娇色导航

Keith, Hi everybody. Welcome to Global Tech Tales: What Buyers Want. I'm Keith Shaw here to moderate a discussion with other editors from around the world about the hottest technology topics. Joining me for today's show.

Matt Egan, he is the global content and editorial director at Foundry, and Jens Dose. He is the editor in chief of 娇色导航in Germany and Esther Macías Casado, editor in chief in Spain. Hello. Welcome all Hello. All right, and I again, I apologize for any name pronunciation.

This is a global show I have to do to start learning all of my different languages. Matt, just to refresh everybody, in case they missed the first episode, which we covered artificial intelligence.

Today's topic is going to be what I call "Clouds at the Crossroads," so just to remind everybody why we're doing this, yeah, thank you, Keith. Really appreciate that opportunity.

So here's the thing about all of these wonderful people you see on this screen today is that they spend their days we spend our days talking to it buyers worldwide in all of the world's major markets, journalists from our brands are talking to IT leaders and it operational professionals about their real world, lived experience, what it's actually like to be doing this job day to day.

And that gives us a unique set of insights into what really matters to real IT leaders and IT professionals, and that Keith is what we're here to share today is what it buyers want. It's real time, all right.

And what we're, what we usually do on the show is we start off with a couple of statistics. These are gathered from our partners at IDC. And so for the cloud computing space, there were a couple of things that I want to bring up.

First of all, worldwide spending on public cloud services is forecast to reach $805 billion and is going to expected to double in size by 2028 now, spending growth may slow slightly between 24 and 28 but I think the compound annual growth rate is expected to be about 19.4%.

The second big stat is that AI related spending is fueling shared cloud infrastructure spending. So spending on compute and storage infrastructure products for cloud deployments, including dedicated and shared it environments, increased 37% year over year.

In the first quarter of this year, they're now at $33 billion but in addition, spending on edge computing is forecast to reach 378 billion in 2028 driven by demand for real time analytics, automation and enhanced customer experiences.

So we've got a lot of spending on cloud, but then also spending on edge. And there's a there's some indication that there might be, like we said, where cloud is at the crossroads.

So I wanted to bring in the panel to see if they're also seeing these trends in in their in their markets, or if they're also seeing this confusion about where cloud spending is is going.

Because, again, Cloud has been around for boy, 10 to 15 years, at least, sure. So I guess the question would be, you know, from this original concept, this original promise of cloud that's going to bring ultimate efficiency and scalability to all of your infrastructure needs.

And then the question is, if we, if we're thinking about all of that spend that you spoke about, where are IT leaders in their cloud journey, and is it about expanding? Is it shrinking? Is it public? Is it private? Is it hybrid?

And Keith, I'm going to say the thing you hate when I say which is, it is all of the above, right? Yeah, that's all right. When you talk to people in this space, well, run organizations have an IT strategy that ladders up to a long term business strategy.

They've got infrastructure that supports this strategy and growth. They've got a perfect blend of on prem, public, private, cloud, edge. But organizations also all have legacy, and they also all have different levels of security and governance and risk.

And we should definitely hear from Esther and Jens on these subjects, because they work within the EU and there's a whole different set of concerns there.

And it leaders and IT professionals also work with and for business leaders who change their minds and have different strategies and different demands from week to week, from month to month, from quarter to quarter.

We reported recently on 娇色导航about the increase in tech debt, which is really impacting IT departments, because business leaders have been more short term, or some business leaders have been more short term.

So I think thinking about cloud, I think most it buyers have a really clear idea of what great looks like, and they're doing everything they can to head towards it. But often, when you speak to people who are, you know, really experiencing these things.

They feel like they're building the plane whilst they're flying the plane, because they've got to deal with events and economics at the same time as they've got to deal with their perfect cloud strategy. But I'd love to hear from from Jens and Esther on this.

