Entries by Dr. Owen Rogers, Senior Research Director for Cloud Computing, Uptime Institute, orogers@uptimeinstitute.com

How AWS’s own silicon and software deliver cloud scalability

Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the world’s first hyperscale cloud provider, and it remains the largest today. It represents around one-third of the global market, offering more than 200 infrastructure, platform and software services across 34 regions. To efficiently deliver so many services at such a scale, AWS designs and builds much of its own […]

Sweat dedicated GPU clusters to beat cloud on cost

Over the past year, demand for GPUs to train generative AI models has soared. Some organizations have invested in GPU clusters costing millions of dollars for this purpose. Cloud services offered by the major hyperscalers and a new wave of GPU-focused cloud providers deliver an alternative to dedicated infrastructure for those unwilling, or unable, to […]

Use tools to control cloud costs before it’s too late

The public cloud’s on-demand pricing model is vital in enabling application scalability — the key benefit of cloud computing. Resources need to be readily available for a cloud application to scale when required without the customer having to give advance notification. Cloud providers can offer such flexibility by allowing customers to pay their bills in […]

Where the cloud meets the edge

Low latency is the main reason cloud providers offer edge services. Only a few years ago, the same providers argued that the public cloud (hosted in hyperscale data centers) was suitable for most workloads. But as organizations have remained steadfast in their need for low latency and better data control, providers have softened their resistance […]

Cloud resiliency: plan to lose control of your planes

Cloud providers divide the technologies that underpin their services into two ”planes”, each with a different architecture and availability goal. The control plane manages resources in the cloud; the data plane runs the cloud buyer’s application. In this Update, Uptime Institute Intelligence presents research that shows control planes have poorer availability than data planes. This […]

Data shows the cloud goes where the money is

Hyperscale cloud providers have opened numerous operating regions in all corners of the world over the past decade. The three most prominent — Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure — now have 105 distinct regions (excluding government and edge locations) for customers to choose from to locate their applications and data. Over […]

Asset utilization drives cloud repatriation economics

The past decade has seen numerous reports of so-called cloud “repatriations” — the migration of applications back to on-premises venues following negative experiences with, or unsuccessful migrations to, the public cloud. A recent Uptime Update (High costs drive cloud repatriation, but impact is overstated) examined why these migrations might occur. The Update revealed that unexpected […]

Cloud migrations to face closer scrutiny

Big public-cloud operators have often had to compete against each other — sometimes ferociously. Only rarely have they had to compete against alternative platforms for corporate IT, however. More often than not, chief information officers (CIOs) responsible for mission-critical IT have seen a move to the public cloud as low-risk, flexible, forward-looking and, ultimately, inexpensive. […]

High costs drive cloud repatriation, but impact is overstated

Unexpected costs are driving some data-heavy and legacy applications back from public-cloud to on-premises locations. However, very few organizations are moving away from the public cloud strategically — let alone altogether. The past decade has seen numerous reports of so-called cloud “repatriations” — the migration of applications back to on-premises venues following negative experiences with, […]

Is Google a credible enterprise cloud?

Google was an underdog when it launched its infrastructure cloud in 2013. Amazon had already made a name for itself as a disruptive technology provider, having launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) seven years prior. Microsoft, a household name in commercial software, launched Azure in 2010. What chance did Google, a company known primarily for its […]