The exponential growth of data, and in particular unstructured data, is a problem enterprises have been wrestling with for decades. IT organizations are in a constant battle between ensuring that data is accessible to users, one the one hand, and that the data is globally protected and in compliance with data governance policies, on the other. Added to this is the need to ensure that files are stored in the most cost-effective manner possible, on whichever storage is best at that point in time. The problem is there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all storage platform that can serve as the ..read more

As I’ve been saying for the past year or so, cloud conferences have become generative AI conferences, as have data center conferences, databases conferences, and you name it. It’s clearly more than just a trend—it’s a game-changing push. But we’ve seen this happen enough times in the past 30 years to know nothing is guaranteed to be a true trend. Remember “push technology?” Exactly. As enterprises rush headlong into generative AI, selecting an appropriate infrastructure is critical for optimal performance and cost-effectiveness. Comparing cloud computing and traditional on-premises solutions r ..read more

Some developers and business leaders believe that low-code is only for small, lightly used applications such as replacing spreadsheets and building dashboards. “These tools, in general, aren’t well suited to more advanced applications,” says Steve Jones, devops advocate at  Red Gate Software. With heavier use and more complex data manipulation requirements, he says, “they often start to fail and cause workload and performance issues.” I've used low-code and no-code platforms for over two decades and have written extensively about them, including articles on how generative AI is changing l ..read more

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has slowly and silently phased out its Snowmobile service—an offering launched at its annual AWS re:Invent conference in 2016 to help enterprises move data from their on-premises servers to the cloud provider’s data centers to accelerate their migration to the public cloud. The Snowmobile service, essentially an eighteen-wheel truck and trailer or “big rig” with 100 petabyte data storage and network connectivity, was commissioned by AWS then-CEO Andy Jassy (now CEO of Amazon) to help enterprises who wanted to transfer vast amounts of data, measured in the petabytes or ..read more

Asia/Pacific companies are struggling with wasteful cloud spending, according to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting. The study found that cloud cost management initiatives and tools are being introduced too late and without a full picture of their environment to be very effective. The study, paid for by IPaaS provider Boomi, found that 87% had exceeded their set cloud budgets over the past two years and that 69% foresee exceeding their cloud budgets during the current fiscal year. In other words, we’ve spent too much money on the cloud and will continue to spend too mu ..read more

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company, has updated its Assistants API with a faster, more accurate file search tool, vector stores, and a tool choice parameter. OpenAI announced the Assistants API update on April 17. The new file_search tool can retrieve as many as 10,000 files per assistant. It connects models with developers' data to assist in building applications relevant to an organization or use case. The tool works with the new vector store objects for automated file parsing, chunking, and embedding. New token controls, tool-choice capabilities, and added support for ..read more

Open-source database provider Qdrant has made available Qdrant Hybrid Cloud, a dedicated vector database to be offered in a managed hybrid cloud model. Qdrant, the open-source foundation of both Qdrant Cloud and Qdrant Hybrid Cloud, is a vector similarity search engine and vector database written in Rust. Qdrant offers a set of features for performance optimization and can handle billions of vectors with scale and memory safety, the company said.  To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

Modern software applications are underpinned by a large and growing web of APIs, microservices, and cloud services that must be highly available, fault tolerant, and secure. The underlying networking technology must support all of these requirements, of course, but also explosive growth. Unfortunately, the previous generation of technologies are too expensive, brittle, and poorly integrated to adequately solve this challenge. Combined with non-optimal organizational practices, regulatory compliance requirements, and the need to deliver software faster, a new generation of technology is needed ..read more

In the past two years, I’ve been involved with generative AI projects using large language models (LLMs) more than traditional systems. I’ve become nostalgic for serverless cloud computing. Their applications range from enhancing conversational AI to providing complex analytical solutions across industries and many functions beyond that. Many enterprises deploy these models on cloud platforms because there is a ready-made ecosystem of public cloud providers and it’s the path of least resistance. However, it’s not cheap. To read this article in full, please click here ..read more

“The cloud has tremendous business value!” That’s the battle cry chanted by cloud providers and their allies at every cloud computing conference. You will never hear me say that “the cloud” is always the right solution or, for that matter, the wrong solution. In my 20-plus years as a cloud expert, I’ve never blindly followed the lead of cloud computing pioneers or adopters. Like any other technology trend and category, cloud computing should be considered on a case-by-case basis. This balanced approach may have cost me some friends and perhaps some jobs, but I believe this will remain the righ ..read more