Okay, well, if we are talking about big companies, because at least in Spain, the situation is still different in in SMB market and also in the government, of course, I would say that cloud is expanding now in terms of spend, the cloud has been a part of large Spanish companies for for some time.

Now, according to IDC data from 2023 half of companies in Spain are opting for the hybrid model. Okay.

Also, the use of the public cloud is also growing, especially because there are a lot of well, all the hyperscalers companies have a established a local regions, cloud regions here in Spain in the last two years.

So this is boosting the public cloud here in Spain, definitely also, well, of course, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, but also other providers like Oracle, IBM, have initiatives also related to sorting that data, OK, and I think according IDC, again last year in Spain, the public cloud moved almost 5 billion euros, and this year is going to reach almost 6 billion.

So it's a growth of more than 20% year per year.

Well, what the CIOs of large companies are telling us is that the public cloud model is absolutely necessary for innovation, and this is because of the flexibility it provides when it comes to launching new business applications, many of which are also related to artificial intelligence, of course, gen AI.

But on the other hand, this year, we're also seeing, in some cases, a repatriation of loads to on premise or private clouds environments, because they are CIOs are certain, also improvements in cost efficiency and control and regarding this, although some few years ago, many experts said that the public cloud was going to dominate this market.

The real thing is that today, the cloud environments are very heterogeneous and allow many, many modalities.

No and all the CIOs we talked to are betting for models than combine different types of clouds depending on their needs, and normally they are also working with several providers to avoid looking problems, because they are very concerned about about this topic.

And another term we see is that CIOs are more concerned for adopting more sustainable and secure a environment now in the cloud for the moment.

Okay, yeah, I want to, I want to have Jens jump in here too to see because I think we both brought up not only whether the spending is increasing, decreasing or expanding, but also that whole issue of public versus hybrid versus private.

I think a lot of companies in the US are still struggling with that, or maybe not struggling, but you know, at least trying to figure out which parts of their business want to be on which parts of the cloud. Jens, are you seeing that in your areas too?

In Germany? Yeah. So we see all of the above, so to speak, but us Germans love the regulations, so we have like regulations from the state side. We have the critical infrastructure. We have lots of industry and R&D in German enterprises and medium sized companies.

So their IP is their business. So they are kind of hesitant to put it all in the public cloud, especially the hyperscalers. So we see mostly hybrid or multi cloud structures in the in the German market.

So as is the said for innovation, they want to profit from the ecosystems of the hyperscalers so that they don't have to develop each feature and each new tool themselves, but can bank on what the hyperscalers build and just tailor it to their business.

But like Operational Technology, or, as I said, IP sensitive personal information from like healthcare providers or something, they are mostly in private clouds or on premises in the data centers, mostly because of regulations and concerns about data privacy. Do you see companies making that decision ahead of time?

Or do you think that that some of them are they move things and then they realize, okay, wait, I should have done that as a hybrid, or I should have done that as a as a private on premises thing.

Or are they making this, these decisions before they move something to the cloud? Most do it beforehand, because you have to have the governance in place to to actually start not to violate any regulations and risk fines. Or even worse.

So most CIOs we speak to do have a plan, have a strategy, and execute according to that plan and strategy because they have to. I think governance and risk are becoming hotter topics as well, though. I think it's, it's becoming more kind of crystallized in that sense.

And I think, I think what you will maybe driving that Keith and correct me if I'm wrong, but is, I do feel like one of the promises of cloud that the reality hasn't quite matched up to is exactly that it's it different data deserves to be in different places and and I think that's something that has, in some occasions, been been uncovered retrospectively, maybe, yeah, and I'm wondering if it is because of the governance and the regulations, rather than maybe the any data leakage that got out because it it still feels that cloud is relatively secure compared to previous, you know, processes, correct?

Yeah. Say, so. I mean, I mean, again, every, every, every organization has legacy, and the legacy of most organizations includes times that if we looked back now, that server that was under your desk was an unconscionable risk kind of thing.

