AI infrastructure matures, GPU supply and demand may even out

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Since the start of the generative AI boom, demand for Nvidia GPUs has been insatiable. Nvidia is still raking in cash from its AI infrastructure, but there are few recent developments indicating that the industry is maturing a bit.

In an announcement largely overlooked amid Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's keynote at Computex, the company launched Nvidia DGX Cloud Lepton, an AI platform and marketplace that will connect developers to available GPUs.

Nvidia isn't providing the service, but has lined up a set of cloud partners including CoreWeave, Crusoe, Firmus, Foxconn, GMI Cloud, Lambda, Nebius, Nscale, Softbank Corp. and Yotta Data Services. These providers are offering Nvidia Blackwell and the rest of Nvidia's stack. GPU marketplaces including Fluidstack, Foundry and Hydra are also participating.

The marketplace "connects our network of global GPU cloud providers with AI developers," said Huang, who added the Nvidia and partners are "building a planetary-scale AI factory." Huang said leading cloud providers and other GPU marketplaces are expected to participate in DGX Cloud Lepton.

Developers would purchase GPU capacity directly from cloud providers or bring their own compute clusters. GPU capacity can also be deployed across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.

With the marketplace, Nvidia is trying to democratize GPU access a bit. After all, Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, AWS and Google Cloud are likely gobbling up the capacity.

The other Nvidia move that made me go hmm was NVLink Fusion, which enables other CPUs to plug into the Nvidia stack. Speaking at his Computex 2025 keynote, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled NVLink Fusion. NVLink Fusion allows cloud providers and presumably sovereign AI efforts and ultimately private infrastructure to use any ASIC or CPU to scale out Nvidia GPUs.

MediaTek, Marvell, Alchip Technologies, Astera Labs, Synopsys and Cadence are the early adopters of NVLink Fusion for its custom silicon. Qualcomm also announced its data center efforts and moves to integrate its CPUs into Nvidia infrastructure. Fujitsu and Qualcomm CPUs can also be integrated into Nvidia GPUs via NVLink Fusion.

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said: "Nvidia once again acknowledges the importance of the network for AI. The speed and efficiency how data is served to the precious and inexpensive CPUs is what matters."

The other development in AI infrastructure this week was revealed at Dell Technologies World. Dell outlined a plan to disaggregate data centers and use AI and automation to create a stack that can better mix and match layers, vendors and AI workload architectures.

Dell's disaggregated approach to the data center will apply to private cloud and on-premises deployments.

And finally, Dell is diversifying its AI factory approach. Yes, Nvidia's full stack is the headliner for Dell AI factories, but the company added an AMD version and early-stage Intel offerings.

Add it up and there seems to be some acknowledgement that there will be Nvidia diversification whether it's with custom processors from AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud or custom ASICs and rival efforts. Even Nvidia's NVLink Fusion acknowledges the broader ecosystem at least for CPUs. Nvidia is playing the long-game, which revolves around the ecosystem and connecting AI infrastructure with its platform.

Zoom reports strong Q1 earnings, shows enterprise strength

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Zoom Communications delivered better-than-expected first quarter earnings as the company is seeing strong demand for Zoom Customer Experience, Zoom Revenue Accelerator and Workivo.

The company reported first quarter earnings of 81 cents a share on revenue of $1.17 billion, up 2.9% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings in the first quarter were $1.43 a share. Wall Street was looking for non-GAAP earnings of $1.31 a share on revenue of $1.17 billion.

Eric Yuan, Zoom CEO, said "we saw continued momentum in Zoom Customer Experience, Zoom Revenue Accelerator, and Workvivo as customers look to elevate CX, reinvigorate sales, and strengthen culture." He added that the company appeared to be landing accounts in an uncertain economy. Enterprise revenue in the first quarter was $704.7 million, up 5.9% from a year ago. Online revenue, which is small business accounts, had revenue of $470 million, down 1.2%.

Zoom evolves AI Companion with agentic AI features

Zoom said it had 4,192 customers contributing more than $100,000 in trailing 12 months revenue, up 8% from a year ago. Online average monthly churn was 2.8%.

