¶ NaaS and AI Partnership
I don't know . I think it's extremely broadly defined to get to this clickbait number , or that they actually believe it and they just don't understand what NAS actually is .
I mean not that any of us are NAS experts , because I don't know who's figured out yet what NAS is , but to me , network as a service is not just anything that's delivered running over a network . Welcome to the Cables to Clouds podcast , your one-stop shop for all things hybrid and multi-cloud networking . Now here are your hosts , tim , chris and .
Alex . Hello , welcome back to another episode of the Cables to Clouds fortnightly news podcast . I still can't get it right whether we're saying bi-weekly or fortnightly , but yeah , so here's going to be your next roundup of cloud news for the last two weeks .
My name is Chris Miles at BGP Main on Twitter , and joined as always are my beautiful co-host , tim McConaughey at Juan Gomez on Twitter and Alex Perkins at Bumps in the Wire on Twitter . So , without further ado , let's go ahead and jump into it . So we have a few articles to cover this week . Again , we put all this into a public facing document .
So if you want to look at any of these articles in depth and there's actually some extra news offerings in there that we don't talk about on the show as well so if you want to have a look in the show notes once this episode's over and have a further look , please do and let us know if you had any feedback .
All right , first up , so we have a news article here from Globe Newswire , which is all about basically a summary from a report , a research report that was put together by SNS Insider , talking about the network as a service , market size growing by 2032 up to 285 billion with B .
So as of , I believe it's saying as of right now , it's valued at about 19.2 billion , or sorry , 19.2 billion in 2023 . So last year , and they're expecting it to reach up to about $285 billion by 2032 .
So they kind of correlate this to the typical stuff widespread adoption of cloud , the need for agility , the need for scalable networks on demand type thing Pretty much just sounds like the cloud , to be honest with you , the way it's described in this , but it's for network as a service , and they emphasize a bit about the government investments in this realm , which
is , as we know , is a very popular thing . They mentioned some of the major players that they have in this particular bit of research here and it's , I'll be honest with you , it was kind of surprising to me to see some of these major players that they have listed out being , you know , juniper , cisco , ibm , vmware , even AT&T , ariaka , things like that .
And then they kind of mentioned some newcomers being like companies like Akamai and Cloudflare working with Kindrel . It's weird they bring up Cloudflare working with Kindrel that's deploying a Versa solution , so it's layered in there . But this is interesting .
I knew network as a service was going to be a popular thing since its inception a few years back be a popular thing since its inception a few years back . But one thing that is really confusing to me by at least a report like this is it seems like the classification of network as a service is so , so broad .
Anything can be counted as network as a service and I'm wondering if that's maybe why the market cap is growing so much . I don't know . The more I read about this , the more I just figured that just sounds like standard networking to me , or it sounds like SD-WAN , or it sounds like cloud right . So it was kind of confusing to me .
Yeah , I think the biggest thing I took away from this article is that the people who wrote this report I don't know who they're talking to , but they're obviously talking to the old guard , Because network is a service you don't see Graphian in this list . You don't see Nile at all . Where the hell is Nile in this list ?
They're on the Gartner magic quadrant for this list , they're not in this article , and so I actually take their numbers with a huge grain of salt , especially because they're so broadly defining it , so like they put Cloudflare in here , right . Or like content delivery networks .
I know it has the word network in it , but like the content delivery network isn't , in my opinion , network as a service , because you know we're not delivering network services , we're delivering content , right , like I don't know .
I think it's extremely broadly defined to get to this clickbait number , or that they actually believe it and they just don't understand what NAS actually is . I mean not that any of us are NAS experts , because I don't know who's figured out yet what NAS is , but to me network as a service is not just anything that's delivered running over a network .
Yeah , I completely agree with both of you . I mean it's weird because they also call out WAN as a service and LAN as a service in this article and it's like , why are you even doing that ? That doesn't even make sense . If you have network as a service , why are you sub-compartmentalizing even more ?
And I agree , there's not really a good definition of of NAS . Like we were trying to look this up and if you search it , niall has an article where they are announcing that they're in the Gartner magic quadrant for NAS , but there's no , like good definition of what a NAS actually is .