So I don't think you can look at these things in isolation, and I do think that most modern public cloud installations are sufficiently secure for most data, but I also understand that you have to govern for the exception, right, right?

I just remember that in the early days of the cloud promise and the cloud hype, they kept saying, Oh, we're going to be more secure than what you've currently got in your in your on premises, and that was a reason that many companies were reluctant at first to go to the cloud, but then I think that they did do their their homework and their due diligence to find to make sure that that these cloud environments were secure.

And then I think the cost savings took over for a lot of these companies. So I don't know how much we really are talking about cloud security these days. I'm sure it's out there.

Another issue just that I just want to bring up at this point is aside from the security is like the availability or the network connection, because in Germany, we have many rural parts where there's just not infrastructure to support high latency cloud service like I talked to a 娇色导航of like a food provider, and they have two data headers, all flash storage, because their VDI infrastructure just cannot live on Cloud alone because they don't know If they have the latency or not to provide the user experience they want for their users.

And so what did they so what did they end up doing? Jens, they put in each of their dependencies, like one data center that's providing for this place. And just don't rely on Cloud for any high latency services like data access and so on.

That's another thing I want to bring up, and I want to ask Esther this too, is we are seeing some cases where companies may have moved a lot of their applications and their services to the cloud, and then all of a sudden, at the end of the month, they get a bill, and it's almost like that first time you get your your kids cell phone bills, and you're like, Whoa.

This is, you know, it's almost like sticker shock. So we are seeing cloud costs go up so much so that we're now seeing companies that are coming up with applications and services to help CIOs monitor their cloud spend.

Should that be concerning with the price of cloud services going up, or is that just, is that just a minor blip? You know, what are the it? Leaders tell you?

Esther, well, of course, all the leaders are worried about the cost, because many, many of them have seen how a they cost are increasing with the clouds. Know that the promise they had with the cloud of going down the cost is not real.

But now, I think they have learned the lessons, and they control. They manage in a more efficient way, the cost, thanks to a, I don't know, a best practices, like a phenops and well, they have, they are prepared, I think, to manage these, to have the control.

Because that's another problem. They lose of the control of the of the out of their clouds environments. I think that's a really important point. Esther, I was thinking about this point earlier.

And again, if we go back, the promise of cloud was ultimate scalability and efficiency, and that promise is partially fulfilled. I think it is possible. And to your point, Esther, I feel like you know, a lot of.

Smart IT Leaders are doing that now, even given legacy governance, tech debt and working with an imperfect model, which most organizations do. But something I've heard a lot about recently is this idea of short term versus long term.

So when we talk about cost and spend, Keith you said, at the end of the month, which is definitely, definitely a factor. But when we talk about spend, are we talking about this quarter, this year, the next 10 years?

Because it is most efficient today to invest with, with one partner, one ecosystem, put it all in the public cloud, but then immediately you lose flexibility, and once you're in, it might get a lot more pricey over the long term.

So I do feel one of the challenges for IT leaders is that they have to balance their IT strategy with a business leader who might be thinking more short term. They might need savings quick.

So you end up with this kind of big picture approach, this strategy, strategic approach to providing the organization with what it needs to innovate and to build with efficiency. But then you got the tactics, which is managing end user costs with ruthless efficiency in the short term.

And I do find a lot of it buyers will tell you that's a conundrum they're having to deal with the whole time.

I talked to an IT leader the other day who had kind of a clever solution, because in the course of the democratization of IT resources in the company, they shifted the ownership of cost per business unit to the business unit leaders, so they share the use, but each business unit is responsible, at the end of the day for the cost they For the money they spend for cloud resources they need.

So that is, in my opinion, like a way out to level this conundrum, like everyone's in the same boat, has the same resources, but is responsible for his ballpark or her ballpark, yeah, because that is one of the problems with something you can't see or touch, is business leaders, if it's an IT bill, they will typically not think of it as their cost.