As for the outlook, Zoom projected second quarter revenue between $1.19 billion and $1.2 billion with non-GAAP earnings of $1.36 a share to $1.37 a share. For fiscal 2026, Zoom projected revenue between $4.8 billion to $4.81 billion with non-GAAP revenue of $5.56 a share to $5.59 a share.

Yuan in prepared remarks said:

• "Adoption of Zoom AI Companion continues to grow, with monthly active users up nearly 40% quarter over quarter."
• "While we continue providing tremendous AI value at no additional cost to users with a paid license, we're now monetizing through Custom AI Companion. Though only weeks in market, we're seeing strong enthusiasm from several Global 2000 trial customers, who are especially excited about features like Bring Your Own Dictionary and Index, meeting summary templates, and our Jira integration."
• "Zoom Phone continues to perform strongly, with revenue growing in the mid-teens. It is also opening new markets for Zoom by integrating seamlessly with other productivity suites and delivering a best-in-class, AI-first voice experience. The adoption of Zoom phone integration with Microsoft Teams has grown significantly, showing how we can meet customers where they are and add value within their existing tech stack."
• "In Q1, the number of Zoom Contact Center customers grew 65% year over year and Zoom Virtual Agent landed its largest deal to date as an upsell to Contact Center - altogether Zoom Customer Experience is a triple digit million ARR business, growing in high double digits."
• "Zoom Revenue Accelerator, our AI-first sales enablement and conversational intelligence solution, continues to deliver strong results for revenue teams. In Q1, licenses grew 72% year over year, reflecting growing traction."

Snowflake delivers strong Q1, Q2 outlook

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Snowflake delivered first quarter revenue growth of 26%. The company's data platform continues to see strong demand due to AI workloads.

The company reported first quarter non-GAAP earnings of 24 cents a share on revenue of $1.04 billion. Including stock compensation and other items, Snowflake reported a net loss of $430.1 million, or $1.29 a share.

Wall Street was expecting Snowflake to report non-GAAP earnings of 21 cents a share on revenue of $1.01 billion.

As for the outlook, Snowflake projected second quarter product revenue of $1.035 billion to $1.04 billion, up 25% from a year ago. "We see an enormous opportunity ahead as we extend this value throughout the full data lifecycle," said Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy.

• Snowflake adds OpenAI models to Cortex AI via expanded Microsoft partnership, integration
• Snowflake Marketplace: The Future of Data Monetization and Enterprise AI
• Constellation ShortList™ Automated Cloud Data Warehouse Services

By the for numbers for the first quarter:

• Snowflake had 606 customers with trailing 12-month product revenue of more than $1 million.
• Remaining performance obligations of $6.7 billion, up 34% from a year ago.
• Research and development spending in the first quarter was $472.4 million, up from $410.8 million a year ago.
• The company has been hiring as expenses have crept higher.

Snowflake cited customers such as JPMorgan Chase, AstraZeneca, Dentsu, Kraft Heinz and Siemens. He noted that the company is focused on innovative use cases.

Here's what Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy had to say on the earnings call:

• "Our core business is very strong, our product delivery remains on overdrive, and our go-to-market engine continues to get stronger and stronger. We are in the zone and there's still an enormous opportunity ahead."
• "We've made important progress in delivering an extensible and flexible connectivity platform, both unstructured as well as structured data. Snowflake connectors, which leverages the technology from our acquisition of Datavolo enables customers with seamless connectivity and data integration with key platforms like Google Drive, Workday, Slack, SharePoint and more to tap into critical data across the business."
• "This quarter alone, we have brought over 125 product capabilities to market, a 100% increase over what we delivered in Q1 of last year. We continue to see strong adoption of open data formats, especially truly open modern table formats like Apache Iceberg."
• On hyperscale cloud competition, the Snowflake CEO said: "The hyperscalers are formidable. They are amazing both from an engineering execution and business perspective, but they also work with Anthropic and OpenAI because they are the best -- among the best model makers in the world. Similarly, we are very uniquely positioned in terms of being the excellent data platform that is. And we've also learned how cooperating really leads to a better outcome, whether it is with AWS, which is our biggest partner, or more and more with Azure. There are many customers that Azure not play is just a better outcome for everybody that is involved."

