After 1000+ shows of The Cloudcast, when critical lessons have we learned about the industry, our our journey, and tips for anyone in tech.

SHOW: 995

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #995 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW NOTES:

Lesson 1 - Why did we create The Cloudcast? [Career expansion]

Lesson 2 - How did we learn all the topics we covered? [Skills development]

Lesson 3 - What have been the biggest Cloud trends we’ve covered [Trends]

Lesson 4 - How did you think about technology transitions over the last 10-15 years? [Change]

Lesson 5 - How important was it for you to learn the business side of cloud? [Follow the money]

Lesson 6 - What structural changes do you think Cloud will have on IT in 10 years? [Legacy]

Lesson 7 - What lesson from an episode do you think about the most frequently?

Lesson 8 - What surprised you the most about the Cloud 1.0 era?

Lesson 9 - What did you expect to happen, which never really happened?

Lesson 10 - What were the most important lessons you personally learned? [Lessons Learned]

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15 years ago, when we started The Cloudcast the definition of cloud was pretty clear cut. But now in 2026, the rules are all different and a new era of Cloud is upon us. Let’s explore what the next generation might provide.

SHOW: 994

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #994 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW NOTES

• AWS in 2026: The year of proving they still know how to operate (This Week in AWS)

WHAT IS AND ISN’T CLOUD IN 2026?

• Cloud isn’t a single company
• Cloud isn’t just public cloud
• A CIA cloud isn’t a Gov cloud isn’t your Enterprise Cloud
• Multi-cloud is a real thing that needs technology
• Google, the people that invented “cloud” are a real company in cloud
• Defining cloud by purity, or IaaS/PaaS/SaaS terms doesn’t really matter
• Does data locality matter more in an AI-Cloud era?
• Do we begin to see price wars over the core Cloud 1.0 primitives?
• Are we in the 9th inning of Cloud, and the 1st inning of what’s next?
• AI has replaced SaaS in immediacy, so does that have impact on Cloud services?
• Does the lack of application portfolio finally come back to bite AWS?
• Can niche cloud services emerge (e.g. is Vercel another Digital Ocean, or something unique?)

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SHOW: 992

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #992 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST - "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW NOTES:

• Tonic.ai website
• Tonic Validate Product Page
• Tonic Validate GitHub

Topic 1 - Adam, welcome to the show. Give everyone a brief introduction.

Topic 2: Our topic today is RAG systems, specifically RAG in production. Let’s start with customization sources and types. When it comes to customizing off-the-shelf LLMs, RAG is one option, as is an MCP connection to a SQL database, and there is pre- and post-training, as well as fine-tuning. How does an organization decide what path is best for customization?

Topic 3 - RAG came on the scene as the savior for organizations that want to use customer AI without the need for fine-tuning and additional training. It has either gone through or is currently still in the trough of disillusionment. What are your thoughts on RAG's evolution and the challenges it faces?

Topic 4 - Let’s walk through the basics of validation. Once you set up RAG, how would an organization know it works? How is accuracy measured and validated? Are you looking for hallucinations? Context quality?

Topic 5 - What is Tonic Validate, and where does it fit into this stack? Is it in band? Out of band? Built into the CI workflow?

Topic 6 - Accuracy is one aspect, but we hear more and more about ROI for Enterprises. How should ROI, risk, and compliance be measured?

Topic 7 - Where and how does security fit into all of this? Also, your thoughts on synthetic data for training vs. real data?

Topic 8 - If anyone is interested, what’s the best way to get started?

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Peter Zairsev (@PeterZaitsev, Founder of @Percona) talks about the history of OSS databases, and how AI is reshaping the demands on modern databases.

SHOW: 991

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #991 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW NOTES:

• Percona website

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show, Peter. Give everyone a brief introduction, and we’ll also dig into the details of Percona after that.

Topic 2 - Percona is basically a household name in our space. Part of that is the excellent tech, and part of that is the longevity. Tell everyone the origin story of Percona.

Topic 3 - How have OSS databases evolved? Going back 20 years is a bit far, but what recent trends stand out? How have cloud (i.e. the hyperscalers) and SaaS in particular changed this landscape

Topic 4 - Percona plays in the same space, and with, MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL. If you don’t mind, help everyone connect the dots there and why that matters.

