June 05, 2023

214: The Cloud Pod Loves Inspector Gadget

1 hour

Welcome to the newest episode of The Cloud Pod podcast! Justin, Ryan, Jonathan, Matthew are your hosts this week as we discuss all things cloud and AI, as well as Amazon Detective, SageMaker, AWS Documentation, and Google Workstation.

Titles we almost went with (and there’s a lot this week)

The Cloud Pod becomes the cloud docs

The Cloud Pod loves inspector gadget

The Cloud Pod documents the documentation

The Cloud Pod bangs its shin, since geospatial abilities are lacking

The Cloud Pod bangs its shin, since we lack geospatial abilities

The Cloud Pod bangs its shin, if only we had geospatial abilities

Unlike the Cloud Pod, Alibaba Cloud exits the stage

Retiring AWS Documents on Github… or how we laid off too many people in our

document team and can’t support this albatross anymore

Microsoft Builds AI tools at its Build Conference and Wants you to Build More

A big thanks to this week’s sponsor:

Foghorn Consulting, provides top-notch cloud and DevOps engineers to the world’s most innovative companies. Initiatives stalled because you have trouble hiring? Foghorn can be burning down your DevOps and Cloud backlogs as soon as next week.

News this Week:

01:29 Alibaba to Exit Cloud Business After Beijing Undercuts Potential

Alibaba is apparently planning to spin out its $12 Billion dollar cloud business.

It’s unclear if Alibaba is bowing to market pressures or political pressures; in 2020 Beijing became increasingly suspicious of cloud services operated by private firms, and started cracking down on internet services.

Alibaba Cloud drew regulatory ire in 2021 for discovering and sharing a flaw before informing authorities (there goes their citizenship score), and was investigated for its role in China’s largest cybersecurity leak.

Analysts value it at 30B, and was a once thriving operation that harbored the potential to AWS level of market control in China.

“This full spinoff plan involving AliCloud is both bold and puzzling, “Nomura Holdings Inc analysts Jialong Shi and Thomas Shen wrote in a note. “Their current valuation for the unit stands at about $31 billion. AliCloud is BABA’s organic business and is still deemed as one of the long-term drivers for the group even though its growth temporarily slowed down in recent quarters due to macro headwinds. That is why we find it puzzling that BABA has decided to fully spin off this business instead of retaining a minority stake at least.

04:30 Justin – “We’re basically entering a very Cold War period between the US and Chinese. And so that’s gonna be interesting to see how that continues to shake out. I saw some articles this week as well, like in the information about VC firms trying to exit their investments in China and just realizing that it’s not gonna be the growth engine they expect it to be. I mean, we talked about here on the show even some of the supply chain issues with China, with the cloud providers and how it’s impacted them. And now, I just saw this week, Apple just announced that they were making chips with Broadcom on US soil for some things. So, there’s definitely an undercurrent in our politics about China in general.”

05:46 Matt – “On the flip side, I’m kind of curious to see how taking this business unit out of the general Alibaba is going to work, especially with everyone starting to yell that the big tech

...more