We spoke last week about the executive order issued by former President Biden around AI export controls. There has been some more information released about the reasoning behind the controls. One of those was that, as mentioned, third party actors are shipping restricted hardware to countries that were already banned from receiving it. Still others were able to access those systems through cloud computing in countries such as Malaysia and Brazil. The AI Diffusion Framework names 18 “friendly” countries with no restrictions and designates 23 countries under embargo with restrictions and caps on certain AI chips. The remaining nations of the world are categorized into a kind of limbo. The restrictions are based on a Total Processing Performance (TPP) metric that restricts exports based on the power of the chip. This and more on the Gestalt IT Rundown.
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1:05 – Futurum Asks CEOs About AI
The Futurum Group released one of the most impactful reports on AI to date. Working with Global Management Conulting Partnership Kearny, the report asked leading CEOs of companies with over $1 billion in revenue about their AI vision. The report includes important details like hurdles to AI integration and how older companies view AI versus the younger digitally native organizations. This comprehensive study has some of the most important information about the future of AI that has ever been collected.
6:40 – HPE Investigating IntelBroker Claims
HPE is doing some detective work this week after they found out last week that one of the more successful breach crews, IntelBroker, has made off with some of HPE’s information, including product source code. IntelBroker has decided to have an after Christmas sale and is offering the code on various forums as well as some personally identifiable information (PII) from older HPE delivery records. While you should always take criminal claims with a grain of salt, IntelBroker has been implicated in a number of thefts over the years that have turned out to be accurate.
Read More: HPE probes IntelBroker’s bold data theft boasts
9:51 – Former Meta Exec leads Microsoft’s New AI Team
Microsoft is building a dedicated AI group that has a familiar face at the helm. The CoreAI Platform and Tools division is going to be led by former head of Meta engineering Jay Parikh. The new office will pull in folks from the AI development teams along with some of the denizens of the Office of the CTO to focus on building an AI Platform to be used both internally and externally. The move was noted in a memo from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who says that AI is compressing thirty years of change into three. The company, according to Nadella, needs an AI-first app stack powered by Azure. Parikh was hired by Microsoft back in October and will now report directly to Nadella.
Read More: Microsoft creates new AI engineering group led by former Meta executive
13:41 – Gartner Says VM Migrations Won’t Be Easy
Moving away from VMware by Broadcom is going to cost you a lot of resources. That’s according to Gartner VP analyst Michael Warrilow. A survey published this week says that having external help to migrate a VM could cost you between $300 and $3,000 per machine and the project could take over two years depending on how many you need to move. In further breakdowns, the analyst says that teams of a dozen people could take more than a month to scope the project and start the migrations. Included in the report is the fact that VMware by Broadcom provides more than just virtualization support. Networking, storage, and management tools are also critical components to consider.
Read More: VMware migrations will be long, expensive, risky, Gartner warns
17:53 – Lenovo Acquires Infinidat
Lenovo is looking to shore up their storage chops and they’re taking a bite out of Infinidat. News broke last week that Infinidat is being bought for and undisclosed amount. Lenovo, probably most well known for their consumer devices, also has a significant stake in the enterprise, having purchased the IBM X-Series server line previously. Since that acquisition over a decade ago, Lenovo has sold third party storage lines such as EMC and NetApp. The move is seen as a way to help Lenovo compete against titans HPE and Dell in the space and provide options for customers looking at more advanced technologies such as AI.
Read More: Lenovo to acquire Infinidat, further expanding enterprise storage portfolio
22:05 – More on AI Diffusion Regulations
We spoke last week about the executive order issued by former President Biden around AI export controls. There has been some more information released about the reasoning behind the controls. One of those was that, as mentioned, third party actors are shipping restricted hardware to countries that were already banned from receiving it. Still others were able to access those systems through cloud computing in countries such as Malaysia and Brazil. The AI Diffusion Framework names 18 “friendly” countries with no restrictions and designates 23 countries under embargo with restrictions and caps on certain AI chips. The remaining nations of the world are categorized into a kind of limbo. The restrictions are based on a Total Processing Performance (TPP) metric that restricts exports based on the power of the chip.
37:24 – The Weeks Ahead
AI Field Day 6 – January 29 – 30
Cisco Live EMEA 2025 – February 9 – 14
Cloud Field Day 22 – February 19 – 20
Networking Field Day 37 – March 19 – 20
Gestalt IT and Tech Field Day are now part of The Futurum Group.
The Gestalt IT Rundown is your look at the IT news of the week. Be sure to subscribe to Gestalt IT on YouTube for even more weekly video content.
