The murmurs are already in the alleys and corridors. If you follow online tech forums, you can see discussions around how many tech executives now believe that the migration to the cloud ended up costing more than they thought it would. You can find some detailed analysis floating on LinkedIn as well.

I have highlighted in many of my posts and articles that the value of the cloud is not baked in the cost. And you need a robust cloud strategy to understand this. If you jump into the cloud world with cost as the primary basis, there may be discontent. There are few other value levers that are frequently floated around to assert the benefit of cloud. I have seen posts negating them as well. But in my opinion, the reason organizations need to look at the cloud, now more than ever, is what is getting infused in cloud solutions- Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Many benefits of the cloud, like scalability, agility….yada..yada…may not even be an issue for many organizations, unless you are a startup looking to launch a solution, with uncertain future demand patterns. A Fortune 500, non-tech company, that has been around for a while, will likely not experience a scalability constraint, not one that it can not solve by throwing some money at the problem. The real value of the cloud, one that prudent technology executives are aware of, and one that propels many companies to gravitate towards the cloud can be encapsulated in one word- expertise.

When you move to the cloud, you tap into the expertise of these hyperscalers. Expertise that goes beyond the infrastructure, systems, and databases. Expertise to transform the way IT runs and then innovate.

This expertise comes in many forms. Solutions that aid in everything from data management to advanced analytics. And now, Artificial Intelligence.

Within the next five years, AI will become the single largest differentiating aspect between hyperscalers. What this means is that the hyperscaler that can help its clients design and deploy the most transformative and innovative solutions will exponentially race ahead. The power of the cloud, the value of buzzwords like agility, scalability etc., all come together beautifully with AI to build capabilities that can help organizations explore a whole new way to leverage technology, and hopefully become truly technology-driven organizations.

If you are at work as you read this, take a pause and then think about two or three problems that you have been trying to solve, leveraging technology, but have not been able to. It does not matter what the challenge is, but the fact is that by incorporating the cloud and AI solutions (automation, analytics, deep learning, GenAI) available in the cloud portfolio within the technology bucket of people, processes, and technology, you can solve any bottlenecks, that are worth solving. Remember, not all challenges may be worth solving. You just mitigate or minimize some.

Hyperscalers realize this and are rapidly integrating AI capabilities into their portfolio. Some are leaders, but we are seeing laggards too. But the fact is, the growth of cloud business in next ten years will be dominated by which provider has the best AI solutions integrated in their portfolio, and how aggressively they have been able to infuse them into their clients, across industries.