And yeah , like Juniper being in here , what do they have that has anything to do with cloud or even NAS ?
Yeah , yeah , one thing that it was . I will say that I was . I read this report and I immediately was like maybe I just don't understand what NAS is . Maybe that's my fault . So I threw it into chat GPT and I said what is network as a service ?
And I'll be honest , the response it gave me was just as broad and it did include content delivery networks , which I guess in a sense I can fully understand how that's a network as a service . Right , you're paying for the distribution of the content , the caching of the content , but it's like it's kind of it's not just the network , right ?
It's over a network . But it's so much more than that Like I don't think you would say it's . I mean , if you said cdn as a service , sure like , but like network has more terms . Yeah , exactly , database as a service yeah , um , but yeah , so , yeah , that's good , all right well , we'll .
We'll get a definition of nas at some point and and we'll talk about it in one of our shows . Let's move on to the mandatory AI announcements . So Scale AI I'm going to call them , even though we realized if you type in scaleai it redirects to scalecom , which was , I thought , a little weird .
They announced a partnership , a multi-year strategic partnership , with AWS to accelerate enterprise and public sector generative AI adoption .
So I don't know a whole lot about this platform , but what my understanding is they are kind of a middleman between your enterprise data and all these different models that are available and out there , especially in something like AWS , where they have Amazon Bedrock , which is like a marketplace basically for a bunch of different kinds of models .
So it seems like the gist of this is you scale , takes your data and then they interface with all these different platforms and they return your data in a way that makes it much easier for these businesses to kind of use and actually get useful information from and understand , because when you ask an AI for something , you get a lot of responses back and sifting
through all that data like people that are not working with this every day might have a lot of trouble kind of figuring all that out . So scale is there to kind of help them figure out what to do with the responses and kind of how to secure their data as well , which is something we talk about a lot on here .
The thing I thought was kind of how to secure their data as well , which is something we talk about a lot on here . The thing I thought was kind of funny . I was looking up some of these . If you look at some of the links in this article , it kind of goes into their marketplace
¶ AI Platform Pricing and Security Considerations
pages . With AWS , this platform is a million dollars a month , and then there's also tokens for use when you use it , and that's just for the regular scale . It's called the ScaleGenAI platform .
And then they announced also this scale Donovan product , which is supposed to be for public sector customers , which I'm sure you know is meant to be more secure , and that has its own its own like charge on top of all of this . So AI is already expensive .
I don't know people that are also going to spend another million dollars a month plus usage tokens on top of what they're already having to spend for ai .
So that's what do you guys think , dude ? That's insane . Like a million dollars a month . I know I get it right . The the all the checkbooks are open with blank checks for generative ai . Anything , right , if you put ai on something , all of a sudden everybody's got infinite money for it , but that's just .
I can't even imagine the value , because you think about it right like . A business has to figure out what is the value add , what is the ROI on this investment . What business has so much data available that needs this extra layer of sifting and structuring that the time they will save is equal to or exceeding a million dollars a month ? Yeah , exactly .
Well , I mean , let's give them the benefit of the doubt here .
So when we say a million dollars a month , it's what's listed on the marketplace AWS marketplace , true , yep , as someone that works for a vendor that exchanges with customers or , sorry , transacts with customers out of the AWS marketplace , there are private offers to get around this stuff all the time .
That might be a list price that's just put out there to make sure that customers aren't directly consuming this platform without you know , working with you know sales reps to you know come to a term deal or something like that , I don't know , but nonetheless , that is the price tag on there and that's going to deter a lot of people right off the bat .
Um , given like I don't like I get the need for this . Where they're going , um , where they're going with you know , like you know the customers out there want to consume AI , but they don't have this large amount of trust , um , and , and you know they have data privacy and security concerns and things like that .
But I don't necessarily see how this man in the middle is this man in the middle just to say that , hey , we're going to protect you from AWS in the long run , because we've been making that argument on this pod for a while that is it really safe to give all your data just to AWS without batting an eye ?
But are you , in turn , just giving it to scale in this scenario ? I don't necessarily understand that .
