One of the most unexpected things to happen in May was a sudden outage at the Australian pension fund UniSuper.
After days of confusion and concern that the fund may have been hit by a cyber attack among its customer base, it emerged that Google Cloud had accidentally deleted UniSuper’s entire cloud subscription. We dive into what lessons businesses can learn from this freak event.
Also in May, OpenAI trumpeted its goal to unlock so-called artificial general intelligence (AGI) through new advancements. But is such a thing even possible, and who would it benefit?
Highlights
“This is obviously something that is a nightmare scenario for any company. But in fairness to both UniSuper and Google Cloud, it was rectified fairly quickly. I can imagine there were a few people at Google Cloud and both UniSuper that were scrambling and tearing their hair out for several hours over this.”
“In our coverage of the story, we spoke to a few people in the industry who emphasize the importance of multi-cloud. It’s something that's been really growing in importance at enterprises over the last couple of years, the ability to mix and match cloud providers and hedge your bets in that regard.”
“Sam Altman, towards the end of last month revealed that they've started trainingit's next frontier large language model. Think the way that OpenAI described it was – to quote – ‘bring us to the next level of capabilities on our path to artificial general intelligence’, which sounds equally exciting and ominous.”
Footnotes
- Google Cloud blames “combination of rare issues” for customer's mysterious outage
- ‘Multi-cloud all the way’: Why Google Cloud’s UniSuper fiasco shows you shouldn’t rely on a single cloud provider
- What is 'multi-cloud by design'?
- What is multi-cloud?
- Everything you need to know about GPT-4o, including pricing, features, and how to get access
- OpenAI says it’s charting a "path to AGI" with its next frontier AI model
Subscribe
- Subscribe to The IT Pro Podcast on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe to The IT Pro Podcast on Spotify
- Subscribe to the IT Pro newsletter
- Join us on LinkedIn
-
Criminals target APIs as web attacks skyrocket globallyNews More than a third of web attacks target APIs as AI expands attack surfaces and brings new security challenges
-
What to look out for at RSAC Conference 2025Analysis Convincing attendees that AI can revolutionize security will be the first point of order at next week’s RSA Conference – but traditional threats will be a constant undercurrent
-
Google Cloud wants to tackle cyber complexity – here's how it plans to do itNews Google Unified Security will combine all the security services under Google’s umbrella in one combined cloud platform
-
Google Cloud Next 2025: All the live updates as they happenedLive Blog Google Cloud Next 2025 is officially over – here's everything that was announced and shown off in Las Vegas
-
Google Cloud Next 2025 is the hyperscaler’s chance to sell itself as the all-in-one AI platform for enterprisesAnalysis With a focus on the benefits of a unified approach to AI in the cloud, the ‘AI first’ cloud giant can build on last year’s successes
-
The Wiz acquisition stakes Google's claim as the go-to hyperscaler for cloud security – now it’s up to AWS and industry vendors to reactAnalysis The Wiz acquisition could have monumental implications for the cloud security sector, with Google raising the stakes for competitors and industry vendors.
-
Google confirms Wiz acquisition in record-breaking $32 billion dealNews Google has confirmed plans to acquire cloud security firm Wiz in a deal worth $32 billion.
-
Keeping data safe and flexible with sovereign cloudProtecting sensitive data doesn’t have to be a burden – sovereign cloud gives you control of your data and improves flexibility
-
Microsoft hit with £1 billion lawsuit over claims it’s “punishing UK businesses” for using competitor cloud servicesNews Customers using rival cloud services are paying too much for Windows Server, the complaint alleges
-
Microsoft's Azure growth isn't cause for concern, analysts sayAnalysis Azure growth has slowed slightly, but Microsoft faces bigger problems with expanding infrastructure
