Amid talk of a recession, there are other areas in tech where there’s actually a tailwind — the growth of artificial intelligence and open-source software among them.

There’s also a lot more cloud action happening, with more data coming in. In that way, a trend of rightsizing makes sense as a natural evolution of the next-generation cloud. How are companies seeing things as they seek to get their house in order, moving from being a janitor custodian toward operationalizing some of the mechanics and key performance indicators needed to scale cloud — automation being among them?

“We were leading with a cost optimization story over the last couple of years, and it really sort of fell on deaf ears. It wasn’t a great conversation piece,” said Ethan Simmons (pictured), managing partner of Pinnacle Technology Partners Inc., which helps companies accelerate development in cloud environments. “Starting last fall, we had more and more customers coming to us saying, ‘Hey, I remember when you guys were talking to us about how we can save some money in AWS. How do we do that?’”

Simmons spoke with theCUBE industry analyst John Furrier at the AWS “Savings in the Cloud” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed PTP’s relationship with Spot by NetApp and the growth of AI. (* Disclosure below.)

Working with Spot by NetApp

“If you try to do manually what Spot does, Spot and CloudCheckr together, if you were to try to do that manually, it would be an impossible task to do in real time,” Simmons said. “Having that automated, AI approach to cost optimization really takes a lot of the legwork out of doing the manual piece of cost optimization.”

For PTP, it was a two-pronged approach. The company was using CloudCheckr for its traditional services and was heavily using Spot by NetApp for its AWS Reserved Instances management capabilities, Simmons explained.

“Now, those tools are merging together. So it’s nice to have one tool rather than managing two. Our managed services team sort of has tool fatigue at times, where they have all these different tools to manage,” he said. “It’s nice to bring that into one platform going forward. But, I still think, from a customer standpoint, they don’t want to go out and buy these tools. They don’t have the staff to use them and learn them. So, again, I think for us, it’s a great opportunity for more managed services.”

The next wave

Given the advent of AI, there are likely to be more cost management challenges in the future. There’s also the human capital side of things, where automation is really going to augment several areas. So, what’s PTP’s vision for the future, as automation takes things into the next wave of AI and data?

“You’ve seen a lot of enhancements to cloud storage, S3, with auto-tiering and moving stuff faster off to cold storage, and more intelligence tiering of storage,” Simmons said. “With the LLM, the large language model, all this data now needs to be in hotter storage. That’s what’s driving a lot of the costs where these algorithms need quicker access to data.”

It’s really about that intelligence built into the storage to have it in the right place, at the right time, according to Simmons. In addition to that, it’s about trying to do it as efficiently as possible. PTP often works with customers who are scientists or bioinformaticians — individuals who don’t want to spend their money on IT.

“They’re trying to find a cure for cancer or for a disease, and their goal isn’t to spend money on IT or to worry about IT infrastructure, and they’re really focused on time to value,” Simmons said. “How can I use the funding that we have in this startup phase, or seed round, or A Round of funding?”

These customers are asking how they can get to a point where they can prove their science works, according to Simmons. That’s where the company is trying to help them get there faster.

“The IT piece of it and the cost savings is interesting for us, but seeing the customer able to do their research faster is what really drives us and is an exciting part about what we do,” he said.

Here’s the complete video interview with Ethan Simmons, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS “Savings in the Cloud” event:

(* Disclosure: Spot by NetApp Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Spot by NetApp nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE