AI and Cloud Computing Top News, January 2024 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing continue to shape the future of technology, with significant advancements and applications across various industries. This collection of articles provides a comprehensive overview of the latest trends, top stocks, and significant news in AI and cloud computing, with a particular focus on the year 2023 and projections for 2024.

1. Nvidia’s AI Chips Power Self-Driving Cars and Cloud Computing
   Nvidia’s AI chips are not only powering self-driving cars but are also a critical component for cloud computing services. The company’s processors are widely used by internet and tech companies, marking significant AI-driven growth for Nvidia. URL: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/ai-stocks-artificial-intelligence-trends-and-news/
2. Adobe Joins the AI Revolution with Creative Cloud Enhancements
   Adobe has been identified as one of the top AI stocks to watch, as it integrates AI and machine learning into its Creative Cloud suite, offering innovative solutions to creatives and marketers.
   URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor-hub/article/12-best-artificial-intelligence-ai-stocks-to-buy/?sh=6f69f8cd4093
3. IBM’s AI Efforts Gain Traction with Industry Applications
   IBM continues to make strides in AI, with its technology being applied across various industries. The company’s AI solutions are helping businesses enhance their operations and customer experiences.
   URL: https://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/artificial-intelligence-stocks-the-10-best-ai-companies
4. Salesforce Leverages AI for Enhanced Customer Relationship Management
   Salesforce is utilizing AI to transform customer relationship management (CRM), providing businesses with advanced tools to better understand and engage with their customers.
   URL: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/ai-stocks-artificial-intelligence-trends-and-news/
5. Microsoft’s AI Innovations Propel Cloud Services
   Microsoft is at the forefront of AI innovation, with its cloud services benefiting from the integration of AI tools. The tech giant’s commitment to AI is evident in its cloud computing growth.
   URL: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/ai-stocks-artificial-intelligence-trends-and-news/
6. Amazon Plays Catch-Up in Generative AI for Cloud Services
   Amazon is ramping up its efforts in generative AI to enhance its cloud services. Despite facing stiff competition, the e-commerce and cloud computing giant is making significant investments in AI.
   URL: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/ai-stocks-artificial-intelligence-trends-and-news/
7. C3 AI Offers SaaS Solutions Powered by Artificial Intelligence
   C3 AI is providing software as a service (SaaS) solutions that are driven by AI, catering to businesses seeking to leverage AI for efficiency and innovation.
   URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor-hub/article/12-best-artificial-intelligence-ai-stocks-to-buy/?sh=6f69f8cd4093
8. Artificial Intelligence Trends And Top AI Stocks To Watch, This article discusses the trends and top stocks in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). It highlights the use of computer algorithms to replicate human learning, the two most common types of AI tools (machine learning and deep learning networks), and the battle for AI dominance among tech giants, cloud titans, and chipmakers. The article also mentions specific companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon, and their involvement in AI-driven growth and cloud computing. URL: https://www.investors.com/news/technology/ai-stocks-artificial-intelligence-trends-and-news/
9. Top 20 Uses of Artificial Intelligence In Cloud Computing For 2024. This article outlines the top 20 use cases of artificial intelligence in cloud computing for 2024. It emphasizes how AI enables mass personalization of products and services, and its use in industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, customer service, education, banking, finance, and media intelligence. The article also discusses AI’s role in resource provisioning, IoT and edge computing, and business intelligence and reporting. URL: https://aithority.com/it-and-devops/cloud/top-20-uses-of-artificial-intelligence-in-cloud-computing-for-2024/
10. The Top 10 Biggest Google Cloud News Stories Of 2023 (So Far) | CRN, This article presents the top 10 most important Google Cloud news stories of 2023, including the launch of a new generative AI portfolio and other significant developments. It discusses Google Cloud’s profitability, generative AI support for Vertex AI, and its commitment to responsible generative AI. The article also highlights Google’s investments in AI product innovation and partnerships. URL: https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/the-top-10-biggest-google-cloud-news-stories-of-2023-so-far
11. Top 10 Biggest Google Cloud News Stories Of 2023: AI, Profitability And Layoffs. This article covers the 10 most important Google Cloud news stories of 2023, focusing on generative AI innovation, profitability, and layoffs. It discusses Google Cloud’s efforts to become a key player in the artificial intelligence arms race, its investments in AI product innovation, and the launch of new AI products. URL: https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/top-google-cloud-stories
12. Google cloud top news of 2023 | Google Cloud Blog. This source provides a collection of top news stories related to Google Cloud in 2023. It includes the introduction of generative AI to developers, businesses, and governments, the launch of new BigQuery editions, and the advancement of generative AI at Google I/O. The article also mentions the introduction of Duet AI for Google Cloud and the announcement of A3 supercomputers with NVIDIA H100 GPUs. URL: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/google-cloud-top-news-of-2023