That's what it sounds like , so you give it to them .
I don't know . Do you know , alex ? Did they say this was exclusive with AWS ? Are we planning to see this probably come out for Azure and GCP and then it just be this man-in-the-middle platform that you exchange data with that runs the AI inferencing on the back end ?
Yeah , it's definitely not exclusive , because I did see somewhere I don't think it's in this article , but somewhere when I was researching , I saw that they have some kind of partnership with OpenAI as well . But they have some kind of partnership with open AI as well . Yeah , so it's not exclusive .
But I think the reason it's significant with AWS is because I don't the Microsoft or GCP even have a marketplace . That's kind of like bedrock , right . Aws is the only one that has like a multiple model options right , like Azure and GCP . just have open AI and offering and that's it Right . And Gemini right .
That's a and that's it right . Gemini right . That's a fair point .
But yeah , like you said , even that they have this specific product called Donovan , which looks like it's marketed specifically towards the public sector and government , which is surprising because I think , as we all know , probably the public sector and government , fedramp , things like that are not early adopters in this realm , so I'm surprised they're even leading with
this , to be honest with you . But you know , I guess they're also going to be the ones that are going to be the most stringent about their , you know , data privacy and things like that .
Yeah , I think that's them like trying to get ahead of things , because if you look at Donovan , it even says that they're working towards FedRAMP high accreditation . They don't have it and that process takes a significant amount of time .
So I think it's just them drumming up interest they're beating the drum on this and saying , hey , we're going to government , you should use us , basically . And it does say that Donovan has some kind of I guess they must have some kind of weighting in there .
That is specifically for defense and intelligence agency , just common things that agencies like that would use . It sounds like .
I don't see the government , those agencies specifically , ever , no matter what certifications are issued , handing over the keys to the kingdom to any company right .
It does depend on the agency , right , Because you have GovCloud . This is publicly available knowledge . You have data centers that are built supposedly on the CIA campus basically . So there is stuff like that , but I I it's very agency dependent Like you're not going to get a lot of these small agencies that are using stuff like this .
It's going to be the very well-known , well-funded , more secretive agencies , for sure .
Tim , are you ? Are you implying that the government typically operates with the with the actual benefit of the consumer in mind ?
oh no , I would never .
I would never actually imply that that would be ridiculous . That's the . That's the tinfoil hat moment for for today's episode I don't know is it , is it a ?
is it a tinfoil hat if ? If it's like obvious and clear , it's just a regular hat dude , it's just a .
That's a . That just a Yankee cap right there , that's right .
Okay , moving on .
¶ Cloud Networking Partnerships and Antitrust Settlement
So again , in case you're only just started tuning into us , it's relevant to point out that Alex I'm sorry Alex Chris and myself work for Aviatrix , which is a cloud networking vendor , and the reason I bring that up is because one of our news articles this week is about a new partnership between Megaport and Aviatrix . So we just launched this on Tuesday .
I've been testing it internally for like a month now . It's pretty cool . So you can now build the Aviatrix Edge platform , which runs as bare metal or as virtual . In this case it's going to be through Megaport , so it's virtual we have , so it's the Aviatrix platform . Essentially we call it Edge . It's running in Megaport's environment and you know .
So , using all of the front end that Megaport provides , you can spin up the Aviatrix Edge and connect it to any of the clouds that Megaport has connectivity to , using private circuits or internet , and then connect it to your existing or new Aviatrix environment and bring it in middle mile connectivity to the cloud . So we're embracing hybrid cloud .
Hybrid cloud is a big deal for us , so we already have a partnership with Equinix . We now have this partnership with Megaport , making it super easy to just you know if you're a Megaport customer already , it's three clicks and you can get started .
Or if you're an Aviatrix customer already and looking to expand into hybrid like Megaport data centers , same thing Get it up and going . So that's a new capability that we're offering . What do you guys think about that ?
Well Tim , the network is the cloud right , that's what I've heard .
I've heard that the network is the cloud .
So please can you explain what that means for us ?
