Month: July 2020

According to a recent report, the global value of AI market will grow to $190 billion by 2025, it is no doubt that AI is one of the fastest-grow market in the world today. On the other hand, it is accounted that global public cloud market was $272 billion in 2018. Unlike AI, cloud industry has well-developed in the market and seems to be a driving force for economic growth. AI and cloud computing industries are not mutually exclusive, in fact, there are many evidences proving that AI and cloud can coordinate perfectly. Intelligent assistants like Siri and Google Assistant are the best example showing how AI access the big data with the cloud, learn from the data and continuously improve the performance.

What actually is AI?

Artificial Intelligence refers to the simulated intelligence in machines. The terms refer to the result of endowing machines with the ability to learn and analysis from data, which allow them to make the best decisions in different scenarios. AI is always associated with robot because of the influence of movie, however, most of the AI are invisible and working closely with our daily life.

AI Self-Managed Cloud

AI has been embedded into IT infrastructure to help streamline workloads and automate repetitive tasks, such as email auto-reply and payment requests. With the diverse capabilities of AI, some companies start using AI to optimize the core business workflow, thus the routine processes can be managed by the system itself, it helps IT teams better capture the efficiencies of the cloud.

AI and Data Management

AI is also performing as data analyst nowadays, as mentioned above that Cloud allows AI to access big data, a wide range of data-related duties can be handled by AI strategic program. Those duties include data collection, data identification, ingestion, categorization and database management. The categorized data will be analyzed and evaluated by AI for generating valuable recommendations in different aspects like website UI, marketing, customer service and supply chain. In order words, the cloud endow AI with capabilities to learn from big data in order to achieve auto-optimization.

AI in operation strategy

Product recommendation is applied by many e-commerce websites aiming for remarketing. After visitor shopping for a product online, he will then keep exposing to banners for related product suggestions, it is all about AI and big data. In addition, chatbot is widely used by enterprises, it tends to extract information from website and present it to customers. These bots advance with time, understanding and serving customer queries better due to its machine learning algorithms. In fact, moving the e-commerce to cloud can be benefited from valuable advantages, full article available at Blog – Cloud hosted eCommerce.

The Future Business Environment

 The fusion of AI and Cloud is transforming the business environment in every level, from deeper learning to near-compete automation of key processes. Although the AI is already applied in many businesses today, the technology is still in its early stage. It is widely believed that there will be a phenomenal advancement in the future, many types of job will be replaced by AI in coming 10 years, the industry evolution is yet to come.

　
* Let us know your comments and suggestions on LayerStack Community.

When it comes to hosting enterprise’s IT infrastructures, there are two major options for business leaders, the cloud and data center. A traditional data center is on premises that data is accessed through a local network, it is typically maintained by in-house IT specialists. Cloud computing, on the other hand, is essentially a remote version of data center which allow business to access the data through the internet. In this article, some difference between cloud and data center will be outlined for your reference.

Cost Saving

Cloud computing comes with obvious cost-saving and this is the driven for many businesses to move to the cloud for years. Cloud users only need to pay for their needs and cloud usage without any advance investments on hardware and software infrastructures that will be outdated.
　
　

Scalability & Deployment Time

Scalability is another selling point of cloud. A traditional data center involves some time-consuming work to bring additional server online, and that time lost may eventually affect your business. However, it takes only 10 mins to deploy a new cloud server which allow users to resize cloud servers to meet changing needs.
　

Data Security

For sure that datacenter provide user with complete control which is not possible in cloud computing. However, many popular cloud providers do also deliver superior data security to users, like 24/7 supports and user permission management. Thus, a trustable cloud provider is the key of data protection.
　

Accessibility

Unlike placing the data in traditional data center, users can upload and download files even they do not have the particular devices on hand with cloud computing, it allows businesses to achieve remote working business model which has been proven beneficial to business efficiency and productivity.
　

Disaster Recovery

Cloud provides offer multiple solutions for users to completely safeguard business data from disasters. The rationale behind those recovery solutions are that data is free to transfer from cloud to cloud, it can be automatically copied to a backup server to minimize the recovery time objective.
　
　

Geo Restrictions

To cope with global expansion, sometimes businesses need to move the data to local network in order to speed up the website or comply with local regulations. Deploying a new cloud server in a new country or region is as simple as selecting the location from a drop-down menu.
　
　

Technology Choice

There is no restriction on software and hardware with datacenter. Users can install with a specific graphics accelerator or hardware security module to meet businesses’ operation needs. The technology choice of datacenter, in fact, is more extensive then cloud computing as users do not “complete control” the cloud.

　
　
Although cloud computing is the business trend in recent years, it is not easy to judge which option is better than the other as they both have their own strengths, enterprises should evaluate the business needs and decide to use the most effective and efficient way.

Remote working has become a hot topic due to the Covid-19 outbreak, many medical experts across the globe are warning of second wave of Covid-19 infections, it is generally agreed that the inevitable second wave of the coronavirus pandemic could be more deadly than the first because it could be coupled with the seasonal flu. Remote working and learning have been proven an effective option during the global pandemic, according to a recent survey, 98% of respondent said they would like the option to work from home for the rest of their career.

Remote Work As New Business Trend

Many businesses are still concerning about the employees’ productivity as remote working make it uncontrollable, however many researches show that remote workers tend to be 35% – 40% more productive due to a more flexible schedule, lack of distractions, reducing commute time and a less stressful working environment. Moreover, a recent study indicated that employer can also be benefited from a sizable cost reduction, each remote employee could save up to US$11,000 a year in western countries due to the reducing rental and daily operation cost.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is a technology used to create a virtualized desktop environment on a remote server which is hosted on virtual machines and controlled by management software. Businesses can develop a secure remote office environment by simply moving the business to cloud servers and create an IP whitelist with the build-in firewall template function allowing specific IP address to work on the virtual desktop remotely. With virtual desktop, employee no longer need to worry about any hardware and crashing issues on physical machines.

Cloud File Server

Cloud File Server is an alternative way for enterprises to practice remote working, it works when company database runs on a cloud computing platform. Different level of access authorities are assigned to specific users, employee can then download files from cloud server to their own devices. Cloud owner can also set some rules on upload and download actions. Cloud control panels like Plesk and cPanel are server add-on options which are useful for non-professionals to complete files server setting and manage company resource with a user-friendly Graphic User Interface.

Data Security

User data security is always LayerStack’s major concerns, we offer multiple features and solutions for cloud users to improve the security level of servers. Auto-Backup is the most popular solution applied for data security purpose. Cloud server would automatically backup all the data at regular intervals, users can recover important business data at any time. Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), on the other hand, can provide an isolated environment for users to keep sensitive data. It works with a dedicated private network connecting a router server and an isolated server, all data will be transferred through a secure and ultra-fast connection.

Major Business Trend

It is no doubt that remote working is changing the global workspace operates and becoming a major business trend in the next few years. Business should take a step forward to maintain business daily operations in global pandemic and foresaw economic recession.