TABLE OF CONTENTS
Updated: 30 May 2024
AI adoption is accelerating rapidly, with the global Artificial Intelligence market size projected to reach USD 738 Billion by 2030, according to Statista. However, nearly half of organisations worldwide are facing barriers like a lack of in-house skills, data infrastructure, and multi-cloud support - severely hampering their AI progress.
This has fueled the demand for AI cloud solutions. AI cloud provides on-demand access to AI tools, applications and infrastructure via cloud platforms. By leveraging shared, pre-trained models and automated machine learning pipelines, companies can surpass the high costs and complexity of developing AI internally. The AI cloud market is also showing no signs of slowing down as reports suggest that it will reach USD 395 Billion by 2029 - rising at a CAGR of over 30%.
What is AI Cloud?
AI Cloud refers to cloud-based services that offer you on-demand access to artificial intelligence tools, applications, and infrastructure. Rather than building your own AI models and platforms from scratch, AI Cloud enables you to leverage shared, pre-trained models via simple API calls. This allows you to incorporate advanced AI capabilities like computer vision, natural language processing, recommendations, and predictions into your products and processes much more quickly and cost-effectively.
You can scale usage of AI Cloud services up or down based on your specific needs, paying only for what you use. Cloud platforms handle the complex tasks of data preparation, model building, training, optimisation and deployment behind the scenes so you don’t require extensive data science expertise to benefit from AI.
Main Components of AI Cloud
The AI Cloud comprises a few key components and capabilities:
-
AI Cloud Platform - The foundation is the cloud-based platform that handles provisioning and management of computing resources, model building/training pipelines, model repositories, APIs, security, monitoring, and commercialisation.
-
Data Management - This includes cloud data warehouses, data lakes, and tools to store, process, clean, label, and organise structured & unstructured training data used to teach AI models.
-
Model Building/Training - AutoML tools automate certain parts of the model development pipeline. Distributed training frameworks scale model training over thousands of servers.
-
Inference Engine - Highly scalable query engines power real-time predictions and inferences by applying trained models to new data.
-
AI Services & APIs - Pre-built AI services like speech, vision, language, predictions, etc are made easily accessible to end-users via API calls and SDKs.
-
MLOps - MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) refers to the workflows, metrics and governance applied across the machine learning model lifecycle - including integration, testing, monitoring, and updating.
Benefits of AI Cloud
AI in the cloud offers numerous benefits, including accessibility, scalability, agility, and risk reduction for organisations to drive innovation, improve efficiency, and gain a competitive edge in the data-driven economy. Let’s understand these benefits in detail:
Pre-Built AI Services
One of the most impactful benefits of AI Cloud is convenient access to pre-built machine learning models and services. Via simple API calls, you can leverage ready-to-deploy capabilities like image recognition, language translation, text analysis, predictive modelling, recommendations, and more. This eliminates the need to build these complex AI systems completely from scratch in-house.
Flexible Scalability
AI Cloud allows you to easily scale usage up and down to meet your dynamic business needs. Rather than investing upfront in on-premise AI infrastructure which may be underutilised, you can access cloud-based AI on-demand and pay per usage. This makes AI Cloud cost-effective and flexible. You can start small while experimenting with new use cases and scale seamlessly as they deliver value.
Speed and Agility
Developing advanced AI solutions like computer vision, generative AI and predictive analytics can take even skilled data science teams months of effort. AI Cloud shortens this cycle dramatically through automation and pre-trained models. You can now test and iterate AI prototype systems in just weeks and see ROI more quickly.
Democratisation of AI
Sophisticated AI is no longer exclusive to organisations with large data science teams and access to scarce AI talent. AI Cloud solutions make enterprise-grade AI easily accessible with no upfront infrastructure costs even to small teams and businesses. With the cloud abstracting away the complexity of developing and maintaining AI, subject matter experts can now directly apply AI to create tangible business value.
Lower Risk
Adopting AI Cloud solutions reduces development, infrastructure, hiring and maintenance costs and data risks compared to pursuing complex in-house AI. It allows you to get started with AI in a faster, more cost-effective manner while focusing internal resources on your core business initiatives rather than assembling an AI platform.
Use Cases of AI Cloud
Here are some common use cases for AI cloud computing:
Intelligent Chatbots and Virtual Agents
One of the most popular applications of AI cloud services involves powering increasingly intelligent chatbots and virtual agents for customer service and other uses. Through natural language processing and machine learning in the cloud, businesses can deploy smart conversational interfaces to engage customers, resolve issues, complete tasks and route inquiries all with minimal human involvement.
AI-Driven Recommendation Engines
From e-commerce to content platforms and beyond, recommendation engines enabled by cloud-hosted machine learning models are allowing companies across sectors to deliver personalized suggestions, predict customer needs, and promote relevant products in real-time. By continually training on behavioural data, cloud-based systems can dynamically improve recommendations and drive better customer experiences and conversion at scale.
