Tag Archives: Data Center

The other colour

That is what is ended up being. It started with the thoughts of ‘Pink is the colour of ignorance’, a story that might still make it, but I want to add more evidence. The Guardian had a good start, but it is more than that and I need to tag it. The other colour is green, the colour of dollars. Reuters give us some parts of it, but my mind is asking questions. Questions aren’t voiced by the media at present. As such we start with Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-invest-1-billion-uk-data-centre-2024-01-18/) where we are given ‘Google to invest $1 billion in UK data centre’ and this comes with the added text “It also comes weeks after Microsoft unveiled plans to pump 2.5 billion pounds ($3.2 billion) into Britain over three years, including in growing its data centre capacity, to underpin future AI services.” The math doesn’t work, especially now. You see UK pushed away from the EU and all this sets a weird station. I know that any data centre costs money and I have no idea how much. One argument is that a data center of the size that Facebook or Google might use would cost from $250 million to $500 million, so why is Google spending twice that and why is Microsoft spending 250% more than that? Now the twice I could get. Operational cost, rising energy costs and when you add that up you might get to 750 million and that is only 250 million away from the leap that Google is stating. 

Sp when you look at that setting we see two bulls fighting for the same population (Google and Microstupid) but the larger question becomes is why? Why spend that much to cater to 68 million people in the United Kingdom. It is not just services, it is data and data collection. To what degree is anyones guess, but wonder why Microsoft would spend $2,500,000,000 to service 68 million people. I am wondering who is buttering the sandwich of whom. I tend to distrust Microsoft, there have been too many issues and they have lost too many battles. Is this desperation? 

The open field
The questions in the open field is not the UK, you see if these two are there they are already growing in the Middle East or they are about to. You see, these investments make sense in the UAE with 9.5 million and Saudi Arabia with 36 million. Apart from their populations both these players will have exploding infrastructure needs (The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia more than the UAE), but the UAE is on a steep incline of services and services needs and I showed that in a few articles last week. The UK has none of that at present. More importantly the EU has also needs but not to these degrees and the UK facilities will have projected limitations as one might guess. So what gives? As for Future AI services. AI does not yet exist and the Machine Learning solutions are all massively dependent on data, something Microsoft is still short of. As I ponder more sides to this, I see more issues and also Huawei now has a data center in Abu Dhabi, giving them a much larger advantage in a place where cash is still king, or better stated cash has a more robust voice, more than the UK can muster at any given time before January 2026. 

As such there are issues and even as none of this is on Reuters (important to know), the setting is that the lack of visibility in several directions make me wonder where these two are going. No matter how good we think of Google (I still do) they both need data, Google to remain top dog and Microsoft to not be as irrelevant as they made themselves to be. 

Sides no one is looking at and I merely wonder why. Are they in a flim flam spin by Microsoft marketing? Do too many believe the shallowness of Microsoft presentations? Your guess is as good as mine, but when you start digging into actual sources that remain true non-biassed the math does not add up. At least for me it does not and I am not economist or econometrical engineer. Data is its own currency, the problem is that when it is the only currency remaining those who have it get access to everything, the rest do not.

Just a thought, enjoy your Friday.

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The call was made

OK, I have been outspoken on more than one occasion, and as such, I also feel partially connected to make the call when it was made. And the call was made towards President-elect Biden. Even as a republican, I have no issue with this, this is how it is, the votes decide. It is not over yet, team Trump will trump (or rump) what is can, and the numbers are there for automated recounts. Arizona, Biden won by 0.3%, a difference of less than 12,000. Georgia has Biden by 0.3% and that amounts to 14,000 votes. I do not believe that these numbers are overcome and a win of 1 vote is all President elect Biden will need, then there is Wisconsin where Biden won, there is no automatic recount, but team Trump might push for it, they need to overcome 20,610 which amounts to 0.7%. It is a really tall order to overthrow all three and not a real realistic one at that, but that was the game and President-elect Biden seemingly won.

After 10 days of counting the calls are officially made (perhaps pre-official), which was the game. We can wait for the election lawyers to step in, but the numbers are too large to overcome, There is no way the this many ballots are invalid, they can look, but I am not holding my breath on that, yet for me, there is a sunny side (see previous blog), the scare they gave Saudi-Arabia will have larger consequences and with 5G operational there, the response is not going to be a happy one for American entrepreneurs, not when Chinese developers have a much larger app development pol to look at with options in Egypt as well, with nearly 100 million people, it is a stage China really wants and the talks we see between Egypt and Saudi Arabia and given with ‘Vodafone may reconsider price of Egypt sale to Saudi Telecom’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1733206/business-economy) two months ago, were already in the pipeline. I warned for this situation and it seems the Saudi Arabia sees the technology light, pushing out not merely Vodafone, but the sale to Saudi Telecom (STC) is set to $2.4B, which is almost a steal at twice the price. You see, with the Saudi 5G (thanks to Huawei) a lot more services will soon opt via Saudi Arabia and that setting will grow over the next 2 years. A setting the EU and the US have never faced before, and would you believe it, team president-elect has not made friends in the KSA, they can reassess all they want, but the market shares are moving away from those who had it, as will that linked data and Huawei is sitting on the side smirking and nodding in appreciation. What I predicted in my blogs as early s 2018 is now coming to pass, soon Apple and Google want their data centres to run larger services and that is when the US will lose even more. Decentralisation is the worst the could happen here and the timing is even less inviting to the US. In 2019 we saw ‘Google still pursuing Saudi Arabian data centers’, with Egypt in the setting their need increases dramatically, and what else will Vodafail lose? I doubt it is merely Egypt. Last week we were given ‘Vodafone Idea’s inadequate network investments to further accelerate subscriber loss: Analysts’, a stage the might not aid the KSA too much, but the losses will go somewhere and whatever partnership comes from there, in the end Huawei will profit, so there goes the setting we hd towards a setting the US never wanted in the first place and as we see it, we will also see that the EU will need to make a call, especially as they lose out again and again. What path they will walk is still unknown, but it seems decently clear that the path they are on now tends to lead towards self-destruction, the is seen in the Euro reporter, who gives us ‘EU and member states risk a possible WTO challenge for unfair actions against Huawei’ a mere two days ago. Even though it is not on the same setting I had, theirs will do jut as well. As we see: “US actions against Huawei based mainly on its Chinese origins simply will not stand up to a legal challenge before the World Trade Organization. This is because of international treaty obligations that Romania, Poland and Sweden as both EU Member States and WTO members are all bound by, precluding them from discriminating against or between the products of another WTO member” is not merely a costly stage, it is the setting the the path (poorly) chosen could cost the EU a lot more than it bargained for.

Even now Saudi Arabia has the fastest 5G network, compared to the US 752% faster, when Egypt is added to this, the stage changes, two nations with willing and tech hungry developers, all with a 2 year advantage over both the EU and the US, the damage they can install by having faster apps and faster infrastructure is going to cost the other two a bundle, perhaps more. Consider that the UK and US are trailing Egypt and the KSA by such a large difference, the mere humiliation of being second to Egypt and Saudi Arabia is just what the flaccid western technologists required, relying on politicians to fight for them, all whilst their technology could not keep up and that damage will continue until at least 2022. It seems to me that this is only the beginning. When the profit fall away, the real damage comes and both players (EU and US) are nowhere near ready to deal with that, as I see it, President-elect Biden inherited a leaky boat names USA, I reckon he better play nice with whatever ally he still has, the game will change and the US no longer has the lead position for choices, that much is I hope been made clear. 

Have a great Friday, especially those calling in sick so the they can test their new PS5.

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