OK Cloud, On-Prem is Alright - A case for private cloud, or, if you prefer the “a nicely automated VM or container environment” view: on-premises. I’d summarize it to: there isn’t enough ROI to motivate everyone to change, even spend the time to decide to change.
IBM Is Buying HashiCorp. What Comes Next? - Good analysis of the possible business strategy, the synergies to activate. // “Customers in specific industries, often highly regulated and conservative in outlook, have often chosen IBM and continue to do so. For them, the value of cloud is complementary at the margins, not a wholesale change to the core. They are pragmatic, serious guardians of the established order, not revolutionaries hell-bent on destroying and replacing the Ancien Régime."
Spring Now Offers Free Access for the Spring Academy Pro Content - Free Spring training for all: “The Spring team has announced that the Pro Content from their Spring Academy will no longer require a paid subscription, effective April 5th 2024, to improve the learning experience for the Spring community. The Spring Academy will continue to provide new content in the future."
The Chilling of TikTok - Yeah, never good for a tech company to be get its feelings hurt: “the bigger concern will simply be the distraction of it all. Product decisions will take longer. Timelines will slip. Executives will be absent. Employees will leave."
A Shift in LLM Marketing : The Rise of the B2B Model - Enterprise AI requirements are different than consumer AI requirements: “For a data-focused customer base, SQL generation, code completion for Python, & following instructions matter more than encyclopedic knowledge of Napoleon’s doomed march to Moscow."
Inside TSMC’s Phoenix, Arizona expansion struggles - Rest of World - Sounds like a shitty place to work! Long hours, sometimes filled with low value work. The TSMC people must think Europeans are insane. In contrast, for the American work-culture, this feels like a “thank the unions” story.
IBM to acquire Hashi for $6.4 billion, seeks software boost - Enterprise AI businesses case are difficult: “But he also said buyers’ initial enthusiasm for generative AI has eased as they ponder whether it can generate return on investment. Users are finding that applying generative AI to a single business process could cost as much as $300 million, a figure Krishna said is unlikely to produce positive ROI."
The cloud is benefiting IT, but not business - “The central promise of cloud computing was to usher in a new era of agility, cost savings, and innovation for businesses. However, according to the McKinsey survey, only one-third of European companies actively monitor non-IT outcomes after migrating to the cloud, which suggests a less optimistic picture. Moreover, 71% of companies measured the impact of cloud adoption solely through the prism of IT operational improvements rather than core business benefits.” And: “Only 32% report new revenue generation despite having invested hundreds of millions of dollars in cloud computing.” N=“50 European cloud leaders.” // So, backward-looking FUD, sure
Tech Time Capsule: Early 1990s Clip Art Captured an Era - Good stuff.
AI isn’t useless. But is it worth it? - “they do a poor job of much of what people try to do with them, they can’t do the things their creators claim they one day might, and many of the things they are well suited to do may not be altogether that beneficial.” // I’ve lost the links to the Tweets-n-shit on this sentiment, but I’m more less like this: most of the time I try house AI to create, it would have just been faster and easier to do it myself. AI is great of search and for learning (I spent an hour figuring out NPV and discount rateing as applied to non-economic thinking everyday life - ChatGPT was great at this!). AI is not good at creating…if you’re already an expert.