Topic 5 - What are the typical business cases and implementations you are seeing today? What are organizations trying to solve for the most?

Topic 6 - How has AI and the rise of embeddings and vector databases impacted the OSS space? What are your thoughts here? Is this complementary/competitive/both?

Topic 7 - What do you wish people knew more about Percona?

FEEDBACK?

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Aaron Delp (@aarondelp), Brian Gracely (@bgracely) and Brandon Whichard (@bwhichard, @SoftwareDefTalk) discuss the top stories in Cloud and AI from December 2025.

SHOW: 990

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #990 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET

NEW TO CLOUD? CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW NOTES:

• Link to December 2025 News and Articles

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Aaron and Brian make some bold predictions for the 2026 Cloud and AI markets, as well as reviewing the biggest issues going into 2026.

SHOW: 989

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #989 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW NOTES:

• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - NOV 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - OCT 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - SEPT 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - AUG 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - JUL 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - JUN 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - MAY 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - APR 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - MAR 2025 (show)

2026 CLOUD + AI PREDICTIONS (AND BIG ISSUES TO REVIEW)

• OpenAI Revenues and Focus Areas
• NVIDIA customer profitability
• Companies moving to GOOG TPUs
• Enterprise success beyond CoPilot/Gemini
• Enterprise data+model trainability
• Enterprise price hikes
• Broadcom, AMD, Groq - alternative HW options
• Data Center buildouts
• Does AI spending shift
• What is Agentic AI?
• Long term spending + short term refocuses

PREDICTIONS:

• At least one big AI IPO in 2026, and it won’t go well. (Aaron says Anthropic)
• People will question whether Sam Altman is the right person to lead OpenAI
• AI will be a central issue in the 2026 US elections, either about job losses or electricity prices
• One major LPU/TPU/dedicated inference chip will break through in 2026
• Azure will be the Number One Cloud… (Aaron has to keep it going)
• We will start to see a shift in the Enterprise from big models in the sky (1+trillion parameters) to dedicated, purpose-built models of 500M or less in size for efficiency and security
• Gemini will dominate the consumer/prosumer space, OpenAI will go through the trough of disillusionment
• The industry will shift to a base/instruct and a reasoning split of models
• AWS and Azure will double down on being a solutions provider instead of a primitive supplier for AI and infrastructure

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A lot changed in the world of Cloud and AI this year. And then it changed some more, and some more, and so more. The only constant was change.

SHOW: 988

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #988 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW NOTES

IT WAS AN INTERESTING YEAR IN CLOUD AND AI TECHNOLOGY

• AI has become a mainstream technology, political and social talking point
• AI went through 7yrs of news cycles in 1 yr
• DeepSeek - Maybe NVIDIA chips aren’t needed?
• NVIDIA acquihired Grok and their technology
• Maybe AWS’ lead in the cloud is now in question
• Google got their act together with GenAI, after inventing the technology in 2017
• Microsoft and OpenAI sort of broke up, or at least they are seeing other people
• OpenAI forecasts 100x their current revenue in future computing needs
• The US Gov’t either bailed out, or socialized Intel
• Bitcoin - 94k, up to 125k, down to 84k

FEEDBACK?

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Aaron and Brian review the Year in AI, hand out AI awards, and discuss the biggest AI trends from 2025. Maybe a few predictions will be made as well.

SHOW: 987

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #987 Transcript

SHOW VIDEO: https://youtube.com/@TheCloudcastNET

CLOUD NEWS OF THE WEEK: http://bit.ly/cloudcast-cnotw

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PODCAST: "CLOUDCAST BASICS"

SHOW SPONSORS:

SHOW NOTES

• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - NOV 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - OCT 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - SEPT 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - AUG 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - JUL 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - JUN 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - MAY 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - APR 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - MAR 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - FEB 2025 (show)
• CLOUD & AI NEWS OF THE MONTH - JAN 2025 (show)

2025 AI YEAR IN REVIEW

• The Year of OpenAI
• The Year of NVIDIA
• The Year of Microsoft
• The Year of Google
• The Year of Oracle
• The Year of China AI
• The Year of Apple
• The Year of Coding Agents (Anthropic, Cursor, Windsurf, CLIs, etc..)
• The Year of Data Centers
• AI Highlights and Lowlights (Corporate Layoffs, Acquihires, Funding, etc..)
• 2026 AI Draft

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