The concept of cloud is not new and has been in existence for more than a couple of decades. Off late, enterprises, consumer society, and governments have begun to make use of the capability that it offers for building new-age services. Most of this adoption is attributed to the advancement in communications, devices, and platforms.

Cloud’s ability to store and analyze data makes it a potent force to enable the digital infrastructure and services of tomorrow. Smart elevators and parking lots, driverless cars and drone taxis, trains and subways, farms and power plants — all would be powered by the cloud. The cloud will also be transformative for companies, especially small and mid-sized businesses, as data analytics, artificial intelligence, and other capabilities become available as services. The delivery on the cloud makes it easier for product companies and their enterprise customers to get into innovative business models, which makes adoption effective for both.

The role of the cloud in unlocking the value of services required by enterprises, consumers, and governments is significant. Cloud solves the challenges pertaining to accessibility, availability, and affordability [in case of volumes], thereby, lowering the barriers to the adoption of services. Progressive governments are already using the cloud for the access and distribution of public services. This has improved the experience and lowered the cost of service delivery.

Using the data underlying the services and transactions therein, there are immense opportunities for Artificial Intelligence to be used in effective public service delivery. Similar has been the experience of new-age consumer app start-ups, who have been able to reach out to their users across geographies, scale their infrastructure based on usage and growth, and deliver services and functionality consistently. In essence, the backbone of the cloud has been able to fuel their growth.

Increasingly, cloud-based services are gaining further traction and finding their relevance in uncharted domains of manufacturing and industrial technology. Enabling delivery of the Internet of Things [IoT] and Industrial IoT [IIoT] has been a cornerstone in the adoption and ubiquitous application of the cloud in an enterprise context. Cloud is here to enable the building of more critical and advanced services, making our lives simpler and better.