Okay , yeah , what's funny about this is I've actually gotten this specific question probably eight or 10 times this week . So if you have no idea what we're talking about , one of the things Aviatrix did as part of the launch just a general launch and the launch with Megaport was , to kind of coin the phrase , the network is the cloud .
So if you're not familiar with this , this is a harken back and it's very possible . So if you're not familiar with this , this is a harken back and it's very possible . Unless you're one of the old guard , you probably aren't familiar with this . It's a harken back to a 1984 advertisement run by Sun Microsystems saying the network is the computer .
So what they were saying at that time ? Of course , think about that . It's 1984 . Servers were pretty new . So the idea of decentralizing compute and running applications and stuff on different computers was a huge step forward . Like just it didn't happen . At that time you had a computer and it did everything you wanted and it sat in your room .
So the idea that the network is the computer was a brand new idea . So the network is the cloud is kind of taking that , moving it forward , flipping it around for cloud and saying basically nothing you run in the cloud is going to be done without some kind of a network , right ? So the network is the cloud literally all of your applications .
Taking that loose coupling framework that we talk about and the CSPs talk about , where you decentralize all your apps and your app functions , the network becomes the cloud . Technically , the network is the cloud , if you want to get literal about it .
Obviously , the CSPs have huge hyperscale network infrastructures underpinning the whole thing , but I think the idea is more to the fact of nothing . You run in the cloud . An application is going to be without any kind of networking . So that's the long and short of it . The real question is is the cloud network as a service ?
Well , I mean , it depends on how you broadly define it , right ? If we're saying everything that runs over a network is now a network as a service , then I guess hell , everything's network as a service .
Oh yeah , you remember when somebody figured out how to make they were transmitting Ethernet over pasta or whatever ?
Is that how it goes ? You didn't see that , tim , I didn't . I don't know this one .
Yeah , it's like people had these pieces of spaghetti and they were somehow putting Ether , uh , ethernet frames over . It is crazy . Oh , that's hilarious . Yeah , so that's network as a service as well . Just anything that's a network is as a service to me now . Um , but yeah , not much to add there .
Um , I think , um , I think we've been pretty vocal on this podcast at least I have been that um , people that are doing connectivity specifically I'll call out Equinix and Megaport do things very well and they do it so well because they embrace simplicity and , like interacting with their platform is relatively simple .
I know sometimes it might have its quirks here and there , but it works very well when you need it to , and you know that really matters when you know defining network connectivity . So , um , yeah , really , really uh , um , hopefully this is peas in a pod type thing , right , that's what we want to see , so , yeah , yeah , that's a good point .
Like I haven't really done a whole lot with megaport , um , but they both of them , it sounds like do make it very transparent and easy , and it's like you almost have to deal with one of them . It sounds like do make it very transparent and easy , and it's like you almost have to deal with one of them to connect up anywhere .
Anyway , and they've just kind of become invisible in that middleman area , so that's a good point .
Yeah , Megaport is enabled in what ? Over 800 data centers ?
850 plus . Yeah , yeah .
And obviously Equinix has hundreds and hundreds of locations as well . So it's like you know , yeah , you're they , I mean they've .
I think equinix has probably been on more of the acquisition side of the house for for quite a while , like things from , like digital realty and telex and , um , pretty much all the ones that you can think about from probably like 10 to 15 years ago . Um , but yeah , they , uh , um , the footprint is crazy .
Like , think about from probably like 10 to 15 years ago , but , yeah , the footprint is crazy . Like you said , it's really hard to avoid either one , but thankfully for us , both of them work very well . So and by us I mean the general us , not Aviatrix specifically , I'm saying all of us that need connectivity to things .
So , okay , we got one last one here and we'll round it out today . So one last article from Network World talking about Microsoft agreeing to pay a settlement for a cloud complaint of $22 million to avoid EU antitrust further fines . So , basically , there was a complaint that was filed . I think we actually talked about this on one of the podcasts earlier .
A complaint was filed back in 2022 from the CISPE , which is the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers of Europe , accusing Microsoft of unfair licensing practices that essentially contributed to hurting Europe's cloud ecosystem , cloud computing ecosystem , as they put it . So they have , you know .
