Cloud and AI — Who are the top 6 Cloud AI service providers?

The AI cloud is transforming the way companies do business. According to Accenture, companies that adopt this technology could see their profits rise by a massive 38%.

The cloud combined with AI allows companies to roll out AI to every aspect of their business and build it into the very fabric of their daily operations. And, while AI clouds can be managed by companies themselves, it’s extremely expensive to develop in-house, so many prefer to have their AI solutions in the cloud managed by Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).

More and more cloud vendors now offer cloud-based AI products within their cloud computing packages.

So, which are the providers of choice right now?

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS AI business services have tended to take their lead from those available in its consumer products.

Alexa, for example, as used in the Amazon Echo, brings AI into consumers’ homes via its intelligent voice server.

When it comes to AWS, the company’s main professional services are Lex, which can build conversational interfaces into apps, Polly, which can turn text into speech, and Rekognition, which is an image recognition service.

Customers can also take advantage of Amazon Machine Learning. It offers visualisation tools that are easy to use, without having to learn ML algorithms and technology.

2. Microsoft Azure

Microsoft offers AI solutions in three categories: AI Services, AI Tools and Frameworks, and AI infrastructure.

• AI Services include pre-built capabilities such as Azure Cognitive Services as well as custom AI development like Azure Machine Learning (AML);
• Tools & Frameworks allow customers to use numerous Microsoft AI products like Azure Notebooks and Visual Studio Tools for AI;
• lastly, AI infrastructure includes Azure Data Services and Azure Kubernetes.
  
  

3. Salesforce

Salesforce’s AI platform, Einstein AI offers AI solutions that integrate with its other offerings. This allows customers to build apps using ML and predictive analytics, whilst using Salesforce data.

For example, users can build chatbots that can learn by interacting with customers. Armed with these new insights, companies can prioritise leads and build stronger relationships.

4. Oracle

Oracle offers customers different services that allow them to build and deploy models with open-source frameworks like PyTorch and Tensorflow.

Oracle clients can also add prebuilt chatbots, anomaly detection software, natural language processing (NLP), and vision capabilities to apps and operations.

5. IBM Cloud

IBM has a plethora of AI offerings with no fewer than 16 services, including Watson Studio, a cloud service that enables users to build and train AI models, prepare data, and perform data analytics on that data.

IBM Watson Services for Core ML offers companies the ability to build AI-powered apps that connect securely with their data, which can run either on-premises or in the cloud.

6. Google Cloud

Google sells a number of AI and machine learning services to companies, including software project TensorFlow and Tensor AI Chip. The Cloud Vision API can identify logos, landmarks, and objects within images and find similar ones on the web, as well as detect faces and read expressions.

Its Cloud ML service allows developers to train high-quality machine learning models (for example, customer service technology) using Google APIs.

Google Cloud’s new updated AI tech is helping retailers transform in-store shelf-checking processes, enabling them to offer a more seamless shopping experience to customers.

(According to NielsenIQ, empty shelves cost US retailers 82 billion dollars in missed sales in 2021, so this could be a real gamechanger for the retail industry.)

From healthcare and retail to customer service, logistics and transportation, AI in the cloud helps companies streamline their operations and boost their bottom lines. AI cloud providers help fuel the uptake of this new technology, making it easy for customers to build their own AI-powered apps and ML models in the cloud.

However, to realise the huge potential of the AI cloud, companies need to have the right talent on board.

For the past twelve years in a row, we’ve been named one of the Top 20 IT Training Companies in the World. We offer accelerated courses in all aspects of AI and Machine Learning in the Cloud. Perhaps one of them is right for you? See all our Cloud Computing courses.