So that does feel like a really smart solution. Jens, and the back of the mind of the business leaders is, oh, that's my money now I don't want to spend my money, right? So, yeah, right.

Everyone's really good at spending other people's monies when it's, you know, when it's your own, all of a sudden you get really frugal. I say this all the time, believe me, there is some relevance here to the under eight soccer team that I coach.

I tell them every football imagine it's a 10 pound note. So when you kick it down the hill that we don't get it back, that's 10 pounds that's gone out of your piggyback, okay? And I think what Jens is advocating here is a similar approach to Cloud Storage.

You know, the question that I would have for that IT leader, he was willing to give up his part of the budget to shift it over to the business leader, or is it, is it handled differently?

It's handled, if I remember correctly, in a steering board, so they allocate the whole budget, and then it is given to the business unit leaders and the IT leader. And so it's one but one budget, but distributed in an additional step, equally to the demand that's there.

I think this is a this is showing the democratization of technology and how other leaders, business leaders, are taking the lead no in technology, and the role of CIOs is also changing because of this. And right?

That's a kind of a development we see with Gen AI with low code, no code, with shadow it for years now.

So that's a process that's all already in motion, and now it's time for the leaders to kind of own up to it and say, Okay, this is happening. How do we deal? Yeah, you know, we we've seen the trend with software as a service.

And those, those, those SaaS based apps, where business unit leaders will just spend all sorts of money on SaaS apps, and then the it, people are like, whoa, we've got a problem here.

And they and then, you know, you have hundreds, if not 1000s, of apps that are being paid for, and it has to kind of get a control of that. So I want to say app spending versus cloud spending.

So are you we might also be seeing this in the cloud space, where business unit leaders are taking control of cloud spend, but they're, are they doing it still fiscally, you know, responsibly, one of the perceived benefits of cloud, and one of the geniuses of the marketing of cloud, is it does make simple, something that is very complex.

So, and I know we will end up talking about AI at some point, but as we we're getting there, Matt, but as with AI, you have a an approach to technology that is understandable by anybody.

And so you have the you have the internal question of, why aren't we in the cloud forever? Thing, because, you know, that's going to be cheaper and it's going to scale more quickly.

We're going to have the most latest technology the whole time, but you also have, I mean, this was one of the initial successes of AWS, was that a developer could use their own credit card and sign up and be online pretty quickly, kind of thing.

And that happened within big enterprises, even if they didn't know they were on cloud.

And I'm not saying that happens today, but to Jens point about shadow IT and the democratization of of it, like you have to have a very good answer as an IT leader as to why we're not using these things.

Because, you know, line of business leaders understand conceptually what the opportunity and the benefit is.

Now, Matt, you mentioned complexity and simplicity, but as more and more companies are moving things to the cloud, it does become a little bit more complex, which also requires, then in the enterprise that is monitoring their cloud services to then invest in training and employees and making sure that they have the right skills.

Are you also seeing those costs go up as well? I think if, if not monitored and managed in the way you're talking about, all costs will go up again. I come back to this point of that the the best strategy for Cloud is probably not a cloud strategy.

It's an overall infrastructure, storage and connectivity strategy, you know, again, mentioning AI, well, we're going to see a rise in edge computing because it makes sense, almost like enzymes, example of the rural organization, it makes sense to have your compute and your storage close to where it's being used if you're doing something that's really high intensity from a compute perspective, but if you can store it in the public cloud, It's probably more efficient to do so.

So I think I come back to this point I made earlier, which is, on the one hand, from a cost perspective, there's the strategy, how long we're going to measure cost over how we're going to optimize for that time period, and that will involve working with a limited number of partners, and how much do we want to be committed to those partners?

Because that those limit our ability to change and reduce costs in future versus like in the short term. How do we keep those costs down? How do we, you know, how do we rely on hardware and technology that we don't need to replace in the short term?

So I think you know right from a dedicated focus on cost management and reduction, which is definitely, I mean, Esther mentioned this earlier, and she should speak to this.

