What is cloud? Does it have anything to do with artificial intelligence? How is cloud computing and AI affecting the fast growing technological and business world? Let us dive in deep into exploring these technical terms and their dependence on each other.

Wikipedia defines cloud computing as on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. In simpler words, it is the use of hardware and software to deliver services or access and store data over a network, generally the Internet. Google Drive is a very common example of cloud computing service that works with storage apps like Google Docs, slides and sheets. Now the question arises, how can AI, which is the future of technology, add value to the cloud computing services? According to subject matter experts, AI might just be the technology to revolutionize cloud computing solutions.

Merging AI and cloud computing

Merging of cloud computing and AI will allow users not just to store data, but also to analyse it and draw conclusions from it. Over the years companies like Microsoft, IBM, Google and Amazon have invested enormously in AI, especially in the cloud software solutions. In the present scenario cloud-AI is identified as the following major sub-groups:

Machine learning cloud services: The integration of machine learning in the cloud is known as intelligent cloud. Using ML cloud services, apart from storing and networking users can apply machine learning algorithms efficiently and in comparatively less time. Following are some of the prominent AI applications in cloud:

• IoT cloud: IoT (Internet of Things) cloud architectures are the cloud services that power IoT. They are used to store and work on data that is generated by IoT. Amazon Web Services IoT platform and Microsoft’s Azure platform are examples of IoT cloud services.
• Business Intelligence: BI services are using cloud based AI services to get deep insights into the behaviour of their target audience. They use cloud services to store and manage large amounts of customer data and the machine learning algorithms are used for analysis and solutions. (Read – Lets talk AI in BI)
• Chatbots: Chatbots which are AI based software that can simulate conversations with a user in defined natural language are in developmental phase. Cloud based services can allow storage of very large amounts of data which the chatbots can use to learn and evolve.  (Read – How Conversational AI Works?)
• Cognitive cloud: Cognitive cloud computing is the use of computerized models to simulate the human thought process in complicated situations where the answers may be ambiguous. It refers to the services that are designed to work on AI and signal processing. It includes machine learning, natural language processing and human-computer interaction.
• AI-as-a-service platforms: AI as a service allows individuals and companies to experiment with AI for various purposes without large initial investment and with lower risk. It is a third party that offers AI outsourcing thus it is considered as a very cost-effective model for developing businesses.

Cloud AI platforms: Cloud AI platforms like Google Cloud and AWS, are used to train machine learning models, host trained models and use the model to make predictions and deliver insights.

Implementation of AI in cloud computing can enable the latter to make smart decisions on its own. Following are the major advantages of using AI in cloud computing:

• Improved decision making: Cloud can only be used to store and process data. With the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, one can identify patterns and extract valuable insights from datasets. These insights indicating customer behaviour can be used by organizations to promote their growth.
• Minimizing costs and obtaining better output: The combination of AI and cloud computing aims at reducing the overall costs. The AI cost is reduced significantly as when the cloud is used, there is no requirement for a separate data centre. By moving to cloud computing, businesses and AI based services can significantly save capital costs through a reduction in expenditure on equipment, infrastructure and ML solutions.
• Analytics: A large amount of data that is stored in the cloud requires sorting and analysis. AI can do this task efficiently. On the contrary, even if skilled analysts take this job of analysis, it would require a longer time and would be very tedious. So, using AI with cloud for analysis saves time, human effort, and cost.
• Applications in the field of data mining: Cloud can store the data and update it on regular basis and AI can be useful in extracting useful information from it.
• Seamless data access: In simple language, it refers to unlimited data access privileges. Implementing AI in cloud computing resolves the issues of delay inaccessibility of data and enables the cloud to solve potential problems in advance.

Nowadays, almost every technology comes with cloud backup services. So it can be concluded that the demand of cloud computing services will seemingly increase in the years to come. AI on the other hand has already started to dominate the tech-world and can be seen in every work domain. Though their usage together is in primary stage, companies are still investing enormously in cloud computing AI services.  This is because when both of these are merged, the quality and benefits of each are enhanced tremendously especially when it comes to their usage the booming commerce world.  This combination can be looked at as one of the most remarkable innovations in the future.