For as long as I can remember, I have been focused on finding “what’s next” in technology; some of my “what’s nexts” have been stickier than others. I have boxes and drawers full of devices and tech that never caught on (Popcorn Hour, IOT everything, personal robotics) and countless research notebooks on topics that went nowhere (FLAPE, single pane of cloud); I also have a resume built on topics like Virtualization, Cloud, Disaster Recovery, and Observability that have propelled my career. As a technologist I am perpetually looking toward the future, trying to connect the dots between where we are today, the technology being developed that could impact our present state, the evolving variables that will require a shift or change as we scale, and most importantly, what our customers want. I’m currently watching two trends that might just be the next big thing in the infrastructure space:
AI Inferencing Leading to Edge
Clearly, I am not the only one watching the AI race that is happening right now. Data centers are being built at a rapid pace to support the insane amount of NVIDIA cards being consumed. But what’s not being talked about is the next phase, the inference phase, which is where I see the biggest opportunity as an infrastructure provider. Industry analysts and government offices are predicting that by 2030 we will triple the amount of power being consumed by data centers and will enter a $3 trillion total addressable market of IT spend. This switch from centralization to decentralization will drive the largest infrastructure spend we have ever seen as we race to get data and compute to the consumer’s edge.
How do we do that? Edge. Or said differently, private cloud computing plus fiber and the use of a true multi-cloud. This is a key bet for US Signal and why we are making investments into both our fiber infrastructure — with 500+ route miles under construction today — and our cloud infrastructure with Open Cloud.
The 10,000 route miles of owned and operated fiber will create the high bandwidth/low latency pathways to connect data centers to the people and the new edge that is being formed.
Open Cloud is built on Apache CloudStack and is a market-disrupting scalable private cloud that can be located anywhere you want (https://projector.cloud-mercato.com/projects/us-signal-compute-benchmark). Open Cloud is in our data centers today and we expect to quickly morph to a hybrid model where it is located at our customers’ sites, partner data centers, and eventually our fiber regeneration points, dramatically reducing the latency we serve our customers. The best thing about Open Cloud is that it is, well, open – so, as a community, we will be able to evolve it to service the constant change needed to innovate.
These two infrastructure plays will allow us to provide a ubiquitous platform enabling any business to get closer to their end user and providing the instant insight, content, or interaction they require.
Generative AI Leading to Cloud Repatriation
Generative AI is the most talked about and fastest adopted technology of our time. With the cost of token dropping rapidly, we are looking at a future where everyone and anyone can enhance their intelligence by simply asking an all-powerful machine. Democratization of AI is a big shift; a monster wave is coming, and it is going to push every business to think differently about their IT spend.
So how does this link to Cloud Repatriation? Public Cloud can consume up to 50-60% of a company’s IT budget and is very well publicized to be considerably more expensive than what the decision maker expected. The overrun of budget is typically because the team used public cloud when what they really needed and wanted was a cloud like experience of virtualization now known as private cloud. In 2025 and beyond, I expect that enterprises will repatriate some of their IT workload to private cloud to reduce their monthly expenses and enable them to repurpose budget to strategic business objectives like Generative AI. 37signals was very vocal about its repatriation out of AWS and the $2 million annual savings realized, and GEICO is now making significant noise with its journey out of Azure. I think these two are very early adopters and a big wave is forming. Multi-cloud will be here soon as all businesses need to embrace public and private cloud to solve their needs.
At US Signal, we are working hard to understand the technology landscape, listening to our customers, and making bets that will move our business forward while providing a vision for the future for our customers. With anything in technology, this journey will have head winds that will keep us from achieving our vision; I detailed some thoughts on those subjects at my presentation at the 2024 CloudStack Collaboration Conference in Madrid, you can watch the full video here:
About John White, COO, US Signal
John White is a highly experienced and innovative leader, with a proven track record of driving growth and operational excellence. With previous roles as Chief Innovation Officer at Effectual and Expedient, John has led significant transformations, optimized technology, spearheaded acquisitions, and developed strategic partnerships that have resulted in increased profitability and customer satisfaction.
As the current COO at US Signal, John brings his extensive expertise to continue leading the company’s growth and evolution as a leading provider of infrastructure and cloud services.
Ivet Petrova is the Marketing Director of ShapeBlue. She is responsible for strengthening ShapeBlue’s global brand and market awareness of ShapeBlue’s services. Specifically, Ivet’s team is responsible for brand, advertising, content and digital marketing, social media, and media relations.
Ivet is also an active member of the CloudStack community, working on increasing the awareness of the technology and showing its benefits to a wider market.
Ivet has 13+ years of experience in marketing for IT service providers including a number of cloud and hosting providers, storage companies, SaaS providers and software development companies. She holds a Masters degree in Marketing.
Away from work, Ivet is passionate about travelling around the world and exploring new cultures.
