Google Cloud: When it comes to business AI, no-one can deliver value like us – TechRadar
Google Cloud is confident that it can help businesses unlock the potential of AI. The company is targeting a number of sectors, such as retail, healthcare, and manufacturing, and claims its tools and expertise will deliver value. The company’s SVP of Global Marketing, Kevin Ichhpurani, says that the “business value delivered by AI has been accelerating.
Speaking at the Google Cloud Next event in San Francisco, Ichhpurani added: “But as you’ve probably read in all the press coverage, most enterprises don’t feel they’ve captured the full benefits of AI yet. And that’s because their own attempts to build AI in-house have been too challenging.” He added that, despite their technical prowess, companies can struggle to find and retain data scientists with the skills and expertise they need to drive forward ambitious AI initiatives. The company is pitching its Vertex AI service as the answer to this challenge, offering a managed platform with features designed to improve developer productivity and boost efficiency for enterprises with ambitious AI aspirations.
“Today we are extending Google Cloud’s machine learning and AI expertise to a full-fledged managed machine learning platform – Vertex AI,” Ichhpurani added. “Vertex AI makes machine learning accessible for all business users.”
Ichhpurani explained how Google Cloud’s AI strategy involves a mix of open-source technology, proprietary innovations and third-party partnerships to build a platform that companies can use to access AI. It also works on a model where it provides businesses with different levels of support, depending on their level of experience with AI. “We understand not every organization will have a Ph.D. in machine learning in the organization, not every organization will have an established data science function. And some will,” Ichhpurani said. “With Google Cloud’s end-to-end platform, organizations can address both the challenges of creating data and machine learning models, as well as the need to seamlessly deploy, monitor and govern models, as well as build an enterprise grade application with machine learning.”
However, while Google Cloud is keen to trumpet its efforts, its commitment to providing a secure and open environment for building and deploying AI is being called into question, at least by one vocal AI developer, the creators of Apache Spark. This follows the launch of the Apache Spark creator’s own rival cloud platform that seeks to bring open AI tools to a wider market, including Google Cloud’s.
It comes after years of effort, through various forums, by the Spark community, to ensure that open-source tools and technologies used by a wide variety of developers remain open and accessible to users – with open being the key word, and with Google often seemingly dragging its feet when it comes to offering transparent, secure, open, and compatible implementations of open source tools.
However, Google Cloud remains focused on helping businesses achieve their AI goals, and appears keen to remain ahead of the curve with its developments. During the Next event the company also highlighted its ambitions with Vertex AI and how its platform will be a game changer for organizations.
“We are excited to bring Vertex AI to our customers,” Ichhpurani concluded. “We are going to drive AI forward, and are making a serious play for a massive market opportunity.” Google’s AI push also comes at a time when companies are trying to deal with rising economic and political uncertainty, which is further driving the demand for tools to streamline operations, cut costs and increase efficiency. If its Vertex AI strategy delivers as Google Cloud believes, the platform will become a significant weapon in the battle to secure businesses, particularly in this new climate of risk.