Over 50% Of Enterprises Are Prioritizing Cloud-Based Analytics & BI In 2021

May 25, 2021

• 77% of enterprises have adopted cloud computing architectures as of 2021.
• Cloud adoption increased 25% in the last year among enterprises interviewed.
• 35% of enterprises are using hybrid cloud configurations today.
• Data architect and cloud architect roles are in top demand across the global enterprises interviewed.

These and many other insights are from data virtualization provider Denodo’s Global Cloud Survey, 2021 (PDF, free, opt-in). The survey is based on 150 global business and IT professionals interviews from 18 different industries and five global regions. Software/IT (19.59%), Financial Services (14.86%), Energy (7.43%), and Manufacturing (6.76%) are the top four industries represented. Please see page 20 of the study for more details on the methodology.

Key insights from the survey include the following:  

• 53% of enterprises say enhancing analytics and BI reporting is their top cloud initiative in 2021. Based on conversations with CIOs of financial services, consumer products goods (CPG), and e-commerce providers, there’s an urgent need to make sense of the new data generated during the last fifteen months of the pandemic. The question many CIOs and businesses they support have is if the unique patterns in data reflect a new series of buying behaviors they’ll need to adapt to quickly. Better data integration (43.92%) and expanding data science using AI/ML (also 43.92%) are also high priorities for cloud spending in 2021, which is understandable given how urgently CIOs need to help line-of-business leaders interpret and act on customer data.

• Analytics is the most in-demand cloud service by enterprises this year, followed by compute and storage infrastructure. 59% of enterprises say Analytics Cloud Services lead their investment priorities today. 56.7% prioritize Compute and Storage Infrastructure as their most crucial investment this year. According to the survey, Machine Learning & AI Data and Data Lakes with Azure Data Lake are the third and fourth-most popular enterprise cloud investments. The following graphic compares the cloud services most in-demand in enterprises today.    

 

• Machine Learning/AI and IoT Cloud Services’ adoption is growing fast. ML/AI Cloud Services adoption surged across enterprises, increasing from 17% in 2020 to 45.9% in 2021. IoT Cloud Services jumped from 11% in 2020 to 27% in 2021. It’s noteworthy that migration to the cloud also increased from 23.4% in 2020 to 33.1% in 2021.  

 

36% Of Enterprises Predict Public Cloud Spending Will Increase In 2021

May 16, 2021

451 Research’s recent survey, Voice of the Enterprise: Cloud, Hosting & Managed Services, Budgets & Outlook 2021, provides new insights into how the pandemic acts as a catalyst driving organizations to pivot toward new digital business models faster than they had anticipated. The survey is based on interviews with over 300 cloud and IT professionals.

Key insights from the survey include the following:

• Public cloud platforms met and exceeded expectations during the pandemic. The study found 85% of the enterprises are getting positive results from their quick shift to public cloud platforms in response to the pandemic.
• Enterprises predict the most significant spending gains in 2021 will be in IaaS, PaaS, and public cloud platforms. The pandemic made adaptive intelligence, agility, time-to-launch for new apps, and speed the most urgent priorities IT teams worked to achieve. Moving more workloads to the cloud and creating a virtualized infrastructure is behind increased spending on public cloud platforms. SaaS applications trail just by 6% at 30%, showing the robust momentum cloud platforms have in enabling new app adoption.

• 55% of enterprises say securing cloud environments is their biggest challenge when using public cloud platforms. Enterprises also say that cost optimization (51.7%), governance & compliance (49.1%), and refactoring apps for the cloud (40.7%) are the challenges they are most focused on solving today. “Governance becomes more of a challenge for organizations the more they start using the cloud,” Posey said. “If you have two people in the IT department spinning up a cloud service, they can govern themselves. But once you get more and more workloads to the cloud and more people in the organization updating the code, you actually need to put into place some governance structure.”

Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence, COVID-19 driving surge in enterprise cloud adoption – 451 survey

 

AWS Growth Is Accelerating, Hitting A $54B Annual Run Rate In Q1, 2021

May 8, 2021 

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) revenue grew 32% year-over-year, increasing from $10.2B in Q1, 2020 to $13.5B in Q1, 2021.
• Corporate-wide, Amazon’s net sales jumped 44% to $108.5B in Q1, 2021 compared to $75.5B in Q1, 2020. Operating income more than doubled to $8.9B in Q1, up from $4B in Q1, 2020.
• AWS added new customers including Twitter, Nationwide, Global Payments, Moderna, and with The Walt Disney Company on the expansion of Disney+ to more than 100 million subscribers around the world. Q1/2020.

Amazon’s first-quarter financial results show AWS is on a $54B run rate for their latest fiscal year.  Amazon’s cloud service also shows the potential to reach $16B in operating income at 30% gross margins in FY21.  AWS operating income jumped 35% from $3.075B to $4.163B from Q1, 2020 to Q2, 2021. 

 

Quarterly Analysis of AWS Financial Performance

 

Significant New AWS Product Announcements  

• AWS announced the general availability of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS (ROSA). Also announced is the general availability of AQUA (Advanced Query Accelerator) for Amazon Redshift, and the general availability of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) X2gd instances, the next generation of advanced, memory-optimized instances powered by AWS-designed, Arm-based Graviton2 processors. 
• AWS also announced Amazon Lookout for Equipment, a new service that uses AWS-developed machine learning models to help customers perform predictive maintenance on the equipment in their facilities. Combining IoT-based data with Amazon Lookout for Equipment is going to create new services businesses specializing in AI-assisted Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO).
• Amazon Lookout for Metrics is a new fully managed machine learning service that helps AWS customers monitor the most important metrics for their business. Key metrics measured include revenue, web page views, active users, transaction volume, and mobile app installations with greater speed and accuracy. The service also makes it easier to diagnose the root cause of anomalies like unexpected dips in revenue, high rates of abandoned shopping carts, spikes in payment transaction failures, increases in new user sign-ups, and more.

Source: Amazon Q1, 2021 Results 

38% of Organizations Say SaaS Is Essential To Achieving Their Business Goals

April 27, 2021 

According to the Harvey Nash Group Technology and Talent Study, 2021, SaaS, Big Data, and AI & machine learning (ML) are the three most important technologies organizations rely on to realize their business goals. Over a third of organizations surveyed say SaaS and Big Data (33%) are very important to achieving business outcomes. Chart source: Statista.

 

McKinsey: Cloud’s trillion-dollar prize is up for grabs

April 25, 2021 

McKinsey’s recent article, Cloud’s trillion-dollar prize is up for grabs, predicts more than a $1 trillion in run-rate EBITDA across Fortune 500 companies is up for grabs in 2030. The $1 trillion value pool breaks out as follows:

McKinsey says that “companies in every industry can capture substantial value from Cloud, but it isn’t distributed evenly. High tech, oil and gas, retail, healthcare systems and services, insurance, and banking are positioned to generate the most value as measured by EBITDA impact in 2030, although almost all industries across the Fortune 500 show potential for an average rise in EBITDA of more than 20%.” The following graphic shows the distribution of EBITDA impact by industry:

You can find the entire article on the McKinsey site here.  

