An analysis of recent price increases among the largest cloud providers shows the impact of AI on cloud services, and in particular, how the price of accelerators is having on rates. 

This is according to Liftr Insights which over the past three months tracked the average price of accelerators, which are used to enhance and expand cloud capabilities. Prices have increased for the top cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, Alibaba (Aliyun) Cloud, and Google Cloud. For example, when looking at certain NVIDIA GPUs, Azure is leading the pack with prices increasing by 55.2% in the past three months. Specifically, these percentages are based on average price for NVIDIA Tensor Core (Ampere) models. Google Cloud was the next largest at 20.0% followed by Alibaba Cloud and AWS at 3.5% and 1.2%, respectively.

A portion of these increases are due to higher core counts, but the prices for these in-demand accelerators also show growth when evaluating the average price per core.

"While we see many valuable data points in the prices across providers and across the globe, Liftr data show that cloud prices don't typically fluctuate to this extent," says Tab Schadt, CEO of Liftr Insights. "It's a sign of the hot AI market. Accelerators—like NVIDIA GPUs—are the technology needed for artificial intelligence training and inference. Demand for AI is driving these price changes."

Among many attributes, Liftr Insights tracks on-demand prices for the top six cloud providers, representing over 75% of the total public cloud space. These prices are measured for all the unique configurations in Liftr Insights data, including numerous dimensions for processors and accelerators, such as global region, architecture, core count, and accelerator count as a few examples.

"This level of information is important for organizations needing to pay attention to their bottom line," says Schadt. "Particularly as they expand into new territories and new technologies, such as artificial intelligence. Our customers will be paying close attention to changes in the data as they occur."

AMSTERDAM—TV Technology recently spoke with Cory Bialowas, senior vice president of product marketing on their plans for the IBC Show, taking place at the RAI Convention Center in Amsterdam, Sept. 9-13.

TV TECHNOLOGY:What will Signiant be showing at IBC?

CORY BIALOWAS: We’ll be demonstrating new capabilities across our entire portfolio of accelerated file transfer solutions for media enterprises. Support for local object storage is the big news for our flagship Manager+Agents, which is ‘behind the firewall’ software for automated file movement. Companies that own these systems are also adopting Flight in record numbers – that’s our cloud-native offering for upload to AWS or Azure, which can be connected directly to a M+A system. And there are lots of new enhancements to Media Shuttle, the Signiant SaaS platform that continues to be the tool of choice for people who need to move large media files fast.

TVT:Signiant recently released a new guide on FTP. Can you tell us a little more about that?

CB: That asset specifically focused on augmenting or replacing FTP, which is something that more and more of our customers are doing. FTP is old technology, it’s slow, and the user experience isn’t great. Our Media Shuttle SaaS offering is a next-generation solution that solves all of those problems, and at IBC we’re introducing new features that make it practical to undertake large-scale, enterprise-wide deployments. 

TVT:What do you think the main themes for your customers will be at IBC?

CB: We’re expecting cloud technology to continue to be very topical, and local object storage is part of the same conversation. Media customers tell us that storage independence is a critical factor – so Signiant has a strong commitment to supporting a range of storage technologies and suppliers. And as always, customers are looking for technical solutions that meet their over-arching goals of business agility, cost management, and effective resource utilization.

TVT:Can you elaborate on your workflow for Azure and what customer reaction has been?

CB: That was just one example of how media workflows can be extended to the cloud, which is an area of great interest to our customers. Signiant technology plays a key role in the move to cloud technology, whether for a single simple process or the kind of large-scale cloud adoption outlined in our recent press release about Discovery Networks.

Signiant will be in booth 14.L08 in the RAI. For more information on the IBC Show, visit www.ibc.org