Tl;dr: “Supercloud” has turned into a super battle royale
Reader relevance: “super” niche
Despite the term itself being unhelpful, inexplicably, a battle has broken out for the ownership and definition of “supercloud”. (And it isn’t just me that finds the term unhelpful, though even I haven’t suggested we should “nuke it from orbit”).
The “supercloud” squad has flailed around for nearly a year, trying to define the term. We’ve followed those convolutions, I am embarrassed to say, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Meanwhile, perhaps seeing this weakness and a void that could be filled, two new players have laid claim to the term.
CloudFlare, a company that needed to reframe and broaden its positioning beyond just a Content Distribution Network, used supercloud this week to describe their architecture and array of services. And with nary a mention of the previous “supercloud” definitions or debates. I’ve described (see comments) CloudFlare as an edge network, but that apparently wasn’t superlative enough.
Notably, CloudFlare’s offering is totally disjoint to all the (many) proffered definitions from the “supercloud” sultans, who have pigeon-holed CloudFlare as a mere “enabler of supercloud”, but not “supercloud” (and it is rare indeed for them to exclude anything from sitting under their supersized “supercloud” umbrella). So the battle for the soul of supercloud is on.
Our other new entrant is MIT, with their (sporadically PascalCased) SuperCloud. The MIT effort focuses on high performance computing (similar to a dormant “supercloud” project out of Cornell we previously noted)
And it is probably worth mentioning there is a Japanese cloud computing company that operates in China called SuperCloud.
The Supercloud Tournament
How will we resolve the battle over this disputed term? With a “supercloud” tournament! Here are the seeds:
#1 – CloudFlare supercloud (mascot: The Otter) – as a publicly traded company worth over $18 billion approaching a $900 million run rate, they are our top seed.
#2 – MIT SuperCloud (mascot: Tim the Beaver, not SBF as some might assume). Never count out MIT.
#3 – China Supercloud (mascot: Nazo No Sakana, a mysterious fish). A bit of a dark horse, but they probably get up every morning and say “If TikTok can do it, why not us too?”
#4 – SiliconAngle “supercloud” (mascot: The Waffles). Despite having squandered their early “supercloud” lead, they still make the tournament because we need four seeds.
Here is the bracket. Stay tuned for the results in this epic contest!
