Cloud Technology News of the Month: March 2023
Tags: news, cloud, devops, kubernetes
Published: 2023-03-02 09:28:37

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<p>Is FinOps worth the time and money? ⏳</p>
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<p>Keep reading to find out what happened in the cloud world last month.</p>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-story-of-the-month">Story of the Month</h2>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-when-not-automated-finops-can-end-up-eating-your-savings">When Not Automated, FinOps Can End Up Eating Your Savings</h3>
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<p>When used correctly, FinOps tooling helps teams optimize cloud resource utilization, demand planning, and consumption modeling.&nbsp;</p>
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<p>However, many businesses that use manual cloud cost management tools waste far too much time tinkering. As the cloud computing expert <a href="https://www.infoworld.com/article/3688332/when-finops-costs-you-more-in-the-end.html">David Linthicum</a> points out, such “avoidable mistakes end up costing more money than is being saved.”&nbsp;</p>
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<p>If you’re looking to dramatically reduce your cloud costs, do these two things:</p>
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<li>Check the cost of services and time involved in your optimization strategy.&nbsp;</li>
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<li>And start using an <a href="https://cast.ai/blog/kubernetes-automation-7-reasons-why-cast-ai-beats-savings-plans-and-reserved-instances/">automated cost optimization solution</a> that minimizes the time engineers spend on manual configuration.</li>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-cloud-in-numbers">The Cloud in Numbers</h2>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-new-data-centers-grow">Where New Data Centers Grow</h3>
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<figure class="wp-block-image"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/WrUqTShb4Yd3cp3tlrOsDq0BzNgNYSGCkpD-FZyZVdJWEPfnQmhs2JH9oziKCfOhlbSUrGZ4ZseVlbpQ9eTH_IRqkloNh1zq3rfwPOfKFKwTzc6CX-JkpkIEtS-kuGXcg-kW3jze7rQdPMJwyEsK-W8" alt=""/></figure>
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<p class="has-text-align-center">Source: <a href="https://www.chartr.co/newsletters/2022-12-09">Chartr</a></p>
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<p><strong>1 million</strong> – this is the number of users <strong>ChatGPT</strong> reached in just 5 days after launching at the end of November 2022. It took Instagram and Spotify around 2.5 months and 5 months, respectively, to achieve the same.&nbsp;</p>
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<p><strong>$300 million </strong>– Google <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/583ead66-467c-4bd5-84d0-ed5df7b5bf9c">invested</a> this sum in Anthropic, which focuses on safety for GenML chat systems.&nbsp;</p>
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<p><strong>2</strong> – the number of <a href="https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/aws-linked-company-files-plans-for-two-massive-data-center-campus-in-new-albany-ohio/">new massive data center campuses</a> an <strong>AWS-affiliated company</strong> is planning to build in <strong>Ohio</strong>.</p>
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<p><strong>275</strong> – that’s how many<strong> data centers</strong> Northern Virginia is home to. They handle a third of the world’s online usage and, according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/10/data-centers-northern-virginia-internet/">Washington Post</a>, cause a stir in the local communities which suffer due to the constant whir of the rooftop exhaust fans.</p>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-business-of-cloud">The Business of Cloud</h2>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-cloud-repatriation-saga-continues">The Cloud Repatriation Saga Continues</h3>
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<p><strong>DHH</strong> is back with some more numbers about <strong>Basecamp’s cloud exit</strong>. The company’s preliminary calculations show that they will save about $7 million in server expenses over five years from the move, without changing the size of their Ops team. Let’s see how this repatriation story continues when the market bounces back…</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/we-stand-to-save-7m-over-five-years-from-our-cloud-exit-53996caa">Hey</a></p>
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<p>Tech companies are radically <strong>cutting their vendor costs</strong>. Gergely Orosz shows how these cuts are spread between infrastructure tooling (cloud, observability, security), as well as collaboration tools, developer experience, sales, HR, and recruitment.</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/vendor-spend-cuts">Pragmatic Engineer</a></p>
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<p><strong>Generative AI </strong>is all the rage, but all the users who generate images with DALL-E or write term papers with ChatGPT <strong>consume a lot of cloud resources</strong>. Who’s going to pay for it? And what about the environmental cost?&nbsp;</p>
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<p>The publication argues that companies need to step into AI development projects with a clear understanding of the costs and the impact on sustainability.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://www.infoworld.com/article/3688348/the-cost-and-sustainability-of-generative-ai.html">InfoWorld</a></p>
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<p>_____</p>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-security-outages">Security &amp; Outages</h2>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-kubernetes-adoption-challenges-devops">Kubernetes Adoption Challenges DevOps</h3>
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<p><strong>2023 Kubernetes Benchmark Report</strong> is here and shows that DevOps struggle to manage the potential configuration risks coming from new teams adopting K8s. Instead of&nbsp; relying on manual processes for cross-checking policies, teams should automate Kubernetes governance, configuration, and security. The <a href="https://cast.ai/cloud-security/">CAST AI Cluster Security report</a> helps exactly in this area.</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://www.fairwinds.com/blog/2023-kubernetes-benchmark-report">2023 Kubernetes Benchmark Report</a></p>
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<p>This had to happen sooner or later - we now have <strong>CloudGPT</strong> that promises to analyze AWS policies for vulnerabilities. Consider how often ChatGPT gets things wrong before diving in.</p>
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<p>Source: <a href="https://click.lastweekinaws.com/n4ul976qoxivh8o2m0kb6/x0hph3ungxp7ekf5/aHR0cHM6Ly9naXN0LmdpdGh1Yi5jb20vdXN0YXlyZWFkeS9jMjllOWY5ZGNhMGEwYjgxNzBmYmRmZWMxMWFmYzM0OQ==">GitHub</a></p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-">_____</h3>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-brought-to-you-by-cast-ai">Brought to you by CAST AI</h2>
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<p>CAST AI automates Kubernetes cost, performance, and security management for hundreds of companies of all sizes. The platform delivers over 60% cost savings for its clients without requiring months of onboarding to see the results.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
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<p>_____</p>
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<p>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.</p>
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