Cloud Infrastructure Spending Soars Past Data Center Spending 

April 25, 2021 

Synergy Research Group finds that enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services continued to ramp up aggressively in 2020, growing by 35% to reach almost $130 billion. Meanwhile, enterprise spending on data center hardware and software dropped by 6% to under $90 billion. Source: 2020 – The Year that Cloud Service Revenues Finally Dwarfed Enterprise Spending on Data Centers

Source: Synergy Research, 2020 – The Year that Cloud Service Revenues Finally Dwarfed Enterprise Spending on Data Centers

Source: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/item/35606-grasping-the-difference-bet

source: http://cloudtweaks.com/2014/01/cloud-infographic-cloud-public-private-hybrid-differences/

Source: http://saasmarkets.com/the-evolution-of-the-enterprise-app-store/

Source: http://infographiclist.com/2011/10/19/cloud-computing-as-an-engine-of-growth-top-u-s-cities-infographic/

Amazon’s Physical Infrastructure Source: http://visual.ly/amazons-physical-infrastructure

Source: http://visual.ly/variabilization-information-technology

 Source: http://www.staff.com/blog/the-state-of-saas-infographic/

Source: http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2013/02/cloud-infographic-the-cloud-strategy-race/

Source: Created by trackvia

Source: http://www.devry.edu/know-how/infographic-cloud-computing-fact-or-fiction/

Source: http://blogs.vmware.com/accelerate/2012/12/cloud-economics-the-impact-of-cloud-computing.html

Source:  http://www.veracode.com/blog/2012/10/a-buyers-guide-to-cloud-apps-infographic/

Cloud Computing’s Role in Job Creation in Asia

Enterprise Cloud Computing by the Numbers Infographic, September, 2012

Source: http://www.cloudconnectevent.com/santaclara/

Why are more more businesses moving to the cloud? – An infographic by the team at Yorkshire Cloud http://www.yorkshirecloud.co.uk 

Source: http://virtualization.com/2011/04/06/the-cloud-computing-stratosphere-infographic/

Presentations

Cloud Computing Forecast Roundup for 2013

Masterclass Webinar: Amazon S3 – Great Presentation on Amazon S3 Architecture and Optimization

Cloud vs. On-Premise: Making the Best Decision for Your Complex Selling System

Cloud Computing Technology Overview 2012

High Performance Web Applications on Amazon Web Services

Journey Through the AWS Cloud; Development and Test

Hadoop and HBase on Amazon Web Services

Big Data and the Cloud, by Amazon Web Services

Excellent presentation by David Linthicum, Getting an open systems cloud strategy right the first time

Enterprise Cloud Journey – Great Presentation by Amazon Web Services.  August, 2012

Running Microsoft SharePoint on Amazon Web Services

North Bridge Presentation on the Future of Cloud Computing, 2012

Overview of Amazon Web Services

Open APIs: What’s Hot, What’s Not?  Excellent presentation that is packed with valuable content by John Musser, ProgrammableWeb

Introduction to Amazon CloudSearch

Hybrid Customer Insight – Data Collection and Analysis from On-premise and in the Cloud – Excellent Presentation by Dr. Holger Kisker, Forrester

Three Pillars of a Working Cloud Model – Excellent Presentation by SAP Cloud Solutions

OpenStack Gains Momentum, Customers are Speaking Up

Amazon Web Services 101: Cloud Computing Seminar (2012)

Big Data & Intelligent Platforms: Next Iteration of PaaS for Data Driven World

Leaders in the Cloud: Identifying Cloud Business Value for Customers

The Only 3 SaaS Metrics That Matter.  Presentation by Tien Tzuo, Founder and CEO, Zuora

Building the European Cloud Computing Strategy

 

Videos

How to Launch A Website In Ten Minutes Using Amazon Web Services 

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit 2012: Werner Vogels’ keynote

How Platform as a Service Enables Innovation; discussion by Forrester VP and Principal Analyst John Rymer 

IBM’s Cloud Enabled Business Model Innovation Video – Many excellent points on how Cloud Computing is accelerating business model performance 

Exploring Cloud Computing – Introductory Video by Dr. Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, MIT Center for Digital Business

Cloud Computing: An Overview (Oracle Corporation whiteboard session) February, 2012

Big Data on the IBM SmartCloud – Insights into the Commercial Uses of Hadoop 

AWSLIVE: Introducing Amazon DynamoDB from the Online Launch Event on January 18, 2012 

Introduction to Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services: Getting Started with Amazon EC2: Launching a Windows Instance 

Microsoft Global Data Center Tour and Overview 

Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, Talks Cloud Computing

Ford and the Future of Cloud Computing – From the Detroit Auto Show 

How Google Apps Work.  Good examples of how the Cloud is used for real-time collaboration.

Salesforce.com Tutorial on the Fundamentals of Cloud Computing