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"Snowflake had a other great quarter, missing the $1 billion in product revenue by a hair. The question going forward is how will its customers adapt to AI. Snowflake has an ambitious agendas here, including its LLM, but the verdict is still out where enterprise data will live. The balance is slowly shifting from analytics vendors to AI automation vendors, and there the transactional vendors that are gaining momentum in product. The second half of 2025 will not only be different for Snowflake, but all analytics centric vendors." 

Hitachi Digital Services CEO Lvin on AI transformation, operations technology and use cases

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Hitachi Digital Services CEO Roger Lvin said the move to AI agents will feature more transformation in a shorter amount of time than cloud computing due to "the reinvention of processes and applications from scratch." Lvin also talked about talent in the AI era, R&D, operations technology and IT convergence and the need for domain knowledge in AI use cases.

Lvin spoke at Hitachi Digital Services' US Analyst and Advisor Day. Hitachi Digital Services is part of Hitachi Group's Digital Systems & Services division.

Here's a look at the takeaways from Lvin's talk:

Agentic AI's real impact. Lvin said agentic AI is "a real movement" that will have an impact that's overlooked. "Agentic AI will allow us to skip what we had gone through with cloud," said Lvin. He noted that the cloud had two phases. First, there was migration which was largely successful. The second was implementation and returns, which didn't deliver the savings expected for many. The cloud led to a lot of brown field implementations that revolved around retooling existing systems and processes. Agentic AI will feature more green field implementations because there won't be a lift and shift progression.

"With agentic AI, you're going to see a significant movement towards modernization in a green field type of manner. I think you're going to see a lot of reinvention of processes and applications from scratch because of the new approaches. I think that will come about a year from now."

Your data will never be perfect enough. Lvin said it's a mistake to think you have to have your data house completely in order before taking on AI use cases. He said: 

"For AI, obviously, you need data. If you don't have data, you are dead in the water. But I think a lot of the companies two years ago were stuck in the in their horizontal proof of concept hell. I think a lot of companies are now stuck there because they think their data has to be perfect before they go on this AI journey. 

I've changed my own perspective that, and I believe that that's kind of nonsense now, because data will never be perfect. It's never been perfect 10 years from now, it's not perfect now, and we can all be certain that it's not going to be perfect 10 years from now. It's like talent. The best organizations didn't have enough talent 10 years ago, and probably will not have enough talent 20 years from now. The important thing about data is that you have to advance these programs simultaneously. You can't wait for perfection in one swim lane before you take on the second because otherwise you will be in the proof of concept forever."

AI talent. Lvin said the primary issue is that AI requires multiple skills and knowledge including domain knowhow, physics mathematics and experts in horizontal technology. "I don't think that'll change and I don't know if the US is particularly great at teaching those skills. We're good at training those skills, but not necessarily the best at keeping them within the country," said Lvin. "You're going to look for engineering skills, but you're also going to look for domain skills, which we're not going to have enough of."

Mission critical systems. Hitachi Digital Systems runs systems for the likes of Japan Rail, major automotive companies and transaction systems behind the scenes. Lvin said the secret sauce is to run mission critical applications, infuse Japanese quality and process knowhow and new innovations. "These mission critical systems can't go down and they have real-life implications when they do now work," said Lvin.

R&D. Lvin said Hitachi spends $3 billion each year on R&D with a focus on asset heavy and asset light industries. That expertise resonates with enterprises with mission critical systems. "My pitch to engineers that we bring in is that if you want to be a good consultant there are plenty of good companies out there. If you want to be hardcore engineer, this is a place for you to be," said Lvin.

ERP. "We're seeing a huge resurgence in SAP, particularly in the midmarket," said Lvin. "There has been a little bit of a walk back from developing the latest, greatest and coolest UI. Customers are saying let me focus on the core systems and reduce the technology debt."

Operations technology (OT) and security. "SecOps have been around a long time, but the mission of protecting OT is lagging significantly behind," said Lvin, who said enterprises are starting to catch up with OT security.

OT and IT convergence. Lvin said OT and IT are converging because physical infrastructure is going digital.

