioning and cooling systems consume the largest amount of energy in data centers. It has been calculated that AI will cause energy usage at data centers to double from their present levels: The International Energy Agency (IEA) sees electricity consumption from data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency doubling by 2026, having globally consumer an estimated 460 TeraWatt-hours (TWh) in 2022. If that happened, demand would be roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan.

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Three is a Crowd: Microsoft Strikes Sweetheart Deal with Mistral while OpenAI Trains GPT-5

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Microsoft has signed a multiyear agreement with startup Mistral to include GenAI models in Microsoft’s Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning model catalog.

• Mistral-Large is a new LLM that introduces native fluency in English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian.

Microsoft has signed a multiyear agreement with GenAI startup Mistral, signaling the hyperscaler’s ambitions to branch out from its relationship with trailblazer OpenAI, based in San Francisco, California (US), and explore more diverse opportunities. The alliance makes Mistral the second company to provide commercial large language models (LLMs) on the Microsoft Azure platform. Microsoft has partnerships with Meta and Hugging Face, whose open-source models are also available on Microsoft Azure.

Continue reading “Three is a Crowd: Microsoft Strikes Sweetheart Deal with Mistral while OpenAI Trains GPT-5” →

Generative AI Watch: New Zoom AI Companion Capabilities Keep Zoom in the Race

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• With these latest announcements, Zoom continues the rapid build out of its GenAI portfolio.

• The advent of GenAI has leveled the playing field between Zoom and rivals such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Google.

Zoom continues to aggressively expand its portfolio of AI capabilities with a new round of features targeted at admins, contact center agents, and meeting participants. The features are part of ‘Zoom AI Companion,’ a generative AI (GenAI) assistant launched in September 2023. Zoom AI Companion is available at no additional cost for customers with paid services assigned to their Zoom user accounts.

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Google Cloud and Hugging Face Enable GenAI Developers

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Google Cloud and open-source startup Hugging Face signed a deal to share hardware, cloud infrastructure, open data, and open-source models and libraries.

• The partnership meets growing enterprise demand for generative AI (GenAI) software that is optimized for specific tasks and reflects the increasing popularity of open-source applications.

Google Cloud and Hugging Face announced an agreement that will enable developers to access the Google Cloud infrastructure to fine-tune and operate Hugging Face’s open-source models without the need for a Google Cloud subscription. The partnership will also enable Google Cloud customers to train and deploy Hugging Face models within Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and Vertex AI, the company’s ML platform offering Gemini, a multimodal platform from Google DeepMind. Vertex AI and GKE will be available on the Hugging Face platform during H1 2024.

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Cloud-Based Collaboration in 2024: Change Will Come on Multiple Fronts

by Gregg Willsky, posted in Cloud Enable, Communicate
G. Willsky

Summary Bullets:

• The pandemic drove the ascent of cloud-based collaboration platforms, and the ripple effects are still being felt today.

• In 2024, AI – along with the contact center, hybrid work, and mobility – will witness important new dynamics.

Recently, dramatic winds of change have swept across cloud-based collaboration platforms. The pandemic drove the ascent of these platforms and competitors battled in successive rounds of feature enhancements. Cooler heads eventually prevailed, and a ‘truce’ was issued in the form of interoperability between rival platforms. In 2023, things came full circle with competitors reaching deep into AI’s treasure trove and circulating AI features platform-wide. However, AI was not the only force shaping the landscape. 2024 promises to be as exciting as 2023. Along with AI, GlobalData expects contact center, hybrid work, and mobility to witness important new dynamics.

Continue reading “Cloud-Based Collaboration in 2024: Change Will Come on Multiple Fronts” →