Just a few short years ago, hyperscalers were widely touted as key drivers of digital transformation in the enterprise thanks to their ability to offer something akin to a ‘one-stop-shop’ for cloud computing, storage and everything in between.
In theory, by consolidating products and services and making them more available through major service providers such as Google Cloud Computing Services or Amazon Web Services, companies could move faster and do more for less budget. Meanwhile, smaller service providers could tap into valuable enterprise-scale revenue streams by offering their solutions through providers’ marketplaces.
While this logic isn’t flawed, the industry seems to be shifting towards a more collegiate future. While major providers like AWS represent a vital and integral part of the overall cloud infrastructure that many companies rely upon, looking to just one of two such hyperscalers may end up creating challenges in other areas.
For instance, at the end of 2023 these organizations came under fire for breaking the UK cloud market as the dominance of the ‘big three’ stifled competition.
With a massive number of data centers spread out across various regions worldwide, public cloud storage solutions offer reliable and high-capacity solutions for enterprises. Yet given this demand is forecast to see the Big Three grab 60% of global data center capacity by 2029, we may see more pushback from the industry and regulatory bodies.
In the meantime, a growing number of businesses are now evaluating alternatives to hyperscalers for their AI workloads and are moving towards hybrid scenarios. Vultr Cloud Alliance, a partnership program consisting of industry-leading solutions enabling composable cloud services, is one option that is gaining traction as leaders look for solutions to manage their cloud needs.
In a new milestone Vultr, the world’s largest privately held cloud computing platform, has announced that SQream, a leading data and analytics acceleration platform, is the latest name to join the alliance.
Accelerating AI through smart cloud infrastructure
While it’s true that cloud computing offers tremendous potential on several fronts, outcomes like delivering a long-term and secure way to manage hybrid IT infrastructures are more often viewed as low-hanging fruit.
Beyond this, unlocking business value from data analytics and AI is often the real long-term goal that promises to offer enterprises the most transformative change.
However, as organizations deploy AI they face challenges with existing infrastructure and processes. Indeed, a recent report commissioned by Vultr found that 89% of organizations expect to achieve advanced AI use in two years, yet technical infrastructure is listed as the second biggest challenge (after governance) to meeting their AI goals.
Issues on this front typically include slow data processing times, unexpectedly high associated costs for AI queries, and an inability to extract meaningful insights from large datasets in a timely manner.
This priority focus on AI means that many enterprises are reexamining their cloud infrastructure to overcome such hurdles.
Through the Vultr Cloud Alliance, Vultr and SQream offer a way to address the challenges of processing large-scale, complex datasets crucial for driving advanced AI innovation. By leveraging advanced GPU acceleration, organizations can perform complex queries and analytics at unprecedented speeds, reduce infrastructure costs, and gain deeper insights for faster, data-driven decision-making.
“Our partnership with Vultr through its Cloud Alliance will revolutionize how enterprises approach data analysis and machine learning projects,” said Ittai Bareket, Chief Alliance Officer of SQream.
“With multi-layer parallel processing, comprehensive big-data lifecycle support, and enhanced data processing capabilities, Vultr and SQream enable organizations to achieve faster time-to-insight, seamless scalability for complex and large-scale analytics, and unparalleled flexibility and control.”
“These advancements empower organizations to deliver sophisticated AI solutions more rapidly while pushing the boundaries of AI innovation,” added the executive.
A growing alliance with the latest AI innovations
As SQream partners with Vultr, organizations have a powerful new way to address pressing AI-related challenges. From financial services and telecom to healthcare and retail, the new service offering is looking to tackle vast datasets easily to enable comprehensive analysis and reporting, and reduce the total cost of ownership thanks to SQream’s GPU-powered architecture.
In addition, data processing will meet industry standards and regulatory requirements worldwide with Vultr’s secure cloud infrastructure – SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, and PCI compliant – combined with SQream’s compliance features.
“Vultr continues to grow its Cloud Alliance to give customers easy access to all the best-in-class technology and tools they need to build and scale their cloud- and AI-native operations,” said Kevin Cochrane, CMO of Vultr.
“This latest partnership between SQream and Vultr marks a significant step forward. By making it easier, faster, and less costly to analyze large and complex data sets, SQream and Vultr are clearing the way for a new wave of AI-driven innovation and transformation across industries.”
SQream joins other alliance members including Qdrant, a high-performance vector database with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities; Console Connect, which facilitates private, high-speed networking for secure, low-latency data transfer; DDN for sophisticated AI storage infrastructure; and Run:ai, an advanced AI workload orchestration platform.
A more robust future for the cloud
While major cloud service providers offer enterprises comprehensive cloud solutions, relying on just one provider for all cloud needs risks vendor lock-in.
With the alliance, companies can not only avoid this risk, they will also access a fully customizable way to assemble and scale their tech stack using a compostable approach.
In addition to solving AI delivery challenges, the Vultr Cloud Alliance addresses wider challenges that enterprise leaders face. For instance, it will help ensure broader service offerings to drive innovation and provide access to the solutions that stand to have the greatest impact on AI adoption.
This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company