"A train is used to be four wheels, four walls, a big engine with a black box like you get on an airplane. Today, the train has over 40,000 sensors that are reading the condition of the track. They're reading what's happening with the weather and everything happening with the train. What is new in that example is actually AI on the edge. Hitachi has worked on advanced computing with Nvidia. Now there is a card that sits inside the train, reads the data in real-time from the sensors and now we know more due to things like computer vision."

Use cases. Lvin said Hitachi likes to partner with customers on AI use cases. "The difficulty today is finding the real use cases. How do you bring the application into the real world," said Lvin. He added that the art of finding the right AI use case is about domain and industry knowledge, technical skill and returns.

Palo Alto Q3 strong as it consolidates security budgets

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected third quarter earnings as the company continues to consolidate cybersecurity budgets.

The company, which kicked off a platformization war among security vendors last year, said third quarter earnings were 37 cents a share on revenue of $2.3 billion, up 15% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 80 cents a share.

Wall Street was looking for non-GAAP third quarter earnings of 77 cents a share on revenue of $2.29 billion.

As for the outlook, Palo Alto Networks said revenue will be between $2.49 billion to $2.51 billion with non-GAAP earnings of 87 cents a share to 89 cents a share. Wall Street was looking for non-GAAP earnings of 87 cents a share on revenue of $2.50 billion.

For fiscal 2025, Palo Alto Networks projected revenue of $9.17 billion to $9.19 billion with non-GAAP earnings of $3.26 a share to $2.28 a share.

• Palo Alto Networks acquires Protect AI, aims to secure AI ecosystems
• Palo Alto Networks delivers strong Q2, launches Cortex Cloud

By the numbers:

• Next-generation security annual recurring revenue for Palo Alto Networks was $5.09 billion, up 34% from a year ago.
• Operating income was up 23% on a non-GAAP basis in the third quarter.
• About 90 customers in the third quarter standardized on Palo Alto Networks.
• The company had 44 customers with more than $10 million in annual recurring revenue on next-gen security.

CEO Nikesh Arora made the following points on the earnings conference call. 

• "It is becoming increasingly clear that as organizations aspire to simplify and modernize their security architectures in the age of AI with data at the center, our strategy is resonating, resulting in larger deals."
• "The urgency to adopt AI is omnipresent in all of our customers. It no longer seems to be a choice. It's becoming a strategic imperative for every customer as the risk of inaction is too high."
• "It was not an easy quarter to execute. Had we not had the tariff conversations, the geopolitical tensions, it'll be much easier to sell through it. But we had our lessons from the pandemic. We had our lessons from supply chain crisis. So, we had to go back and pull up our shorts and execute the same practices that we did then. And we're kind of, like, on the same sort of cadence now in Q4 because we are trying to stay ahead of the curve."

Google I/O 2025: Google aims for a universal AI assistant

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Google's future vision is to create leverage its data, properties and services to create a universal AI assistant that will be agentic, understand your personal context and carry out tasks. Google sees Gemini 2.5 Pro becoming a world model that can make plans, create new experiences and simulate the world.

Last year, Google was among the first to introduce agentic AI and the role of agents at Google Cloud Next and Google I/O. This year's Google I/O is about more than new models (although they play a big part) but the agentic experiences they can provide in multiple environments including Android, Google Meet and search.

"We are shipping faster than ever since last I/O. We have announced over a dozen foundation models, multiple research breakthroughs, and released over 20 major AI products and features, and it's only a slice of the innovation that's happening across the company, from search to cloud to YouTube and subscriptions and more," said Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who said in a briefing that Google is leveraging its full hardware stack to roll out new models.

Google is processing 480 trillion tokens per month across its products and APIs, up from 9.7 trillion per month a year ago. That tally is likely to increase as Google rolls out its AI mode search experience with its latest Gemini models.

"It's a total reimagining of search with more advanced reasoning. You can ask longer and more complex queries, like query you see there. In fact, early testers have been responding very positively," said Pichai. "They've been asking queries two to three times, sometimes as long as five times the length of traditional searches. And you can go further with follow up questions. All of this is available as a new tab right in search."

Search is the most obvious area--and critical area for AI since it's Alphabet's profit engine--but Google is rolling out AI in multiple contexts. One interesting development is Google Beam, an AI-first video communication platform that will be rolled out with HP. Google Beam, which emerged from a project outlined at Google I/O a few years ago, takes video conferencing, combines six cameras and an AI model that creates a realistic 3D experience from the video streams.