And those kind of fin ops, type operations right up to that kind of strategic level, like how we organizing our costs, and what is the time period over which we're going to measure and optimize those costs, which was what Jens was speaking about earlier.

I think all of the above really, and the cost angle doesn't end with the resources, right?

Because if you have just one vendor that might be viable, but as soon as you have two or three to prevent vendor lock in, or to have data, or to have the freedom to move data from one provider to the other when things get dire, you have more management efforts that have to be paid in form of more personnel or upskilling or reskilling or something else.

So the total cost of ownership depends on how you use the cloud, not just which cloud you are using? Yeah, Esther, did you want to bring up some additional costs that people might be seeing?

There's a lack of experts, of course, and a the well, companies are struggling with with this. A Fortunately, a the big providers also help now with some resources, but it's true that they, they have this problem. No, I wanted to bring up an analogy that I thought of.

Well, you know, Matt was talking about his U8 soccer team. Sorry, football, football team. And, and I was thinking that in the consumer space with streaming media, and then in, you know, for all of the entertainment. So the Netflix, the Amazon Prime, all of this.

Remember that, you know, the initial reason for streaming was, we're gonna, we're gonna let you cut your cable bill. And so everybody you know, then said, Okay, well, I'll do streaming. And you know, streaming is going to be so less expensive.

So now think about this, like, Okay, I'm gonna move everything into the cloud. But now we've got 17 different services out there, and all of a sudden my streaming bill is almost, if not more than what my cable bill was.

And so, you know when Jens was talking about, you know, multi cloud environments now, so it's not just you. You don't have all of your apps in just one provider.

You might be going to Microsoft, Google, AWS, and now you've, not only now you've tripled your costs there, but not necessarily like stacking on top of each other, but now you've got three different platforms, and a lot of those data platforms probably don't synchronize correctly, or, you know, if you're getting analytics and reports, they don't always use the same standard of reporting.

So now you've added additional costs there. And I'm wondering if we're seeing that with the cloud, has it been, you know, have we been seeing that for a while? And what do companies do if they are seeing that?

I mean, from an industry perspective, the big win for the vendors is to be that single supplier.

And we're seeing, you know, the ecosystem approach whereby hardware vendors, software vendors are combining their their approach and their wares to to essentially sell their products through a single point where the vendor, CTO is almost becoming part of the team in some organizations.

And there's a lot to be said for that, because the promise can be, we will always give you the latest technology. We will we will guarantee pricing for a certain length of time that scales with you.

So So you can say to your business colleagues, as an IT leader, you will always have the best technology. We'll be able to innovate, and we know what our costs are going to be for the next what, two, 5, 10, years.

But Jens mentioned it earlier, that does put you in the position of vendor locking, which a lot of organizations are also against and fearing, but I think from an industry perspective, it's it's going to be really interesting.

And your friend of mine, AI, is driving this somewhat as well, which is that organizations, I think, are getting a bit more comfortable with the idea of working with a small group of vendor partners who might form their own ecosystem, because they need the simplicity and they need the ability to scale quickly, more than they fear the idea of being locked into a single vendor or a single set of vendors.

But I'd love to hear from Esther and Jens on that. Yeah, Jens, do you do? Do you hear from a lot of IT people saying vendor lock in is okay, or they are they wary of vendor lock in in the cloud space. That depends, all right, that's okay.

So it depends on the industry. So in high sensitive regions like the public sector, healthcare, energy providers, they do have those concerns, and they really have to cater their strategy to meet the regulations and the demands of their customer base. Right?

If you go into a sector that's not that much regulated, it's mostly like, Okay, I do have, like my Microsoft or AWS, and I stick with them because their ecosystem matches my needs.

Like each each provider has has a different ballpark they are good at or not good at.

So there, when the risk gets lower, the companies might rather just stick with one provider, because they can rely on like to what Matt said, have just one, but that one can cater to my needs in the way I want.

