AI and Automation Conundrum: On Premise or On Cloud

September | 2019

As Artificial Intelligence matures, it is going to drive innovation and competitive differentiation for years to come. And enterprises have many considerations to make in their pursuit of designing the best AI solution – one of the biggest executive conundrums being whether to deploy it on premise or on cloud. The HOLMES Advisory Board met in September 2019 and discussed in length the benefits and the corresponding trade-offs between the two. It is not surprising that some of the biggest and coolest AI providers in the industry believe that the rising acceptance of AI is driven by the ease of implementing on-cloud AI solutions. 40% of all digital transformations today are powered by AI, as noted by one of the leaders in AI market research. While it is true that organizations requiring compute-heavy algorithms, or belonging to one of the highly regulated sectors, prefer on-premise deployments, however, the AI services on cloud assures an equally resilient DNA to sustain today’s new normal of 99.999%. At the end, irrespective of the deployment option, the success of any AI project rests on elevating the organization culture and ensuring a well integrated and outcome oriented solution design.