Our Tech Brunch in Cyprus this November was incredibly fruitful, and we are grateful for all the participants who joined us and contributed to the great discussions. The meeting highlighted the increasing importance of AI, data management, cloud infrastructure choices, regulatory compliance, and cost control in the evolving tech landscape. Participants shared some of the challenges they have been facing and their main concerns when making infrastructure decisions. In this blog, we summarize the key takeaways and insights from the discussions.
AI: Data-Driven Decision Making and Cost Control
The integration of AI into business operations to enable data-driven decisions based on all available metrics, including historical data, was a central focus. AI is seen as key in enhancing analytics, forecasting, anomaly detection, and optimizing business processes. These tools are therefore quite effective at reducing costs while maintaining performance.
Costs are typically fixed when services are initially launched, so the opportunities in reducing costs with AI come after this. A typical scenario is that analysis reveals around 30% of the costs are redundant and could be reduced. The reasons for this include: selecting disks that are faster than necessary (slightly slower and cheaper disks may suffice), excessive backups (the retention period can be shortened, some data doesn’t need to be backed up, or there is overlap in backup sets), and excessive compute and storage usage (e.g., having duplicated databases in staging environments where high availability is not required).
AI Limitations and Strategies
AI is being explored in innovative applications like personalized concierge services via holographic avatars and AI-driven healthcare solutions, showcasing its potential to transform customer experiences. Additionally, AI’s role in business operations extends beyond chatbots to include content creation, predictive models, and operational efficiencies. However, there’s a recognition that AI should not fully replace human decision-making. AI is seen as a tool for scaling and improving efficiency, but its development is still ongoing, and the human factor remains important. Businesses are cautioned against blindly trusting predictive models, and in many cases the human touch is still needed when interacting with customers.
The conclusion is that in today’s world, AI should not just be treated as another project but as an integral part of long-term strategies. Businesses should have a 2-5 year vision of what they want to achieve with AI, whilst keeping its limitations in mind. It’s true that AI does require a financial investment, but we are just beginning to learn the potential of AI. The development of AI will certainly continue in the coming decade so whilst we do not know today what it may bring, you should already be testing what it can do for your business now.
Cloud Services and Infrastructure Choices
Choosing between Public Cloud services and dedicated servers was a dominant question amongst the group, so we discussed the differences between the two. Dedicated servers are typically preferred for cost control, compliance, trust, and performance reliability, especially for industries like Gaming and Finance. Public cloud services are valued for their scalability, flexibility, and cost efficiency but participants said they typically use Public Cloud for smaller projects or anonymized data.
Regulation and compliance make data sovereignty an important factor, which is another reason why some participants favor dedicated servers. You know exactly where your data is making it easy to comply with local laws. This is of course changing, as the EU has launched the IPCEI initiative to build a European sovereign cloud which Leaseweb is involved in via our European Cloud Campus.
Conclusion
AI is a powerful tool that businesses need to utilize if they want to keep up with today’s tech landscape, but its limitations should not be ignored and ultimately humans still need to make critical decisions and produce. Cost management is, as always, a key concern for businesses and AI can help with this if used correctly. Data sovereignty and knowing where one’s data is stored is increasingly important and is impacting infrastructure decisions between dedicated servers and Public Cloud.
Thank you once again to all the participants who joined us for this discussion in Cyprus. Keep an eye out for our next Tech Brunch or contact sales if you have any questions.