More than 80 top cloud and telco executives met up with us in sunny Sonoma, Calif., last week for Silverlinings Cloud Executive Summit to discuss all things cloud, artificial intelligence, open source, security and network automation.
Over two days of discussion and networking activities, CTOs, top engineers and policy gurus let fly with what they really think of the cloud, the opportunities it presents and the (numerous) challenges.
The editorial team was on hand to capture the conversations and the pictures so below are a few scenes from the show and some takeaways that stole the show.
1) There's a lot of hate for multi-cloud
Oracle claimed in a recent study that 98% of enterprises are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy, but that doesn't necessarily mean everyone is embracing the trend. We were surprised to hear several panelists speak out against using multiple clouds just for the heck of it. They argued abstraction platforms can remove some of the unique value adds each cloud offers and said pursuit of multi-cloud should be based on a specific business reason.
Dara Meath, CTO of Build-a-Bear Workshop, said she is a proponent of a single-cloud architecture with Microsoft Azure. Read more about her cloud strategy here: Build-a-Bear CTO builds a cloud army.
Meath also spoke on a panel moderated by Leonard Lee, founder and executive analyst of neXt Curve, about cloud costs with Carolyn Duby, Field CTO of Cloudera. (See picture below.)
2) Nobody knows quite what to expect from AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) may be all the rage, but there are still a ton of questions about what the future holds for the technology. Anne Flanagan, an international tech policy expert, specifically called attention to the shifting regulatory environment and what new rules could mean for how AI can be used and spread. AT&T's Chris Hristov, added it's also proving to be tough for companies to prioritize AI use cases. (See picture below.)
3) Legacy (still) runs the world
Like many conferences, the Cloud Executive Summit was fairly forward-looking. But Flanagan, who spoke on a panel about automation and AI said that as far as infrastructure goes, the past is still king. Whether legacy infrastructure will ever fully be replaced remains to be seen — and Dell'Oro's Mauricio Sanchez said he still sees a lot of "Whack-a-mole" scenarios. (See picture above.)
4) Generative AI models degenerate over time
During the forward-looking “Where do we go from here?” panel, one particularly interesting comment came from neXt Curve analyst Leonard Lee.
Responding to an argument from Equinix’s Steve Madden that generative AI is economically sustainable since not everyone will need to train their own model, Lee noted, “One of the things people don’t talk about is that generative AI models degenerate over time. Think of it as generative dementia, AI dementia…so they will need to be maintained.”
He continued: “The whole process for managing a generative AI application over time is not well-known. It’s too early. Most of these things are in [Proof of Concept] right now the efforts by enterprises. So, it’s yet to be seen, but I think it’s too early to say there’s an economically scalable implementation happening....” (See picture below.)
5) Trust is important for new technologies but erodes fast
Trust, it turns out, is a precious resource for vendors looking to get companies to adopt new technologies like AI and automation. But it's a finicky thing. Once a mistake is made, trust is quickly lost and can result in companies walking back or altogether abandoning their efforts to adopt new tech. The motto is less "move fast and break things" and more "slow and steady wins the race," Sanchez' panelists said.
6) IoT, narrowband IoT, 5G and MEC have not materialized as promised
AT&T's Chris Hristov may have said it, but former Rakuten Symphony North America CEO Azita Arvani explained during her keynote why 5G hasn't lived up to its promise. Monetization efforts were largely expected to focus on network slices and slicing, she argued, hasn't happened as expected because operators haven't gone all in on network disaggregation. (See picture below.)
7) The cloud's open-source foundation is facing a huge security issue
It's commonly known that 90% of cloud infrastructure is based on open-source software. Less known is the fact that the maintainers of many critical open source projects are aging out without replacements. Kubernetes co-founder and Stacklok CEO Craig McLuckie warned attendees this is slowly setting the stage for a huge security issue for cloud companies and enterprises alike. (See picture below.)
Read all of our content from the Cloud Executive Summit here.