Will cloud giants really drive colos off a financial cliff? Jim Chanos, the infamous short-seller who predicted Enron's downfall, has said he plans to short datacenter real-estate investment trusts (REIT). "This is our big short right now," Chanos told the Financial Times. "The story is that, although the cloud is growing, the cloud is their enemy, not their business. Value is accrued …
It's almost never a good idea to mistake what is happening in the stock market for what is happening in the real world.
Chanos is probably right that datacenter REITs are a poor investment but not for the reasons he gives. For years datacenter REITs were known (and bought) as a high income safe investment. But with interest rates rising that probably won't continue.
But I see nothing that indicates that datacenters are collapsing. As the IDG reported, there is still increasing demand for them.
I am not a financial advisor but my personal advice is never short anything and never ever naked short anything. There are safer ways to bet against stocks.
It is wise to consider and expect Clouds to be used by those who and/or that which is able, as if a Trojan horse ..... with one completely unaware of the surprises inside them fully prepared and capable of laying waste to all that they perceive and witness with the fielding and wielding of the Tropes of CHAOS ..... Clouds Hosting Advanced Operating Systems ...... which would certainly be uncommon and even quite alien to many more than just an elitist chosen few.
Although one does have to concede, the creation and pimping/pumping and dumping/administration of conflict and chaos, appears to be a present day default current drivering executive office managements beyond the brinks of exhaustion and towards events verging on the edge of madness which invite extinction ...... so possibly nothing really new, although whenever in different command and control hands/hearts and minds, something quite different to beware and be aware of, and to be worried and probably also rightly terrified of and petrified by, given what can be so very easily done nowadays with practically nothing to show and share about from where or how such things are so simply done. ..... and who or what would be doing them and to what ultimate vested interest end.
Methinks Advanced Augmented Alien Operating Systems utilising Cloudy Communication Channels and Fluffy AI Services are perfectly suited and booted and rooted to entertain and empower the likes of His Royal Highness Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, Chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, with the virtually immediate delivery of overdue solutions to persistently chaotic problems seeding and feeding madness and mayhem/conflict and catastrophic activity
Now that is, and you be hereby well warned and adequately advised, a long position to short for profit at every available future opportunity. I Kid U Not.
* Mandy Rice-Davies Applies
He may be right, but then I'm reading contemporary articles about (for example) Azure stopping signups in regions and stopping demos in others due to capacity problems. It'll certainly have an effect on data centers emptying out in favor of cloud computing if companies find they cannot even receive the services they would want to buy to do so. It's worth pointing out, cloud is not magic, if the cost of servers, RAM, and storage go up for people buying equipment for their datacenters.... Amazon, Microsoft, and Google will see higher prices too, inevitably they would then raise prices on their services; all 3 do have the cash to get into a price war and run these services at a loss fairly indefinitely but I don't see any of them being willing to do so for long.
“Azure stopping signups in regions and stopping demos in others due to capacity problems”
And who do you think is higher on AMD and Intels priority list to buy new capacity? It’s probably the partner buying chips by the ship load. Azure and AWS do have capacity issues but at least they’re able to get new capacity as fast as it’s manufactured!
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