Google Beam aims to bring 3D, AI to video conferencing with HP

Google also highlighted real-time language translations between two Google Meet coworkers--one speaking Spanish and one English.

Select Google I/O news includes:

• Project Mariner capabilities in search and Gemini API.
• Gemini 2.5 Pro and Flash generally available soon.
• Gemini 2.5 Flash updates.
• Gemini 2.5 Pro Deep Think reasoning mode.
• Veo 3 and Imagen 4 models.
• AI Overviews and AI Mode using Gemini 2.5.
• Deep Search in AI Mode.
• Search Live.
• Gemini is coming to Chrome.
• Try it on, a shopping feature where you can send in a full body picture and Google will use AI so you can wear it.
• Agentic checkout, a tool to monitor prices and have an AI agent complete the purchase automatically.
• Gemini app is getting Gemini Live with camera and screen sharing. Google apps will also come to Gemini Live.
• Gemini software development kit will be compatible with Model Context Protocol (MCP).
• Multiple AI driven features in the latest Android.
• Jules, an agentic coding assistant, is in public beta. 
• Google has partnered with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to create glasses powered by AndroidXR people will actually want to wear. 

The latest tools will be bundled into a new Google AI Ultra subscription tier that will run $249.99 a month. That plan includes a Gemini app with 2.5 Pro Deep Think and Veo 3, highest limits with NotebookLM, Gemini in Gmail, Docs and other Google apps, Project Mariner, YouTube Premium and 30TB of storage.

The big picture: An AI experience engine

Although the news out of Google I/O is extensive--and enterprise grade once innovation is included in Google Cloud--the big picture here is where the company is headed with its models and agentic AI approach.

Think of Google's AI as its experience engine. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, said the company is updating Gemini 2.5 Flash, which is popular with developers due to speed and low cost. The Flash update will land in June with a Pro update soon after.

Hassabis said:

"Our recent updates to Gemini are critical steps towards unlocking our vision for a universal AI assistant, one that's helpful in your everyday life, that's intelligent and understands the context you're in, and they can plan and take actions on your behalf across any device. This is our ultimate goal for the Gemini app, an AI that's personal, proactive and powerful."

For instance, Google's Project Astra highlights how the Gemini App can find documents, read your email with permission and carry out tasks like phoning a company and making an appointment.

Now the demo highlighted a bicycle repair and associated questions and the data was on Google--Search, YouTube and Gmail--but you can see where the company is heading. At some point, agents will be able to realistically traverse third-party data stores and services.

"The universal AI assistant will perform everyday tasks for us. It'll take care of our mundane admin and surface delightful new recommendations making us more productive and enriching our lives," said Hassabis. "We're gathering feedback about these capabilities now from trusted testers and working to bring them to Gemini Live new experiences in search, the Live API for developers, as well as new form factors like Android XR glasses, another important way to demonstrate understanding of the world is to be able to generate aspects of it accurately."

Google Cloud Next 2025:

• 9 Google Cloud customers on AI implementations, best practices
• Google Cloud CEO Kurian on agentic AI, DeepSeek, solving big problems
• Google Cloud Next 2025: Agentic AI, Ironwood, customers and everything you need to know
• Google Cloud CTO Grannis on the confluence of scale, multimodal AI, agents
• Lloyds Banking Group bets on Google Cloud for AI-driven transformation
• Healthcare leaders eye agentic AI as next frontier for clinicians, patients
• Google Cloud, UWM partner as mortgage battle revolves around automation, data, AI
• Lowe's eyes AI agents as home improvement companion for customers

Here's how Hassabis sees this universal AI assistant theme playing out in the short term:

• Gemini 2.5 Pro will be able to use world knowledge and reasoning to simulate natural environments in conjunction with models like Veo. 
• Making Gemini a world model is a step toward a universal AI assistant. 
• The Gemini app will be transformed into a universal AI assistant. Capabilities outlined in Project Astra last year wil turn up in the Gemini app.  
• For users, agentic AI embedded into the Gemini app will enable them to multitask better. 