This organization you know is made up of , like I think it said , like it's made up of , cloud service providers , but I think it says like 35 members . Don't even know what 35 members would fit into that category , but it includes the likes of the big ones Azure , microsoft , google and AWS .
So they've agreed to pay this fine in order to get out of further settlements . Sorry , they paid the settlement to get out of further fines . I should flip that around . A settlement to get out of further fines , I should flip that around .
But apparently this is actually kind of ticked off some of the other members , like Google , that this is going to out of court and kind of using this payoff method versus actually abiding by the laws in place within the EU .
¶ Microsoft's CISPE Settlement and Cloud Providers
It's a pretty deep article so you can have a further look if you want to see more info about it . But what about you guys ? Any comments ?
Yeah , I want to point out here . So it says a couple things . It says Microsoft will develop a product allowing the CISPE members to run Microsoft software on their own platforms , and it must be delivered within nine months . I've never , even heard of something like this happening before . That's just super interesting that they were . I don't know .
I wonder if they suggested this . It doesn't make it sound like it was mandated from this settlement , but it is just weird that they're going to develop a product and also , 2222 million is absolutely nothing to Microsoft .
Oh yeah , that's change . That's like , yeah , I dropped a nickel on the ground so I shouldn't even bother picking it up .
Exactly . But it does also say that it says Microsoft will compensate CISPE members for lost revenue over the last two years . Again , that number is not disclosed . I don't know what that means , but funny enough , it says it does not include AWS and GCP . So Microsoft is just getting out of . Of course Google and AWS are mad about this .
It's just hilarious how this is all like interconnected and played out .
So are we . When we're talking about the other members , though , are the other members just like local private clouds or something ? Is that the idea ? Yeah ?
basically , it's a collection of what's it stand for . Again , chris , you said it earlier , it's like a European collection of smaller .
Cloud infrastructure service providers in Europe right .
Yeah .
Yes , correct .
And I think it's like 35 , you said so take out three of them .
Take out three Right .
But that's still significant . That's a lot of providers . Yeah , it's a lot of data center providers .
More than I would say on the cloud side . But yeah , you have some things in there like Blackbox and Cortec . I'm looking through some of these names to see which ones I recognize , and albeit not a lot of them , just local providers , local cloud providers .
They're trying to avoid any competition or any trust . So then the question is was Microsoft basically just out-competing them on the licensing for Microsoft products and stuff ? Is that the complaint , I wonder ? The funny thing is that history repeats itself this whole idea of Microsoft antitrust EU . This is not new .
Yeah , this is just another day in the zoo for them , right ?
Yeah .
Yeah to your point , alex . I'm more interested what this product delivery is going to be within nine months .
Yeah , and what is the product ?
Or they just do . I wonder if they just do something so half-assed that they're like yeah , here it is .
You can run it now . Here's a way to pipe into Azure .
Yeah , and here's your easy guide to doing it and it's like a manual .
It's like you know 600 pages , 10,000 pages , yeah , exactly .
But yeah , we'll see . All right , I think that about wraps it up . Like I said , there are a couple more news articles in the Fortnightly Cloud News document , which is linked into the show notes for this episode .
So if you want to have a look at the articles we discussed today , provide any feedback or read the the other ones that we that we didn't talk about , feel free to have a look on there and and definitely reach out to us . Contact us , cables to clouds at gmailcom . Find us on all the socials at cables to clouds .
We'd love to get some feedback from you guys and see if , on all the socials at Kibbles to Clouds , we'd love to get some feedback from you guys . And do you have any thoughts about any of these articles ? You know anything like that ? We'd love to hear from you . So , without that , please , you know , subscribe , hit that button everywhere .
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So , um , with , uh , with that said , I will um bid you fair due and we will um bid you fair due . Is that even a word , did I ? Just ? I don't know what that is . I'll bid you farewell as well , as well as a fair due .
It's like half half to you . Yeah , I don't know where I was going with that .
It was . You know it's nice . I didn't fuck up until the very end of the episode , so with that we will actually bid you farewell and we'll see you next week . Hi everyone , it's Chris and this has been the Cables to Clouds podcast . Thanks for tuning in today .
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