I would assert that the strategic shift here is from migration to optimization. CIOs’ focus now lies in orchestrating across platforms, negotiating value and deciding which workloads create the most impact in each environment.
To put it more succinctly, I would argue that the cloud conversation has matured from “How do we get there?” to “How do we get smarter about what runs where?”
AI and the new compute gravity
Artificial intelligence has introduced a certain gravity to cloud computing. AI workloads are massive, power-hungry, and location-sensitive. They pull data and compute closer together and, as I’ve seen with many of my clients, reshape entire data centers’ economics.
Meanwhile, cloud providers are no longer just service vendors; they’re infrastructure engineers designing GPUs, AI-specific chips and advanced cooling systems. Enterprises are beginning to mirror that behavior at a smaller scale, building private GPU clusters to control costs and manage sensitive data.