Predictive Maintenance
Industrial companies are applying Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data with cloud-based predictive models to track issues, forecast equipment failures, schedule preventative maintenance and minimize overall downtime. By leveraging robust time-series forecasting capabilities in the cloud, manufacturers can detect anomalies in performance, diagnose problems quicker and optimize parts replacement based on failure probabilities.
Improving Supply Chain Forecasts
Volatile customer demand, natural disasters, supplier issues and other uncertainties make accurate demand forecasting challenging. Supply chain leaders are now taking advantage of AI cloud analytics to assimilate signals from across the fulfilment network – from inbound logistics to point-of-sale systems. By applying machine learning to internal datasets, web traffic, weather data and macroeconomic indicators, AI cloud systems deliver significant upside in inventory and production planning.
AI for Financial Risk Modeling
Banks, insurance providers and other financial institutions manage immense risk across market movements, fraud, investments and lending. While risk modelling is not new, migrating these capabilities to the AI cloud has accelerated innovation. Leveraging extreme compute scale, vast historical data assets, and cutting-edge AI in the cloud, firms now execute sophisticated Monte Carlo simulations, stress testing, price optimisation, and client churn predictions.
Computer Vision Applications
Retailers are using AI-enabled computer vision in the cloud across use cases like inventory tracking, planogram compliance, product display monitoring and even analysing in-store customer behaviour. Autonomous drone providers are testing cloud vision models to safely inspect critical infrastructure. Healthcare organisations are detecting diseases faster from medical scans using AI-assisted imaging powered in the cloud.
The Future of AI in the Cloud
The AI cloud segment represents one of the most sought-after AI markets in the coming decade. Its projected growth will likely make AI as a Service (AIaaS) one of the dominant mechanisms for organisations to employ artificial intelligence. As more specialised AI cloud solutions emerge for key verticals like healthcare, manufacturing, retail, risk assessment etc - they will enable domain experts with minimal data expertise to make advanced AI accessible and actionable across their organisations. The reliability, accuracy, and real-world business value derived from AI cloud platforms are destined to improve substantially with continuous enhancements. From enhanced natural language processing capabilities to breakthroughs in computer vision and predictive analytics, the future of AI in the cloud promises to deliver transformative capabilities that will shape the way businesses operate, compete, and innovate in the coming years.
Hyperstack- Your AI Cloud Partner
When choosing an AI cloud provider, Hyperstack rises above other Legacy Cloud Providers. But what makes Hyperstack an exceptional partner for organisations pursuing AI and machine learning innovation?
-
Specialised GPU Infrastructure: Hyperstack’s focus on GPUs makes it an excellent platform for AI and machine learning tasks, which require massive parallel processing power. Unlike general-purpose cloud providers, Hyperstack’s infrastructure is optimised for high-performance computing tasks, offering access to the latest NVIDIA GPUs, including the NVIDIA HGX SXM5 H100, A100, L40, and others, specifically designed for AI workloads.
-
Up to 75% Cost Savings: Delivering optimised price performance, Hyperstack provides one of the most cost-efficient AI cloud platforms - with no compromise on capabilities. This makes scaling AI accessible for both startups and large enterprises looking to maximise cloud value.
-
100% Renewable Energy: Committed to sustainable computing, Hyperstack runs on fully renewable energy. For AI workloads that can be computationally intensive, Hyperstack offers a green solution aligned to environmentally-conscious cloud consumption.
-
Flexible Scaling and Configuration: Hyperstack's wide range of pre-configured SKUs, along with ultra-fast networking and storage options, provides the flexibility needed to support various AI projects, from deep learning model training to complex simulations.
-
Developer-Friendly API and Tools: Hyperstack provides a robust API and user-friendly tools that simplify deploying, managing, and scaling AI applications. This developer-friendly environment accelerates development cycles and enables agile responses to changing project requirements, enhancing productivity and innovation.
-
Global Reach with European Data Sovereignty: Hyperstack offers a global service while ensuring European data sovereignty, making it an ideal partner for organisations concerned about data privacy regulations such as GDPR. This global reach, combined with compliance and data protection, ensures that AI projects can be scaled internationally without legal or privacy concerns.
Sign up today to experience the power of NVIDIA's most advanced H100 and A100 GPUs. Let your complex models train faster at a massive scale while benefiting from cloud flexibility at Hyperstack.
FAQs
What is AI Cloud?
AI Cloud refers to delivering artificial intelligence services via the cloud. This allows for scalable, on-demand access to AI tools without needing specialised on-premise hardware.
What are the benefits of AI in the cloud?
The main benefits of AI in the cloud include reduced costs, increased accessibility, and scalability. Organisations can leverage powerful AI without large upfront investments in infrastructure or expertise. Cloud-based AI can also quickly scale to meet spikes in processing demands.
What are examples of AI in cloud computing?
Examples of AI in cloud computing include services like image recognition, language processing, speech recognition, automation and predictions. These AI services can be integrated easily into applications using cloud APIs and SDKs.
Why use AI in cloud computing?
Using AI in cloud computing helps in automating tasks, reducing human errors, improving efficiency, implementing cost-saving measures, and enhancing overall productivity.
Get Started
Ready to build the next big thing in AI?