Why companies still want in-house data centres
The unlikely persistence of on-premises computing in the cloud age
Sometimes it seems as if the cloud is swallowing corporate computing. Last year businesses spent nearly $230bn globally on external (or “public”) cloud services, up from less than $100bn in 2019. Revenues of the industry’s three so-called “hyperscalers”, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure, are growing by over 30% a year. The trio are beginning to offer clients newfangled artificial-intelligence (AI) tools, which big tech has the most resources to develop. The days of the humble on-premises company data centre are, surely, numbered.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Head out of the clouds”
Business October 7th 2023
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