Liz Reid, Head of Google Search, outlined how AI overviews will change and Vidhya Srinivasan, General Manager of Google Ads and Commerce, highlighted how AI will change shopping, answer follow-up questions and help consumers buy products throughout the customer journey. Ultimately, this AI assistant theme will run through all of Google's services. 

Reid said the search improvements are designed to move from information to intelligence. "There are a lot of times where you come to search and you're just trying to find something when you really need a recommendation. We're going to be enabling you, starting with your own searches, but also giving you an option to opt in to connect your Google Apps, things like Gmail, so that you can just get much better recommendations fit for you," she said.

Srinivasan walked through a shopping experience where Google's AI agent watched prices and options and then since it had all the billing information could complete a checkout. The consumer would have to approve the transaction, but the theme is the same. Google is moving from agents that provide information to ones that do things. "This is really the start of a search that goes beyond information to intelligence," said Srinivasan.

What's clear is that agentic AI is going to be the new user interface. That impact may happen well before agents start executing on tasks and all the mundane work in day-to-day life.

Google Beam aims to bring 3D, AI to video conferencing with HP

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Google launched Google Beam, a 3D video communications platform that will initially launch with HP.

The platform, which was formerly known as Project Starline, is designed to make remote video conferencing 3D and appear like participants are in the same room without glasses or headsets.

Google Beam will use an AI volumetric video model and multiple cameras to make 2D calls look immersive and in 3D. Google Beam is built on Google Cloud infrastructure.

According to Google, Google Beam will combine the AI video model with a light field display that will create a sense of dimension and depth and appear like you're in the same room with the other person.

Google also said it is exploring real-time speech translation with Google Beam. That feature is landing in Google Meet.

Coming to the workplace

HP will be the first vendor to bring Google Beam devices to market later in 2025. HP will unveil the first Google Beam devices at InfoComm, an audio-visual conference that kicks off June 7 to June 13.

However, Google said it is working with Zoom and channel partners to bring Google Beam to market.

Google said it has already been trying out Google Beam with early customers including Deloitte, Salesforce, Citadel, NEC, Hackensack Meridian Health, Duolingo and Recruit.

A few thoughts:

• Google Beam appears to be a big advance in remote collaboration.
• Yet, the Google Beam advance is a bit ironic given that enterprises are hellbent on getting people back to the office.
• Pricing will be the big issue for Google Beam. Of course, Google Beam will be way cheaper than those telepresence systems of yesteryear, but the price point has to appeal to prosumers and consumers too.
• The real win will be embedding this technology into Google Meet and Zoom for market coverage. I assume that Microsoft won't be embedding Google Beam into Teams devices anytime soon.

Dell Technologies: Welcome to the disaggregated data center

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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Dell Technologies said enterprise data centers, which will increasingly support AI workloads, will become disaggregated as IT buyers look for maximum flexibility.

According to the company, the modern data center will be disaggregated and more turnkey courtesy of software automation. Private clouds will also take architecture cues from AI factories and Nvidia's designs. Current data centers typically have three tiers, multiple vendors and hyperconverged infrastructure. The data center stew gets complicated.

"What we're doing here with our software driven automation and support for open ecosystem is we are architecting outcomes for our customers, turnkey outcomes for our customers that want to take advantage of our disaggregated infrastructure and have that open flexibility for their most critical workloads. We're doing this across private cloud and edge," said Varun Chhabra, Senior Vice President of Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) at Dell Technologies.

• Dell Technologies expands AI factory efforts with Nvidia, AMD, Intel, ecosystem

The big themes in this disaggregated approach are:

• Enterprises are figuring out how to support AI workloads via private clouds and on-premises.
• Customers are very wary of lock-in and Broadcom's purchase of VMware has made enterprises wary. Enterprises want validated blueprints for stacks like VMware, Red Hat and Nutanix.
• Business infrastructure incorporates hyperconverged infrastructure, which reduces flexibility but gains simplicity.
• Companies also want automation on top of Dell servers, storage and networking gear.

Ultimately, Dell's pitch for modern data centers are automated architectures that enable enterprises to swap out private cloud vendors in components. Dell executives said that Dell's disaggregated data center offerings are separate from its previous Apex private cloud efforts, which have been touted at Dell Technologies World in 2023 and 2024.

