“It is the combination of Big Data, Social networks and mobility. The new frontier of artificial intelligence is driving growth. Servers are increasingly being built for these Cloud giants”. (Gartner)
Analysts all over the world agree in considering the Cloud the new generation of business technology. According to Gartner too, this sector will generate a turnover of 67 billion dollars in 2020, compared with the 23 billion expected by the end of 2016.
Amazon Web Services, which introduced its first Cloud product ten years ago now, dominates the market.
With revenue of 2.6 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2016, it is the undisputed leader in the sector; AWS profits account for 56% of the group’s operating profit. Microsoft’s Cloud offering, on the other hand, revolves around Azure, its cloud business launched in 2010, which grew by 100% last year.
Google cannot afford to fall behind, even though for now it seems to be struggling against the giants of the sector. The Alphabet group, which brings together all of Mountain View’s activities, does not even disclose separate figures for Google Cloud Platform. Yet Google owns what is probably the largest computer network in the world and spends almost 10 billion dollars a year to run its services, from Gmail to YouTube.
Google has just announced its strategy. Here are the three moves with which it plans to regain lost ground and, who knows, take the lead:
- Data centres for customers that save energy thanks to artificial intelligence;
- Transcription and analysis of recorded speech in order to extract both its meaning and its emotional charge. This will make it possible to analyse billions of minutes of customer service calls. Some companies have already done so, and Google guarantees that the system works with 80 different languages;
- Google has moved its US West Coast customers from the data centre in Iowa to infrastructure in Oregon. Google’s network is capable of sending the equivalent of 375 hours of video in one second. Moving the customers on the American west coast means that they will now get even faster performance, capable of serving needs such as virtual reality or instant interactions with customers over mobile networks and sensors.
Network speed, more competitive prices and artificial intelligence: will this be enough for Google to steal the lead from Amazon?
