Much has changed in the industry since supercloud started “becoming a thing,” as theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante put it in a May 2022 edition of his Breaking Analysis series.

These days, there’s a lot more visibility on this layer, with multicloud now a much more used term and with cross-cloud getting a lot of traction. But as generative artificial intelligence enters the scene, automation comes with it — and with it, a lot of hype.

The industry has coalesced around the concept that there is a certain architecture that one needs to adopt in order to be successful in this multicloud era, according to Kit Colbert (pictured), chief technology officer of VMware Inc.

Since ChatGPT came out last November, there has been huge interest across the industry, Colbert pointed out.

“This was very much like an iPhone moment: You saw it, and you can never unsee,” he said. “You can never go back to the way things were before. I think what we’re seeing across the board is every company trying to figure out, ‘OK, how do I realize the value of generative AI and how do I do so without necessarily falling into some of the same traps that I’ve fallen into before when the previous super hot technology came out?’”

Colbert spoke with industry analyst John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, at the Supercloud 3: Security, AI and the Supercloud event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE. They discussed the coalescing of cross-cloud or multicloud architecture with AI and the concern emerging from large enterprises around security. (* Disclosure below.)

Generative AI has its own market

In a world where people are going to reuse generative AI for their existing properties while netting new capabilities, an interesting dynamic emerges. How does generative AI get valued in terms of the person looking at it?

“What you see is with something like GenAI, given the importance of it, it really creates an inflection point for the industry,” Colbert said. “I think when you find these inflection points happening in the history of business, what you see is it does provide tremendous opportunities for these startups to get in with a very different, or potentially you could argue, better value proposition.”

For established enterprises, many may be thinking about how, while an organization may have a solid moat, the company still needs to be concerned about how it could get disrupted by this new generative AI technology, according to Colbert. Further to that, how might established enterprises think about how to defend against startups?

“I think everyone realizes there’s huge potential. I think there’s still a lot of discovery happening around how to best realize that potential,” Colbert said.

Excitement and risk management

The other concern often being voiced these days by large enterprises has to do with security. The common thread there is that many want to move quickly to take advantage of technology while ensuring they are also not driving greater risk or damaging themselves in any way, according to Colbert.

“Am I potentially leaking proprietary data from leveraging GenAI? Am I potentially doing some sort of IP contamination through the output of these GenAI systems?” he said. “Some of these things are unknown at this point. So, I do see both the excitement as well as the risk management side of it and folks trying to balance those two things.”

Some companies have the ability to do training and GPU clusters, and there are costs associated with doing it. But how does it relate to supercloud? As supercloud and multicloud are coming together, will AI help in the short term by pushing things operationally forward toward supercloud? That could be one of those scenarios where things go both ways and arguments could be made in both directions, according to Colbert.

“Typically, what you find is that when folks see a new technology like GenAI, what we’re seeing now, they’re going all-in. They’re not necessarily thinking about what comes next,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘Hey, I just need to get this thing solved. Get something in production. Start realizing business value from it.’”

But then, typically, what people find is that they’ve pinned themselves into a corner, according to Colbert. That may inhibit a company’s ability to scale and take advantage of, in this case, multicloud.

“I do see some thoughtfulness going into these discussions. People are thinking about, ‘OK, what sort of architecture should I be taking here? What sort of dependencies should I be taking and on whom? And how do I ensure that I still get the choice of location?’” he said. “That’s super important.”

Here’s the complete video interview with Kit Colbert, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Supercloud 3: Security, AI and the Supercloud event:

(* Disclosure: This is an editorial segment. VMware is a paid media partner for Supercloud 3. Sponsors for theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE