Top Cloud and AI Trends for 2021

Cloud computing underpins the global economy, from global supply chains to remote workers, and in 2021 the coronavirus pandemic will remain an important target for organizations seeking scalability, business continuity, and cost-efficiency. By 2021, experts predict that 94 percent of Internet workloads and processing will depend in some form on cloud computing, as many companies shift their daily front and back end operations to the cloud. The cloud continues to evolve and grow in popularity.

Cloud and AI

As cloud technology evolves and more and more businesses shift to cloud-based services, it is important to understand emerging trends around cloud computing. Understanding the leading trends in cloud computing can improve your cybersecurity, data management, and access levels — giving you a competitive edge. 

The concept of AI cloud blends cloud computing with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, delivering enhanced value to the enterprises in predicting software errors, bugs, and incident patterns that help the security and SRE teams handle security disasters, restore services and manage incidents. Along with machine learning advancements, cloud computing and AI are increasingly merging, and the proof is very evident with the assistants such as Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, etc. 

AI and cloud automation has been a turnaround for the IT sector because of the efficiency these technologies impart. Especially during the pandemic, businesses had to boost up their technological abilities to keep pace with remote working.

The share of IT expenditure on the cloud will continue to accelerate in 2021. With the global pandemic and cloud computing in the spotlight, companies want to increase online data security, business continuity, and cost-efficiency in 2021 and continue the same. In 2021 and beyond, the cloud will help artificial intelligence reach its rich potential, which has not yet reached the exciting heights that many are hyping, with the promise of massive amounts of data flowing into the cloud to make that promise a reality. 

Sharing here some notable cloud and AI trends for 2021

• The growth of PaaS is expected

In 2021, Platform as a Service will see more growth as cloud computing increases companies'”ability to build, manage and operate platforms as customer services. Platform as a Service (PaaS) is available in both private and public cloud platforms, increasing the stability of development platforms and facilitating application development, data storage, and software testing. The use of PaaS is rising as companies seek to modernize older applications with cloud-native capabilities.    

• Hyper automation will take center stage

This has gained huge popularity because of enhanced speed, reduced errors, and smooth replacement of human work. Hyper automation is able to accomplish this high-end proficiency when the tools combine with machine learning applications. Hyper automation can be the future of organizations since it assists in the documented understanding of the processes better. It also formulates an environment where manual work is carried out by digital tools seamlessly. Hyper automation aids businesses to mechanize end-to-end workflows. It also brings integration, management, monitoring, and DevOps capabilities in line with one another.

• Increase and efficiency in managed cloud services

Managed cloud services will become more efficient, accessible, and more adaptable than ever before in the coming years. As your business adapts to the cloud and starts growing, managing platforms like Kubernetes can be cumbersome, and hence we see a rise in such managed services that help enterprises manage their Kubernetes workloads worry-free. 

• Edge computing to take new heights

IoT solutions deployed by cloud providers will add edge computing services that help deliver content to hundreds of thousands of local locations. In addition, these solutions offer more flexibility and better options for data management as companies recognize the importance of cloud computing and IoT for the development of enterprise software.  

• An amalgamation of AI and ML with cloud

AI and ML will be heavily incorporated in the cloud computing models. This allows even small businesses to access powerful models trained on millions or even billions of data series at a fraction of the cost. The computing resources can be replicated at the push of a button and scaled up or down as required.    

• Democratization of access to automation technologies 

The digital boom is being witnessed and a revolution brought about by any automation tool is acknowledged thoroughly. Thus, democratizing automation is an effective strategy that will carry out an organization’s menial tasks effortlessly. They will be able to render strong support to the non-technical user base in the company by executing routine tasks. Democratizing workflow automation is imperative for defending any fraud that may take place by consistent anomaly reporting. Lastly, granting greater access to readily efficient and speedy technology to people.

• Serverless and cloud strategies on the rise

Major providers such as AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, etc rely on innovative cloud strategies that take advantage of the serverless computing model. Hybrid and multi-cloud edge environments are growing rapidly, setting the stage for a new distributed cloud model.

• Increase in the number of AI solutions

With the use of artificial intelligence, it will be possible to monitor and manage cloud resources with vast amounts of data. As a result, the number of AI solutions being developed for cloud resources will increase significantly in 2021 and beyond.   

• Liberation of cloud with AI

Low-budget enterprises will be able to leverage the full power of artificial intelligence (AI) with cloud computing services such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) to drive the most advanced capabilities. Of course, AI is a technology difficult to implement without the cloud, but software containers like Kubernetes, serverless computing, and powerful ML frameworks will help users to create responsible, scalable AI. 

• Increased adoption of AI-based voice assistance 

Acknowledgment of voice assistance or language-driven intelligence is the need of the hour for improved remote working conditions.  The need for adopting automated speech recognition capabilities is imperative to support enhanced customer support services. Many times customer grievance services are seen as latent and not helpful enough, therefore speech recognition comes to the rescue. Organizations these days are relying more on deploying this type of voice assistance technology to cater to routine quality checks and better customer support. In addition, customer understanding becomes easier with the usage of these mechanized, faultless, and smooth voice-assisted machines. 

• The rise in the adoption of Hybrid-cloud for more security

Cloud service providers are expected to develop more sophisticated mechanisms to ensure data security in the cloud. Cloud service providers will offer their customers better security options over the next few years. The hybrid cloud will be the best option for businesses looking for extra security and control over their data while remaining cost-effective. 

These are the few notable trends that have been hugely demanding by IT companies worldwide to make their software lucrative. Organizations have tapped into cloud capabilities along with AI and automated tools for offering efficiency in their work and optimizing output. The businesses also want to digitally grow at tremendous levels and keep the database of customers intact at length. Thus, it is significant that companies adapt to newer technologies for accelerated growth amidst the increasing competition.