Huawei, Oracle Infuse AI in the Cloud
Huawei and Oracle today announced separate plans for infusing artificial intelligence (AI) into their cloud-based platforms and applications. The advancements follow a widespread market trend that looks to incorporate more intelligence and capabilities in the cloud for enterprises. It also emboldens the position of cloud providers that are eager to find new ways to compete.
“AI and machine learning work best when you have lots of data … and of course a good place to store all of your data is in the cloud,” saidBlair Hanley Frank, analyst at ISG. “When you think about customers with large amounts of data in the cloud, one of the best ways to add value to that is to add an intelligent layer over top that can reason over that significant volume of data.”
Most cloud providers have also reached a level of maturity that requires competitive gains to be earned on features that go beyond basic services, Frank added.“By developing different and more advanced AI capabilities, that’s how these major cloud platforms can really differentiate from one another,” he said. “Everybody is looking to try and show how they are better than their competition through the creation of new services that add intelligence over top of that existing commodity layer.”
The breadth and capability of AI solutions depends on the vendor and technical acumen of the enterprise, Frank explained. As vendors continue to search for ways to offer distinct value in their cloud platforms, different personalities are emerging, he said.
Huawei Cloud will include “full stack, full scenario AI solutions” later this month, including 48 services that can enable businesses to extract more intelligence from their data, the company announced. Services include Huawei’s AI developer platform ModelArts, optical character recognition, natural language processing, and video analysis.
More than 200 AI-related projects have been initiated on Huawei Cloud to date, the company said. Among Fortune 500 companies, 221 have used Huawei Cloud to extend new capabilities for smart cities, factories, transportation, and urban parking, according to Huawei.
