Spending Slowdowns in Cloud, PCs

Intel executives say slowing data center sales and too much PC/chip inventory account for the company’s latest results.

Indeed, the Intel earnings gut-punch comes as cloud computing providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud report slowdowns in adoption. End users, cleaning up from frenzied, pandemic-forced technology deployments, have started to pull back on their cloud spending, realizing how pricey it really is. More organizations are implementing cost controls and optimization measures, actions that translate into less revenue for the hyperscalers.

Some of those measures include end users turning to independent cloud vendors, which tend to offer the same cloud storage capabilities as the Big 3 at much lower prices. Vultr, Linode and DigitalOcean, for example, all position themselves as affordable options to AWS S3 buckets, in particular.

Keep an eye on these companies. Vultr, for its part, is opening a slew of new data center regions throughout the world. This activity indicates significant uptake among end users and channel partners keen to spend their cloud computing budgets with more deliberation.

But as we note later on, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has given financial analysts a more optimistic take on the matter.