And Esther, what about vendor lock in same, same kind of concerns?

Yeah, I would say that yes, in Spain, I the most of the CIOs are worried about vendor locking, and they try to work with several cloud cloud providers, but that, of course, complicate them their lives, so they have the problem of how to manage all these different environments.

And this is very well, it's complicated and it's costly for them, so, but they, I think that, yes, they want to have different options for not being so, you know, to put all the eggs in the same basket. You say, right, right, right, all right.

So we're at about 30 minutes now, and I have not yet brought up the topic of generative AI and AI, so I think we'll probably talk the rest of the show about this.

So my first question is, is because of the hype around generative AI and AI applications and things like that, do Pete, do the IT leaders that you speak with, think that the spotlight has shifted so that there's less of a spotlight on cloud, or is it more just like, oh, here comes the next technology, and we've got to be ready for that while still doing all of our other things, you know?

And then we could talk about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Well, I think Gen AI is a point of inflection, at least here in Spain, like all the CIOs are seeing that everybody's investigating in the technology, doing pilots, and they want to do this, and they need the cloud.

They need the cloud because the cloud gives you the, you know, the capacity, the computing power, and it's important for them to innovate. No, they didn't need to make a huge investment, no initial investment in the genie project.

And they tried that in the cloud environment, same in Germany. So every IT leader that has some kind of pilot or POC regarding Gen AI.

In the making that I don't think the discussion on cloud and how to manage cloud correctly will go away, because it has become a foundation for it, and per that for Gen AI so and especially in Germany there, there is the discussion of which cloud to use for which use case, can I just put my gen AI model or my LLM into the public cloud?

Or do I need a private cloud because my data is so sensitive? What cost and what effort does this require for me as a company to put in? It will not die. It's almost like the same discussions that they had about cloud are now happening with AI.

Like, you know, which vendor do I use?

Which where do I put it right they are, but to the point that both Esther and Jens made like, what I hear a lot of is, yes, AI is a unique opportunity and a unique problem to solve, but that means that as an IT leader, as an IT bio, we need to support ambitious business strategies with infrastructure, and it's got to be infrastructure that we can afford.

It's got to be infrastructure that we can afford financially, and the world can afford from a sustainability perspective. So I would say that AI is to a large extent, you know, if it is an infrastructure problem, it's a cloud problem.

So I think it's having a massive impact on the conversation around cloud, because again, you have, you know, challenges around legacy infrastructure, cleanliness of data, lack of understanding on the compute power that's required.

There's an expectation that AI will drive efficiency, but often that comes from business leaders who aren't thinking about the infrastructure that's got to underpin the AI. So I see, and I hear a lot about about a couple of outcomes that we can expect.

One is we talked about it before Ian spoke about it, this idea of vendor ecosystems winning because they support a mix of cloud and on prem new and legacy, but they can promise always latest hardened software, and both in terms of infrastructure, but also software features.

But I do also think from a cloud perspective that that we will see edge really grow over the next year, because if you think about those needs, the need for compute, the need for processing and data local to where the activity is happening in a way that could be scaled.

It can be plugged in and it can be plugged out. That is a an edge computing solution, but, but I would think of it as part of an overall infrastructure problem of which cloud is a big part of the solution, right, right?

I think it will be interesting to see which players play in this in this edge field, because now we see like Nvidia, getting bigger and bigger and bigger because they have the AI chips all the cloud providers need to put in into their data centers to support all the compute power they get from their customers.

So maybe they have an in on the edge as well in the coming months and years and provide services for like autonomous driving or in the healthcare sector, or you name it, right where you need quick decisions correct, quick and correct decisions on the place they happen.

So, so what? What do the it buyers that you talk with, what do they want from their vendors? It, you know, do they want this partnership? Do they want to just, basically, just buy and sell it and then we'll take care of everything else?

Or is it more of a they want that integrated partnership between hardware, software, network, storage and then, and then, obviously, the services on top of that, that's kind of an easy question, but I don't want to see if I got it right.

