By Peter Chambers
Enterprise cloud demands have evolved beyond the early drivers of adoption. Now, more than ever, businesses must be prepared to scale at a moment’s notice. Meeting unexpected user demand while maintaining service levels is an ongoing challenge. At the same time, cloud workloads are becoming increasingly specialised, requiring optimized computing solutions across central processing units, data processing units and artificial intelligence accelerators to fully harness cloud-native architectures and frameworks.
As a result, cloud spending has become a critical operational priority. According to Flexera, nearly half of all workloads and data are now in the public cloud. In fact, 72 percent of IT decision-makers are prioritizing cloud optimization as a key organisational initiative to drive cost savings.
These trends highlight the importance of right-sizing cloud solutions. Enterprises must ensure that their infrastructure is optimized for their specific business needs and workload requirements. The right cloud strategy delivers flexibility, security, performance and cost efficiency, all of which are fundamental to maintaining a competitive edge.
Why the time is now
Cloud computing has long been the backbone of modern digital infrastructure, primarily built around general-purpose computing. However, the era of one-size-fits-all cloud solutions is rapidly fading in a business environment increasingly dominated by AI and high-performance computing workloads. Legacy cloud solutions struggle to meet the computational intensity of deep learning models, preventing organizations from fully realizing the benefits of their investments.
At the same time, cloud-native architectures have become the standard, as businesses face mounting pressure to innovate, reduce time-to-market and optimize costs. Without a cloud-optimized infrastructure, organizations risk losing key operational advantages, such as maximizing performance efficiency and minimizing security risks in a multicloud environment, ultimately negating the benefits of cloud-native adoption.
Moreover, running AI workloads at scale without an optimized cloud infrastructure leads to unnecessary energy consumption, increasing both operational costs and environmental impact. This inefficiency strains financial resources and undermines corporate sustainability goals, which are now under greater scrutiny from stakeholders who prioritize green initiatives.
Beyond performance gains, security is yet another critical consideration when selecting cloud-optimized hardware that is often underappreciated. Cloud-optimized hardware often provides a strong suite of advanced security features, such as confidential computing. These technologies ensure that sensitive data remains encrypted while in use, reducing the risk of physical dual in-line memory module attacks or virtual threats in hyperconverged infrastructure environments.
As the risks of data breaches continue to escalate — both in financial and reputational terms — organizations must recognize that leaving cloud environments unprotected is no longer an option. The rise of sophisticated cyber threats, from rogue hackers to nation-state-sponsored actors, makes enhanced cloud security a non-negotiable priority.
Your 2025 cloud optimization playbook
Furthermore, as industries push forward with the adoption and deployment of AI technologies, IT leaders must ensure that their cloud infrastructure can support compute-intensive workloads while balancing cost, security and efficiency considerations. While each organization’s computing needs are unique, IT teams embarking on hardware modernization should consider the following:
• Performance – Are your cloud instances equipped for the level of compute performance your business requires? Cloud infrastructure must support a range of workloads, from web front-end applications to in-memory analytics and heavy transactional processing.
• Cost and efficiency – Can you reduce your cloud footprint by running the same workloads on fewer servers? Prioritizing instances with high compute density allows businesses to run more VMs or containers per server, achieving significant cost and energy efficiency benefits.
• Security – Does your cloud instance provide the level of data protection you require? Confidential computing helps mitigate security risks by protecting data in use, reducing vulnerabilities in virtualized environments.
• Ecosystem – Opting for processors powered by industry-standard x86 architecture simplifies cloud environments, making it easier to develop, maintain and migrate applications with minimal disruption.
Unseen optimization, tangible impact
For IT decision-makers, understanding the cost implications of each "unit of work" is crucial when selecting cloud instances. Traditional infrastructure forces enterprises to choose between overprovisioning resources — leading to unnecessary expenses — or underprovisioning, which can cause performance bottlenecks. Cloud-optimized hardware changes this equation by enabling businesses to achieve more with fewer resources while maintaining high levels of performance, security and efficiency.
Ultimately, cloud optimization should not be regarded as a destination, but an ongoing journey. As an example, Oracle Cloud and Google both announced new cloud offerings powered by the latest 5th Gen AMD EPYC Processors. Oracle has reported that their latest E6 standard bare metal instances deliver up to 33 percent more computing and memory and 2X the network bandwidth compared to E5 Standard, delivering up to 2X the performance on industry standard benchmarks. At the same time, Google Cloud’s testing revealed that its new C4D virtual machines deliver up to 80 percent higher throughput/vCPU compared to previous generations by leveraging the advancements of the AMD “Zen 5” architecture.
As cloud technologies continue to evolve, enterprises that prioritize modernization will reap the benefits of seamless scalability, improved sustainability and a resilient digital foundation for future innovation. In a world where agility is critical, cloud optimization is no longer a luxury — it is a business imperative for staying competitive in 2025 and beyond.
Peter Chambers is the managing director of the Asia-Pacific region at AMD. The views in this column are his own. -- Ed.
By Jo He-rim (herim@heraldcorp.com)
