Research Notes

Research Note: AWS Releases Trainium3, Teases Trainium4

Steve McDowell December 7, 2025

At its recent AWS re:Invent event, AWS moved its custom AI accelerator strategy into a new phase with the general availability of EC2 Trn3 UltraServers based on the Trainium3 chip and the public preview of its next-generation Trainium4.

Research Note: HPE Announcements at Discover Barcelona 2025

Steve McDowell December 5, 2025

At HPE Discover Barcelona 2025, Hewlett Packard Enterprise centered its announcements on three core pillars of enterprise infrastructure: networking for AI workloads, hybrid cloud and virtualization enhancements, and AI infrastructure systems at scale.

Research Note: VAST Data Expands Cloud Presence with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Integrations

Steve McDowell November 29, 2025

This month VAST Data announced integrations with both Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, significantly expanding its hyperconverged approach to AI Storage, what its calls its “AI Operating System,” further into major public cloud environments.

Azure customers will gain access to VAST’s complete data services suite running on Azure infrastructure, while Google Cloud users receive the first fully managed VAST AI OS service. Both integrations emphasize eliminating data migration barriers and supporting agentic AI workloads.

Research Note: VAST Data Integrates with Google Cloud & Microsoft Azure

Steve McDowell November 18, 2025

Over the past month, VAST Data has announced partnerships with both Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to deliver its hyperconverged approach to AI data management (which it calls an “AI Operating System”) as a managed service in public cloud environments.

Research Note: Dell Adds 20+ Features to its AI Factory

Steve McDowell November 17, 2025

Dell Technologies announced more than 20 updates to its AI Factory portfolio ahead of next week’s SC25 event, spanning compute, storage, networking, and cooling infrastructure. The announcements center on three primary themes: expanded support for NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs across multiple server platforms, introduction of AMD MI355X-based systems, and deeper integration of automation tools across the infrastructure stack.

Research Note: VDURA Data Platform v12

Steve McDowell November 15, 2025

VDURA recently announced Version 12 of its VDURA Data Platform (VDP), formerly known as PanFS, introducing three primary architectural enhancements to its parallel file system: an elastic Metadata Engine for distributed metadata processing, system-wide snapshot capabilities, and native support for SMR disk drives.