Welcome Craig Matsumoto!

Futuriom welcomes a new analyst, Craig Matsumoto! This is an exciting expansion of our analyst team that will give us more capabilities to deliver unique insights in the world of cloud, communications, and AI infrastructure.

To be frank, there is so much going on in cloud and AI infrastructure, we were having trouble keeping up with the demand for information. With decades of experience spanning chips, infrastructure, and cloud technology, Craig's the perfect person to help us expand the mission, whether it's building out our premium Cloud Tracker Pro service or developing new coverage areas such as the neoclouds and Kubernetes management.

Craig’s a familiar name to us and he might be a familiar name to many of you. Mary and I worked with Craig for years at Light Reading, where we were part of the All-Star team that served as the foundation of that media publication’s long-term dominance of the telecom industry. I also worked with Craig at SDXcentral, were we puttered around Silicon Valley together covering cloud virtualization and software-defined infrastructure in the mid-2010s (it already seems so long ago!).

Berkeley Bear Tackles AI Boom

Craig will be a huge addition to our knowledge and insights. He’s got decades of experience. He comes fresh off a 7-year stint as an analyst at S&P Market Intelligence (formerly 451 Research), where he covered datacenter interconnection, multicloud networking, and edge AI inferencing.

Craig’s based in the heart of Silicon Valley and is a longtime Bay Area resident and Berkeley Bear. In addition to his experience as a longtime editor at Light Reading alongside Mary and myself, Craig also worked at EE Times in the early days of the enterprise networking boom, covering network and optical silicon.

It’s going to be fun to see what directions Craig points us into, with his unique knowledge of technology and Silicon Valley history. Craig might not remember this, but he was the first person to explain Kubernetes to me over coffee in Santa Clara in 2016.

Putting the Band Back Together

It’s also a unique time for Craig to reunite with Mary, Dave, and I (we all worked at Light Reading together). During the 2000s, we enjoyed the ups and downs of the telecom bubble and collapse, and we managed to build a thriving and lasting business at the same time. At Light Reading, the key to our success was providing accurate and timely information to help the community navigate booms, busts, and shifts in technology trends. Our business flourished through the telecom bust as we picked up new assets and grew the audience. We expect the same to happen through whatever the AI boom bring us.

I find it fitting that Craig and I met up last week at NVIDIA’s GTC in San Jose to explore the expansion of the AI boom, which has many parallels to the 1996-2000 timeframe. There will be similarities to how this evolves, but also differences. History rhymes. AI has provided the catalyst for the industry's next big expansion, yet there are still many questions to answer, and that's where we're rolling up our sleeves. We're expanding our database of cloud case studies, including the Hybrid Cloud Index, to include a new database on enterprise AI deployments. And Craig will help us cover the busy world of startups and the Futuriom 50, which is an ever-present source of innovation.

Whether it's neoclouds, OpenAI, or Cilium, we intend to grow our presence as the top research and analysis platform narrating the evolution of the infrastructure as it happens. Just as we did during the last infrastructure supercycle, we intend to bring you the most accurate and critical analysis of the industry as it negotiates what I expect to be a volatile and exciting phase.

Feel free to welcome Craig at Craig at Futuriom dot com! We'd welcome your ideas and conversation.