Griffin on Tech: Cloudy with a chance of delays
Remember the breathless press releases about AWS’s $7.5 billion data centre investment promised for Auckland?
Well another one dropped yesterday, announcing that Kiwibank, MATTR, and Deloitte have signed up to use the AWS Asia Pacific (New Zealand) Region when it launches “this year”.
They join Datacom, One NZ, and Vector, who have also signalled their desire to be first into the AWS data centres when they are up and running. But for the moment, think of these companies as early adopters of vaporware infrastructure, because AWS is at least a year behind schedule on construction of its own data centre and indications are that the delays at its West Auckland data centre location are dragging on.
In June, Herald tech editor Chris Keall, wrote that all was quiet on the Western front.
“Following tradie chatter that work had ground to a halt at on Amazon’s data centre build in West Auckland, Tech Insider visited the site around 2.30pm yesterday,” he noted.
“The limited amount of machinery was idle. Only two people were immediately visible on the site: a security guard and a staffer from contractor Naylor Love, which is carrying out the build.”
Where’s the detail?
It seems highly unlikely that AWS will have its own data centre ready to go in the next six months, which suggests that it will lean on data centre operators CDC or DCI, who have facilities in the Auckland region and who work with AWS overseas, to get something off the ground before year’s end. AWS (and Microsoft) have been notoriously tight-lipped about any details relating to the construction of their data centres so it is hard to know exactly what they have in mind for the local AWS region, which typically involves three data centres for sufficient redundancy.
Back in June, an AWS spokesperson “would not address the apparent lack of day-to-day activity on the site”. Drainage issues on the site initially saw construction grind to a halt. AWS also said yesterday that it has trained 50,000 New Zealanders as part of its memorandum of understanding with the Government to support the launch of the data centre region.
These skills are via the AWS Academy, AWS Skills Builder, AWS Educate, and AWS re/Start training programmes AWS runs, but its unclear exactly who these people are. I’d wager that AWS is simply counting anyone in New Zealand who has registered with one of those programs over the past few years, be they employees at customers, university students, or enthusiastic high school kids.
The rollout of data centres has been hyped to the max, with promises of huge productivity and GDP increases - $10.8 billion over a 15 year period according to AWS. Then there’s the energy issues. AWS says its data centre region will be 100% renewable energy at launch, “thanks to our collaboration with Mercury NZ on a long-term corporate power purchase agreement for the Turitea South wind farm”. Microsoft did a similar deal with Contact Energy for access to geothermal energy.
But our energy sector is stretched, with more renewables and battery storage needed to meet growing demand, the intermittent nature of wind, solar, and hydro, and the declining supplies of natural gas. Are the data centre operators simply going to exacerbate the problem, edging out other parts of the economy and tightening supply for households? Ultimately, there are plenty of renewables in the pipeline, but as with AWS’s West Auckland facility, it all just can’t happen fast enough.
Tech Blog has asked AWS for more details on the data centre construction and training progress.
Big Tech earnings: All clouds, all the time
Back in the earnings theme park, Microsoft is rolling in revenue, powered by, you guessed it, the cloud and artificial intelligence. Azure cloud revenues topped US$75 billion, up 34% year-on-year, and CEO Satya Nadella wants you to know that “every Azure region is now AI first”.
That means more data centre sprawl, more generative AI, and more fee increases for Microsoft 365 which has been bewildering customers with upgrades to Copilot. Shareholders, unlike customers waiting for Amazon, are thrilled with the speed at which Microsoft’s coffers are filling up.
Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet all flashed their cloud muscles this quarter. Meta’s there too, talking up its new superlintelligence unit and reporting strong revenue growth. But the real party is in data centres and AI copilots.
The health data is coming from INSIDE the house!
At the heart of the surging AI use is data and an initiative announced by the Trump administration to hoover up mountains of health data has privacy experts nervous. The US government and Big Tech companies plan to allow millions of Americans to “opt in” to sharing their health records everywhere.
The official line is that it’s all about access and patient empowerment; the unofficial mood is closer to “Black Mirror meets HIPAA”.
“There are enormous ethical and legal concerns,” warns one law professor, putting it mildly.
Don’t worry, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will “keep it secure.” What could possibly go wrong? Surely your health data is safer than Auckland’s stormwater.
How exactly would it work? According to PBS: “Once a patient is in the system, their information could be shared across apps or health systems that have joined the initiative. So, for example, the Apple Health app on your iPhone that tracks your daily step count or your sleep could access lab results from your doctor’s office. Putting that information together, the Trump administration says, will offer a fuller picture of your health.”
That all sounds rather convenient and exactly what’s needed to give people more visibility into their healthcare and to enable so-called preventative healthcare. But as Jeffrey Chester at the Centre for Digital Democracy told PBS: “This scheme is an open door for the further use and monetisation of sensitive and personal health information”.
Trust isn’t is abundance in the US at the moment, so as useful as pooling health data across the various health services, apps and tech platforms we use could be, the fear of health data being used to dictate health insurance terms or access to public health services is real.
Disaster warnings, now with more glitches
Let’s round out the week with a salute to the humble civil servants who tried to warn Kiwis about the tsunami risk resulting from this week’s massive earthquake off the coast of Russia.
Unfortunately, New Zealand’s emergency alert system needed some “testing in production”: some people received up to six texts (for that authentic panic-room vibe), while others got none. The Government assures us they’ll “work with the telcos” to fix the glitches.
It’s the sort of performance you’d expect from a retro alarm clock, not a national disaster system. The Government clearly has some work to do on the system. Perhaps AWS can host the next version, assuming it ever exists outside the realm of planning consents.
Alert fatigue is a real risk. Or maybe, as Anna Rawhiti Connell at the Spinoff suggests, the alerts should get us out of bed every morning at 6.30am given the parlous state of the economy and the fact that the country is “circling the drain”.
“National emergency alerts shouldn’t be reserved for tsunami warnings, storms or earthquakes. Roll them out every morning until the very real emergency has passed and every lazy loser and dropkick is out of bed, working more for less, and the nation is great once more.”
