The Year in Hyperscale: Sizing Up the Big 3 Cloud Platforms

Dec. 28, 2018
The three major cloud platforms – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google – continue to shift the data center landscape. Here’s a look back at the Big 3 in 2018.

Cloud computing platforms are quite frankly shifting the data center landscape — especially when it comes to giants like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google.

Want to find out what three major cloud players were up to in 2018? We’ve curated our coverage of these companies at Data Center Frontier to highlight key developments at these three market leaders, including advances in artificial intelligence, liquid cooling, research on underwater data centers, a continued focus on Northern Virginia, and more:

Microsoft

Microsoft Accelerates its Brainwave AI With Intel FPGAs: At its Build conference, Microsoft said Project Brainwave, its deep learning acceleration platform harnessing Intel FPGAs, has been integrated with Azure Machine Learning for the cloud as well as edge computing.

Microsoft CEO Nadella: Underwater Data Centers Are the Future: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the company’s underwater data center, known as Project Natick, could play a key role in Microsoft’s future infrastructure.

Google

Google Shifts to Liquid Cooling for AI Data Crunching: Google is shifting to liquid cooling for its latest version of its artificial intelligence hardware, as the heat generated by its new Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) has exceeded the limits of its previous data center cooling solutions.

Google Building Trans-Atlantic Cable to Boosts its Cloud in Northern Virginia: Google will build its own private subsea cable to manage data traffic between Europe and its huge cloud campuses in Northern Virginia, with potential benefits for Virginia Beach.

Amazon Web Services

Northstar Enters Virginia Data Center Market, with Fortune 20 Tenants: Northstar Commercial Partners has entered the Northern Virginia data center market, buying a prime land parcel in Loudoun County to build a data center campus for one of the world’s largest companies.

Settlement Ends Dispute Over Haymarket Data Center Power Lines: Dominion Virginia Power and several community groups have reached an agreement that clears the way for new power lines to support a data center project in Haymarket, Virginia, ending a long-running dispute.

Keep pace with the fact-moving world of data centers and cloud computing by following us on Twitter and Facebook, connecting with Data Center Frontier editor Rich Miller on LinkedIn, and signing up for our weekly newsletter using the form below. 

Sponsored Recommendations

Guide to Environmental Sustainability Metrics for Data Centers

Unlock the power of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting in the data center industry with our comprehensive guide, proposing 28 key metrics across five categories...

The AI Disruption: Challenges and Guidance for Data Center Design

From large training clusters to small edge inference servers, AI is becoming a larger percentage of data center workloads. Learn more.

A better approach to boost data center capacity – Supply capacity agreements

Explore a transformative approach to data center capacity planning with insights on supply capacity agreements, addressing the impact of COVID-19, the AI race, and the evolving...

How Modernizing Aging Data Center Infrastructure Improves Sustainability

Explore the path to improved sustainability in data centers by modernizing aging infrastructure, uncovering challenges, three effective approaches, and specific examples outlined...

SeventyFour / Shutterstock.com

Improve Data Center Efficiency with Advanced Monitoring and Calculated Points

Max Hamner, Research and Development Engineer at Modius, explains how using calculated points adds up to a superior experience for the DCIM user.

White Papers

Get the full report.

2022 Report: How People, Process and Technology are Redefining Mission Critical Infrastructure Operations

June 16, 2022
A new white paper from BCS Data Center Operations explores how people, processes, and technology are redefining mission critical infrastructure operations.