Vultr, the largest independently-held cloud computing company, operates a global network of 32 data centers. The company offers cloud central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), and bare metal services with latency under 40 milliseconds for 90% of the world’s population. In this episode, Nathan Goulding, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Vultr, explores the rapid evolution of cloud computing, platform engineering trends, and the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with enterprise data.

Goulding emphasizes Vultr’s focus on deploying infrastructure into major metro markets to ensure low latency and high reliability for its customers. “We can serve a large portion of the world’s population with great latency,” Goulding explains, emphasizing the company’s ability to meet growing scalability demands.

Highlighting the shift from centralized to edge computing, Goulding notes how distributed models excel in inference and content delivery, while centralized setups suit operations support systems/business support systems (OSS/BSS).

Goulding also delves into platform engineering, describing it as a critical enabler for developers. By building abstraction layers and tools like CI/CD pipelines and monitoring systems, Vultr accelerates secure and efficient application deployments.

When discussing generative AI (GenAI), Goulding believes there is a growing enterprise interest in agentic AI, which customizes large language models (LLMs) with proprietary business data. Goulding discusses challenges like ensuring data governance and privacy, predicting deeper enterprise integrations in the near future. There are still concerns around ethical AI and Goulding stresses the need for businesses to responsibly use high-quality training data, even as Vultr’s infrastructure operates at a step removed from these concerns.

Reflecting on his experiences at KubeCon, Goulding underscores Kubernetes’ growing role as a foundational abstraction layer. He identifies platform engineering as a maturing business function that accelerates product development and transforms enterprise agility.

Guest: Nathan Goulding
Company: Vultr
Show: Let’s Talk

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.