Cloud computing is changing the technology world and creating opportunity for hundreds of new companies so how are investors thinking about which ones to put their investmentbehind?
Three Seattle-area venture capitalists Frank Artale of Ignition Partners; S. Soma Somasegar of Madrona Venture Group; and Sheila Gulati of Tola Capital spoke on stage Wednesday at the inauguralGeekWire Cloud Tech Summit about the state of the cloud computing industry and opportunities they see for related technologies and startups.
The panelists all agreed that its an exciting time for cloud technology and that this isonly the beginning.
We are early in this game, and its a game that is fundamentally changing how computing happens, Gulati said. Cloud is the new operating system.
The discussion, moderated bySeattle angel investor Charles Fitzgerald, ranged from the most attractive cloud-related areas of investment to how Seattle is becoming the cloud capital of the world.
Heres a quick rundown of their insights, which have been edited for brevity.
S. Soma Somasegar, Madrona Venture Group: In the last six to 12 months, we have been investing in a fair amount of what I call cloud-native, next-generation cloud infrastructure-related startups. Its everything from serverless computing, to the world of containers, to event-driven functions. There are a bunch of things people can go solve in a startup environment.
As you move the stack, there is still a lot of value that people can think about delivering at the application level. We get excited about what we call intelligent applications. Its not just predictable behavior from an application, but one that can learn from the data you have access to and continuously learn from thatand do a better job for customers. There are lots of enterprise use cases that are possible.
Sheila Gulati, Tola Capital: A lot of the opportunities for venture capitalists these days is up-stack, as you take advantage of the incredibly rich platform elements and the ability to develop and deploy more seamlessly and more easily.
But also, the real benefitthat the cloud gives you is that data ownership, that data predictability, that comparabilitybetween your different customersbecause youare running all of thatdata in cloud and then able to do very business-appropriate, business-useful comparisons. Its incredibly invaluable. Our last investment was in the insurance software space. Its specific to a vertical, its adding value. You have the industry incumbents really betting on this company in order to take forward the learnings and the benefit of cloud, mobile, and data-centric computing for their industry. We also like serverless.
Frank Artale, Ignition Partners: One of the things we look at, relative to cloud, are applicationsthat could not exist were it not for what the cloud brings, from an application perspective. That may include low cost access to things like cognitive services; low cost access to elastic compute and storage; networking; availability. Its all of these things that to build on-premise would just be too expensive to even go after. Enablement is always a big word for us.
Gulati: As you take each layer of traditional IT spend and map it out, cloud revenue is eating different layers of the stack. Cloud vendors are coming out with services that replace a lot of thetraditional, massive businesses. As venture capitalists, its important that we think of everything we do in the context of, lets makesure we understand how thisworks.
Artale: With the public cloud, now that it has become a trusted infrastructure as opposed to a technical curiosity, well see a similarpattern with enterprise IT that we saw inthe late 90s when hypervisors first came into existence. You saw a lot of lighter duty, older workloads being moved into virtual machines, and virtual machines being collected on backs of servers for cost efficiency. You could do more with less hardware, you havesome software, and you can run more apps.One of the first orders of business for enterprises of all sizes will be to identify existing on-premise applications that are candidates to make that move. People call this lift and shift, or modernization.'
Somasegar: Hybrid cloud will be around for at least the next 10, 20, 30 years. Not everyone can move everything they have on premise to the public cloud overnight. Its going to take time. People also need to take time to get comfortable to feel like they have the right levels of security and data protection. It takes time to get that level of trust. And even then, there will be extreme situations, whether government related or industry-specific, where youll want some stuff on premise. Hybrid is how I think the world will operate for at leastthe next two or three decades.
Somasegar: Its definitely changing for the positive. I was at a dinner last month with venture capitalists and the whos-who of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. They were saying that theyve never seen so many Silicon Valley VCs come together in one place and were wondering whats happening here. Its a testament to people getting exciting about whats happening in Seattle and how they can be apart of it.
Weve also seen, at least in the past year, a tremendous amount of interest in terms of whats happening in Seattle and the startups here. We host people from Silicon Valley a couple times a week because they want to come here and understand the ecosystem. They know something great is happening and they want to participate more.
And as much as we get excited about Seattle being the cloud capital of the world, its not just cloud computing. There are many other areas where we have a tremendous amount of innovation here, between the bigger companies and the startups. We are the No. 1 or No. 2 in what I call the hot technology trends. All of this together makes us better and better each day that goes by.
