Easy access to data, flexibility of usage, disaster recovery and reduced IT workload ­– these have emerged as the top reasons that companies are embracing cloud computing solutions. In addition, the pandemic-induced remote working model has accelerated the move to a virtual computing environment, gravitating companies towards the cloud, away from on-prem deployments. The shift is discernible: with the entire workforce working on a distributed environment for well over a year, the ability to provide Information Technology (IT) as a service over the Internet has been the single most important factor that has sustained the industry during the Corona conundrum. With just as much as a device connected to the internet, it was made possible for employees to continue to work for their companies: access and upload data, share information, communicate seamlessly, collaborate on projects and documents remotely, and so on. On the IT enterprise end, it was owing to the functionality of the cloud that they were able to treat each of their worker’s location as a remote branch and carry out business operations seamlessly, even while a majority of businesses and industries faced disruption. 

First coined in 1999, the term cloud computing has come to encompass a range of technological services and computing power delivered by cloud providers, such as Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. The suffix ‘as a service’ implies that the client can get specific resources by purchasing them from third-party vendors on a subscription model instead of having to build capabilities from scratch or install infrastructure on site. This manifests in ready-made software, a platform for its development, or a comprehensive computing infrastructure – all provided via networks. There are three major types of cloud services as outlined below.

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Think of it as a virtual equivalent of a physical data centre, used to provide resources such as servers, networks and storage. This eliminates the need for enterprises to maintain a complex in-house data centre, along with the complementary costs of staffing, powering and cooling such an elaborate facility. Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine (GCE), Amazon Web Services ( AWS ), and Cisco Metapod are some reputed IaaS vendors.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): This is an application development platform delivered on demand. Such a platform with inbuilt software components and tools can be leveraged by developers to build the software of their apps without having to worry about the underlying hardware or infrastructure. PaaS solutions vendors are Google App Engine, Amazon AWS, Windows Azure Cloud Services, Heroku, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Apache Stratos and OpenShift.
• Software as a Service (SaaS): This is the most commonly used form of cloud computing, offering the end users access to a cloud-based software through the web or APIs. Since SaaS solutions reside on a remote cloud network, users are not required to install or download the software on their devices. Popular examples include Office365, Google Apps, and Zoho Suite.

Artificial Intelligence and cloud computing share a symbiotic relationship because while, on one hand, the gigantic quantities of data required to train AI algorithms can only be stored on the cloud, it is AI that augments cloud performance, on the other hand. The cognitive abilities of AI, coupled with the power of analytics to present actionable insights, makes the cloud infrastructure more efficient, cost-effective, seamless and secure.

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