The Cloud Lifts AI and Modern Tech Higher Than Ever

Businesses adopting cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence and big data analytics have fueled a meteoric rise in cloud computing over the past few years that shows no signs of slowing down. As emerging technologies become essential for companies to remain competitive, the flexible infrastructure provided by the cloud has become the foundation for developing and deploying them.

The resource demands of machine learning systems and real-time data platforms are simply too much for traditional on-premises IT setups. Developing algorithms requires masses of computing power for training, while analytics engines need to siphon tremendous volumes of data. Building and running this hardware on your own has become cost-prohibitive both from capital and operations standpoints.

Enter the elasticity of the cloud. Tech giants like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have been in a race to provide accessible supercomputing capacity via their global network of data centers. Businesses are flocking to IaaS and PaaS cloud solutions to quickly and economically build data pipelines, analytics engines, and AI systems without any hardware headaches.

Cloud services also facilitate the collaboration required to develop modern solutions. With distributed teams of data scientists, subject matter experts, and application developers, having platform and infrastructure hosted in the cloud makes it easy to iterate without being hampered by on-prem barriers.

The proof is in the numbers. Cloud spending is growing at 4 times the rate of IT spending overall. By 2025, Gartner predicts cloud will make up 14% of enterprise IT budgets. Much of this cash inflow is from data and AI initiatives – for example industries investing heavily in machine learning like retail, banking, and healthcare have some of the highest cloud adoption rates.

And the cloud providers are returning the affection, with all major players offering specialized chips, databases, and tooling specifically aimed at artificial intelligence development. Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky called AI “the largest driver of our cloud growth” – their cloud revenue from machine learning services has grown by over 40% in each of the last two years.

While emerging technology is still in its early days, it’s clear these solutions are already entangled with cloud computing. As enterprises continue digitally transforming themselves via modern data analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence, they’ll need the cloud’s nearly limitless resources to lift these innovations higher than ever before.

As your business is growing, our advisors at RTS can guide you in envisioning innovative business models, capabilities, and products or services enabled by the cloud. Connect with us to learn more about our services.