So from my perspective, they want the one stop shop who has everything. Oh, okay, yeah, right. And are there enough? Are there enough vendors out there to do that, or do they have to go pick it? The vendors are forming partnerships and ecosystems to supply this.

So there, obviously we can never and interest to hear from from Esther and Jens, but we, we can never say that this is a uniform thing and a uniform approach.

But I definitely feel this that you work with an individual partner who actually is representing an ecosystem of suppliers.

Jens, mentioned in video, classic example, in video technology is inside boxes made by other hardware vendors, currently being sold by cloud vendors, like through their software solutions, kind of thing.

And I think that, like I say, the idea of the vendor, CTO, becoming a part of the team, obviously, there's massive benefits to that from the vendor perspective, but actually I'm hearing, increasingly from an IT leader perspective, that that ability to have one partner who can help you solve all your problems is is is really necessary in a world in which AI is changing so much.

Yeah. Esther, any additional thoughts on that? Yeah? Well, I think we are seeing a Co-petition scenario, no in the tech companies. From that point of view, everybody is partnering with everybody because they want to make the things easier for their clients.

But of course, they continue competing in some areas, but they have to join to facilitate the life of their clients. So does this also mean that we're stuck with consultants? They can bring all of those vendor partners together? I don't know.

I always have a weird feeling about consultants.

The sentence I'm getting more is that the vendors have woken up to that, and of course, they're always going to work with consultants and resellers, but they're increasingly trying to create packages and and solutions that mean they can work directly with the companies they work with.

They want to cut out the middleman, like every sales person, yeah, that's a good point, too. All right. All right. So we want to wrap up the show with a with a vote, where everybody gets to to kind of vote on something that's going to happen next year.

So for this topic with cloud computing, I want to ask in 2025 will most companies increase, decrease or stay the same, or will they shift their spending in the cloud? Maybe, maybe take some of that spending and go to edge computing, for example.

So I went first last time, so I'll go last, I guess, this time. So Esther, where do you think most companies are going to do with their cloud spend in 2025 Well, I think it will increase.

I think it has to increase because companies have to go on a, you know, a their journey to digital transformation. I and it's necessary, completely necessary, for their needs.

So I think it will increase the IDC, and all analyst companies are saying the same, I think, for next year. So for Germany is the same.

It will increase our special thing will be that we would, or companies will invest in sovereign clouds to cater to the whole regulatory issues I mentioned earlier. But I'm with Esther, it will definitely increase. And Matt, I completely disagree. No, I don't.

I clearly it's going to increase, I think increase and shift, though, if I think about the way you phrased the question, Keith, because I do think the data sovereignty piece is really important, but also edge hybrid, like the the AI trend alone is going to mean that not only is it about increasing spend, it's about finding solutions that are scalable and sustainable for organizations.

So increasing shift would be my answer.

All right, just to be different, I'm going to say a different answer, but I agree with all of all of you about the increase, but for my official vote, I'm going to say, stay the same, because I think they might put a pause on spending, because I'm also on the record from my AI show, that we think that the bubble may decrease a little bit.

So I think that as companies may pause their spending and just kind of re evaluate where everything is going in 2025 but that's just because I'm just doing this for this show, my true heart is probably that they will increase, and if that's a wishy washy answer, too bad, because I'm the host of the show.

All right, hey, thanks everybody for participating in this Global Tech Tales: What Buyers Want episode. It's a great discussion. I love hearing what's going on out in the rest of the world. So thank you all for joining us. Thank you. Thank you.

And we're going to be back next month with additional editors, and we're going to talk about IT careers and how companies can build a fantastic technology team that's all the time we have for the show today. Be sure to add any comments you have below.

Check out our other TECHtalk shows, such as Today in Tech, 娇色导航Leadership Live and DEMO if you're interested in seeing B2B product demonstrations, I'm Keith Shaw, thanks for watching.