Enterprises Demand Cloud Value
InfoWorld finds enterprises are shifting from cloud-first enthusiasm to demanding measurable cloud ROI, centralizing FinOps and 'centers of excellence' to curb overprovisioning. That discipline changes the calculus for moving latency-sensitive workloads to cloud versus keeping them in colocation or on-prem. (infoworld.com)
Flexera’s 2026 State of the Cloud report found 85% of organizations rank managing cloud spend as a top challenge and reported 63% of respondents have established dedicated FinOps teams to tackle that problem. (flexera.com) 28Stone’s benchmark with Google Cloud recorded tick-to-trade (T2T) best-case latency as low as sub‑2 microseconds on Google C3 machines and reported sustained throughput above 5 Gbps in their controlled tests. (28stone.com) Google Cloud’s summary of the same collaboration says C3 machine profiles produced round‑trip trading decision latencies under 50 microseconds at P99 across tested configurations and highlights the C3 series’ Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs and programmable packet-processing IPU. (cloud.google.com) AWS Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) provides an OS‑bypass networking device using the SRD protocol to cut jitter and lower inter‑instance latency for tightly coupled workloads, and AWS documents Nitro as a family of offload cards that reduces virtualization overhead for better determinism. (aws.amazon.com 1) (aws.amazon.com 2) Kernel‑bypass frameworks such as DPDK and AF_XDP are deployed in both cloud and on‑prem setups to eliminate kernel path overhead and achieve microsecond‑level packet handling, and Google Cloud publishes guidance for running DPDK on Compute Engine VMs. (dpdk.org) (cloud.google.com) Market practice data and industry reporting show many trading firms retain colocation near exchange matching engines (for example Equinix NY4 and similar exchange peering sites) because physical proximity and facility determinism still deliver single‑digit microsecond advantages that cloud instances cannot guarantee in all real‑world conditions. (equinix.com) (hivelocity.net) Flexera reports that 71% of organizations now operate a centralized Cloud Center of Excellence and that the shift to measurable cloud value is driving hybrid architectures and workload-specific placement decisions rather than blanket “cloud‑first” migration. (learn.flexera.com)
