Podcast

Ep 88 – Cloud CAPEX: Not for the faint of wallet

April 2, 2024

This week’s guest

Charles Fitzgerald

Position Platformonomics LLC

If you’re partnering with one or more of the hyperscalers, their roadmap is your roadmap. It’s important to know where they’re steering their ships, and a great way to gain insight into this is to follow their CAPEX spending.

For this episode, I talk with Charles Fitzgerald, managing director at Platformonomics. His annual Follow the CAPEX report tracks spending by the Big 3 hyperscalers—Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud—and includes crystal-ball insights into their strategic plans and priorities. Listen now to hear:

How the hyperscalers spent money in 2023 and how their paths are diverging [02:10];
How AI strategy is affecting CAPEX spending [05:47];
The last word on whether cloud repatriation is really a trend [11:36]; and
Why it’s time for “clown providers” like IBM and Oracle to ante up or get out of the big top [16:59].

Links and resources

Read Charles Fitzgerald’s 2023 retrospective on public cloud CapEx spending and check out his Q1 2023 Repatriation Index^TM
Take a look at TelcoDR’s Hyperscaler Region Tracker to see where the three “BIGS” have been putting their regions.
Check out this Bloomberg article about Amazon’s AI-focused data center investments, which includes quotes from Charles.
You know I love a good playlist. Check out these songs about money:
- Money by Pink Floyd
- Can’t Buy Me Love by The Beatles
- Money, Money, Money by ABBA
- Money for Nothing by Dire Straits
- She Works Hard for the Money by Donna Summer
I can’t wait to pounce on telco execs while I’m in Diani Beach, Kenya, just like my favorite Winnie-the-Pooh character Tigger would do.
Check out this episode on our YouTube channel.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.

Wanna talk public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.

Guest bio

Charles Fitzgerald is a Seattle-based angel investor, with a focus on developer platforms and infrastructure. Previously, he spent 20+ years working on platform businesses at Microsoft and VMware. He can see the cloud from his house.

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