To build out the parts of this disaggregated data center, Dell launched the following components.

• Dell Private Cloud, a system that can run VMware, Red Hat or Nutanix.
• An all-flash Data Domain appliance that will feature 4x faster backup and 2x faster restores with lower power consumption.
• Advanced ransomware protection in PowerStore systems. AI ransomware detection will be built into the appliance.
• PowerFlex Software Defined Platform updates.
• Native Edge updates and support for Nvidia and its latest software development kits. Native Edge will also have support for third party software vendors such as GE Digital.
• Native Edge support for third party and existing hardware in addition to Dell endpoints.

D-Wave's Advantage2 quantum computer generally available

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

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D-Wave Quantum said its Advantage2 annealing quantum computer is now commercially available and is likely to contribute to revenue growth.

Advantage2 is available via D-Wave's Leap quantum cloud service as well as on-premises deployments. Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave, said the system is a milestone in the company's development and able to "solve hard problems outside the reach of one of the world’s largest exascale GPU-based classical supercomputers."

Quantum annealing is a form of quantum computing that's designed for optimization over general purpose computing. Quantum annealing shines when the goal is to find the best configuration in use cases such as logistics, finance and AI. Critics argue that quantum annealing has limited problem-solving capabilities due a lack of individual qubit control.

• D-Wave claims quantum supremacy breakthrough, reports Q4
• 2025 is the year of quantum computing (already)

D-Wave is one of the few companies pursuing this approach. Superconducting qubits is seen as the quantum computing variant with the most long-term promise with IBM, Google and Rigetti Computing pursuing that approach. Trapped Ion quantum computing, championed by high fidelity and long coherence time is pushed by IonQ and Quantinuum. Microsoft is pursuing topological quantum computing and QuEra is focused on neutral atoms.

D-Wave's Advantage2 Quantum Processor has 20-way connectivity, 40% increase in energy efficiency and 755 reduction in noise. The company has already been using Advantage2 prototypes via its Leap cloud service since 2022. According the company, D-Wave has run more than 20.6 million customer problems on the system.

The company said Advantage2 has been used by Japan Tobacco, Jülich Supercomputing Center and Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the first quarter, D-Wave reported $15 million in revenue, up 509% from a year ago. Of that sales total, $12.6 million was the sale of an Advantage2 system to Jülich Supercomputing Center. D-Wave reported a first quarter net loss of $5.4 million with a cash balance of more than $304 million.

Speaking on D-Wave's earnings conference call, Baratz said there's bias against D-Wave's annealing approach compared to the rest of the world. He said there is a lot of interest in Advantage2 in governments and supercomputing centers globally, but "frankly less so in the US."

He added:

"There is a strong gate model bias in the US Government. That is something that we are working hard to address. And we're making incremental progress, but we are not there yet. We believe it's a huge mistake on the part of the US Government because frankly, other governments around the world are looking at quantum computing to help solve important hard problems today, recognizing that annealing can do that while gate model can. And the US, in my view, admittedly somewhat biased, is falling way behind on this and really needs to get that sorted out.

I would not say that we're seeing a lot of interest from the US Government in system sales at this point in time."

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Nevertheless, Baratz said Advantage2 will be able to solve problems in optimization, AI and material science. An Advantage2 annealing quantum system is complete at Davidson Technology in Huntsville, Alabama and currently going through calibration and readiness testing.

D-Wave has other potential Advantage2 systems to sell in the pipeline, but Baratz said there are long lead times. D-Wave just completed its first system sale in the first quarter.

Baratz said:

"System sales tend to take time. And so, while we have a handful that we are working on and some maybe sooner than others, these are long lead sales opportunities. So, it will take us some time to get there. But we're encouraged by the level of interest based on, in part, the supremacy resolve and the demonstration of capabilities that the system has when you're able to control more of the operating parameters than possible through the quantum cloud service."

Recent quantum computing developments:

• Classiq raises $110 million, plans to build out quantum computing software reach
• IBM sees quantum advantage 2026, fault tolerant quantum in 2029
• IonQ’s plan: Quantum networks extending into space
• Cisco launches quantum lab, unveils quantum networking chip