Somewhere over the r-AI-nbow 🌈  | Cloud Core 

Happy spring! This issue of Cloud Core celebrates the return of sunshine with some fant-AI-stic examples of AI use I’ve come across recently.  

Somewhere over the rainbow 🌈 

At Google Next last month, CEO Sundar Pichai announced a random yet cool AI project: transforming the Wizard of Oz from its original 4:3 film for the Las Vegas Sphere’s enormous 16K screen (which is one of the world’s largest).  

According to Sundar, it isn’t something that could have been attempted 18 months ago. 

Watch Sundar’s speech here (starting at 5:12) 

Springing into smarter energy 😎 

At April’s AWS Summit in Amsterdam, Dutch energy infrastructure provider Alliander discussed interesting AI use cases. These included: 

• Estimating cable temperature so they can optimise use without overloading 

• Recognising meter box components from photos, which enables them to automate work planning 

• Analysing signals and producing models that predict future grid outages 

Watch the session here 

Blazing an AI trail 🥾 

This is an example of a risk-averse sector blazing a trail with practical AI use. 

Finland’s State Treasury reviews €4 billion worth of government grant applications each year. They’re consolidating the application process from multiple services to a single digital service. They used GenAI to speed up the build and are exploring AI use cases that accelerate application review and safeguard equality in the process. 

Not only is this an AI milestone in the Finnish public sector, but the State Treasury has been touring Scandinavia to discuss its experiences with other countries on Microsoft’s recent AI Tour. 

Read more here. 

Ensure AI innovation takes root 

Behind every cool AI use case is a common denominator – the right infrastructure. It’s not the sexy front-end stuff, but it’s a crucial success factor. 

With that in mind, here are 5 key steps to ensure you have the right infrastructure for AI innovation to flourish. 

☔️ Don’t let security rain on your AI parade 

Ensure security is embedded by design. Look for cloud-native security measures, encryption and robust access controls that ensure data remains protected at all steps, from ingestion and storage to development and deployment.  

🌱 Prep the soil: Compliant from Day 1 

Leverage pre-defined secure AI frameworks and landing zones that incorporate best practices for GDPR, OWASP and NIST.  

🌴 Grow fast, stay grounded 

Use infrastructure-as-code and secure landing zones designed for scalability. Modular architectures allow you to expand AI workloads while maintaining consistent security policies across cloud environments, ensuring you can scale quickly without compromising on control or governance. 

🌞 Keep data safe in all weather 

From sunshine to sudden storms, automated continuous monitoring and governance ensure AI operations remain secure across all environments (so privacy and compliance never wilt under pressure). 

🌻 Watch innovation bloom (without the weeds) 

Pre-built modular landing zones reduce time-to-value and minimise security risks. Standardised infrastructure and pre-configured components mean you can quickly establish a secure foundation for AI initiatives, allowing you to focus on delivering solutions fast. 

📢 Cloud quote of the month.

“On average, it takes 10 years and billions of dollars to design just one drug. We can maybe reduce that down from years to maybe months or maybe even weeks…I think one day maybe we can cure all disease with the help of AI.” 

Demis Hassabis, Nobel Prize-winning scientist and DeepMind founder  

Read/watch Demis’ interview here

📰  What we’ve been talking about this month 

⭐️ Google Next 2025 highlights 

🫡 Why brands are putting AI chiefs in their C-Suites 

🤖 Sam Altman’s April 2025 TEDTalk 

🧠 Microsoft’s 2025 AI decision brief 

🗓️ Some dates for your diary 

Events 

• 🇫🇮 13 May – ValtioExpo, Helsinki 
• 🇩🇪 26-28 May – European AI & Cloud Summit, Düsseldorf
• 🇸🇪 4 June – AWS Summit, Stockholm
• 🇩🇪 5 June – AWS Summit, Hamburg
• 🇳🇱 16 June – Microsoft AI Tour, Amsterdam

Cloud training 

• 7-9 May – Architecting on AWS (Virtual). Register here.
• 12-14 May – Developing on AWS (Virtual). Register here.
• 13-15 May – Security engineering on AWS (Virtual). Register here.
• 19-21 May – Advanced architecting on AWS (Virtual). Register here.
• 26 May – Google Cloud fundamentals: Core infrastructure (Virtual). Register here.
• 9-11 June – DevOps engineering on AWS (Virtual). Register here.
• 21-22 Oct – FinOps Certified Practitioner (Virtual). Register here. 

🎧 Something to listen to in the home office 

Here’s some happy spring music to get you in the mood for BBQs and beer gardens. 

Enjoy the sunshine, and see you next time! 

 

PS – Did you miss the last newsletter? We celebrated Valentine’s Day by looking at Elvis Presley’s ability to predict platform engineering. Before that, we assessed last year’s biggest IT Ops headaches.