Gulati: Its fine to call Seattle Silicon Valleys little sister, but its not true.Everyone is moving up here; everyone is opening an office up here. Theprevalence of more cloud computing happening here than in any other city in the world does change the game.
Artale: If you look at the movement, one thing people do notice is the amountof real estateleasesthat are being taken by mid-cap, large-cap, even startups from the Bay Area. Weve had companies move here from the Bay Area. There is great access to not just software development talent, but people want to be close to the epicenter and thinkers in cloud computing.
We also find that we are much more concentrated geographically here. Silicon Valley stretches from San Francisco down to south of San Jose thats about 75 miles and many hours sitting in a car. [In Seattle] we are concentrated, so there is good promise around that.
The other thing is that, at least for high value software development talent and programmanagement and marketing functions, people tend to stay in their jobs longer here. They dont go work some place for two years and find the next hotly-funded startup and move on. There tends to be more durability of teams. From my perspective, that is super important. Its something that is very attractive to businesses of all sizes.
The rest is here:
- ISSCC 2024: Inside AMD's Zen 4cThe Area-Optimized Cloud Computing Core - News - All About Circuits - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Huawei Cloud: Infrastructure of Choice for AI with 10 Systematic Innovations Unveiled in MWC Barcelona 2024 - Morningstar - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Cybersecurity fears drive a return to on-premise infrastructure from cloud computing - Help Net Security - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Cybersecurity fears drive a return to on-premise infrastructure from cloud computing - HealthLeaders Media - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Huawei Cloud: Infrastructure of Choice for AI with 10 Systematic Innovations Unveiled in MWC Barcelona 2024 - PR Newswire - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- South Korea Boosts Cloud Computing with $91.5 Million Investment to Propel AI and SaaS Innovation - BNN Breaking - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Science ministry to invest 121.9 bln won in cloud computing industry - Yonhap News Agency - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Why Microsoft is spending billions on AI and cloud computing in Europe - ITPro - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Universities Migrate Research Computing to the Cloud - EdTech Magazine: Focus on K-12 - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Top Cloud Computing Skills You Need to Know in 2024 - Simplilearn - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Best Cloud Tools of 2024: Unleash Maximum Productivity - Simplilearn - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Real-time Analytics News for the Week Ending February 24 - RTInsights - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Synadia Raises $25 Million Series B Funding to Meet Massive Demand for Multi-cloud and Edge Computing Driven by AI - PR Newswire - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- CEO Outlook 2024: 20 Solution Providers On The Cloud Moment - CRN - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- DigitalOcean beats expectations under the helm of new CEO Paddy Srinivasan - SiliconANGLE News - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Securing Kubernetes in a Cloud Native World - The New Stack - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- How to Build a Chat Interface using Gradio & Vultr Cloud GPU SitePoint - SitePoint - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Microsoft to invest $2.1bn in cloud and AI infrastructure in Spain - DatacenterDynamics - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Stannah looks to enterprise cloud software to lift IT systems - ComputerWeekly.com - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- AI vendor finds opportunity amid AI computing problem - TechTarget - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Nvidia Worth More Than Alphabet, Amazon - 24/7 Wall St. - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- VIB spearheads banking innovation with deployment of Temenos Banking Platform on AWS cloud - VnExpress International - February 26th, 2024 [February 26th, 2024]
- Why These 7 Cloud Computing Stocks Should be on Your Radar in 2024 - InvestorPlace - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- IBM to Buy Software AG's Cloud Computing and AI Assets for $2.3BN - Investopedia - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Pass the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Certification in One Week - Medium - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- 3 Cloud Computing Stocks You'll Regret Not Buying Soon: December Edition - InvestorPlace - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Cloud Computing Market Predicted to Hit US$1,266.4 Billion by 2028 - TechiExpert.com - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- AWS chief Adam Selipsky talks generative AI, Amazon's investment in Anthropic and cloud cost-cutting - Omaha World-Herald - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Mangata Networks and Microsoft Partner on AI-enabled Edge Cloud Connectivity - AiThority - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Democratization of Cloud vs AI: A Case Study - Medium - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- 5 Drivers Behind the Growth of the GPU Cloud Computing Market - Visual Capitalist - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Report: AWS to reorganize sales teams amid slowing cloud revenue growth - SiliconANGLE News - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Don't underestimate vulnerabilities in the cloud. Adopt hybrid to stay protected - Best Enterprise Data Storage Software ... - Solutions Review - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Innovations, disruptions, transformations expected in 2024 Intelligent CIO Middle East - Intelligent CIO - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- IBM makes $2B+ deal to add more AI, cloud computing solutions - WRAL TechWire - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- How to Select the Right Industry Cloud for Your Business - How to Select the Right Industry Cloud for Your Business - InformationWeek - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Cloud Computing Market Set to Reach US$1,266.4 Billion by 2028 - Analytics Insight - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Cisco to Acquire Isovalent to Secure Cloud-Native Networking - Channel E2E - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Cloud-native applications: Unlocking the potential of scalability and agility - ETCIO - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Year-in-Review: 2023 Was a Turning Point for Microservices - The New Stack - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- If AI is the future, radiology needs to look to the cloud - Health Imaging - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- AI and Cloud: The Proving Ground for Regulatory Resilience in 2024 - Finextra - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Cognata Redefines Sensor Suite Selection Processes Through Digital Twin-based Sensor Simulation and Cloud ... - PR Newswire - December 25th, 2023 [December 25th, 2023]
- Microsoft and Amazon the focus of cloud computing probe - Proactive Investors USA - October 5th, 2023 [October 5th, 2023]
- Cloud cover benefits of being on the cloud - The Actuary - October 5th, 2023 [October 5th, 2023]
- AI, Cloud Computing among 36 FREE Online Courses Now ... - Philippine Information Agency - October 5th, 2023 [October 5th, 2023]
- Amazon Web Services isn't trying to win the A.I. race. It wants to own the road. - Slate - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- The Machines Behind the FinOps Curtain: Operationalizing Your Strategy with AI - ITPro Today - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Strengthening security in a multi-SaaS cloud environment - TechCrunch - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Oracle Introduces First Cloud Native Secure Cloud Computing ... - PR Newswire - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- The Power of Cloud Computing: How it's Transforming Database ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- From Headquarters to the Edge: The Future of Cloud in the Defense ... - MeriTalk - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- 6 Cloud Computing Companies Navigating the Digital Storm in 2023 - GovCon Wire - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Government Cloud Computing Market Size, Status and Business ... - University City Review - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Cloud Computing in Education Market Forecast, 2023-2029: The ... - University City Review - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Global Cloud Computing IaaS In Life Science Market Size and ... - University City Review - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- What is the Relationship Between IoT and Cloud Computing? - Analytics Insight - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- How Data Center Interconnect Platforms are Shaping the Future of ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Revolutionizing IoT: How 5G and Cloud Computing are ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- The Future of Cloud Computing: Database as a Service (DBaaS) in ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Overcoming Data Privacy Challenges in the European Cloud ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- The Future of Telemedicine in India: How Cloud Computing is ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Multi-Cloud and Hybrid Cloud: What is the Difference? - Analytics Insight - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- A New Era of Data Management: The Growing Importance of Global ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- From niche to necessity: GFT's vision for cloud computing ... - Business Leader - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- ERP, Cloud Computing And Digital Transformation - CIOReview - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- UMD Smith Offers New January Start Date for MS in Information ... - Newswise - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- The Impact of Global White-box Server Adoption on Cloud ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Global Application Transformation: Unlocking the Potential of Cloud ... - Fagen wasanni - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- BFSI Sector and Asia-Pacific Spearhead the Rapid Growth of Cloud ... - GlobeNewswire - July 31st, 2023 [July 31st, 2023]
- Amazon is investing another $7.8B in Ohio-based cloud computing operations, state leaders say - The Associated Press - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- Google Cloud Platform: Everything you need to know about Google's suite of cloud computing services - Android Police - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- Amazon is investing another $7.8B in Ohio-based cloud computing ... - Wilmington News Journal, OH - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- 11 Key Executives in the Cloud Computing Industry in 2023 - Executive Gov - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- 10 Multi-Cloud Myths Debunked: Exposing the Facts - TechFunnel - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- How MTN and Microsoft will transform business operations with ... - TheCable - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- The Power of Cloud Computing: Revolutionizing Business and IT ... - Tech Critter - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- FTC Collecting Comments On Cloud Computing, CCIA Offers Input ... - Computer and Communications Industry Association - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- How AI and Cloud Computing Are Revolutionizing the Insurance ... - Techopedia - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]
- HPE Discover final analysis: Navigating the cloud computing ... - SiliconANGLE News - June 28th, 2023 [June 28th, 2023]