Cloud

Managing your own infrastructure can be costly, especially in the AI World. How do you redeploy the system, scale it, or use limited GPU resources for thousands of customers? What if you need to handle an increased number of customers only on weekends, and otherwise the traffic is just a tenth of that?

Cloud computing generally solves these problems. Here is a more comprehensive list of advantages:

• Scalability: do you need ten times more traffic on weekends or during sudden spikes? The Google Cloud environment allows you to set utilization thresholds, triggering the cloning of Docker containers. This way, the entire operation can be handled without undesirable slowdowns.
• Cost of Operation: despite higher hardware costs for local operations, the Cloud only uses resources that are currently in use. Unexpected underutilization of operations automatically reduces costs. Is your local setup configured so that you can simply turn off some servers?
• Reliability: redundancy protects your server against outages. If one server is in the Netherlands, another in Casablanca, and a third in Iowa, even a nationwide blackout or earthquake won't prevent access to your services.
• Speed: for global service provision, you can deploy servers closer to your customers, as mentioned in the previous section. This significantly reduces latency.
• Backup: most Cloud services have automatic backup setups or can quickly revert to previous versions.
• Out-of-the-box solutions: GPU operation can be set up with a few clicks. Locally, you need to configure, update, cool, monitor, and eventually replace them. Why not delegate these demanding tasks to employees of Google, Amazon, or Microsoft?

Cloud is not a cure-all. Sometimes the transition is not even possible due to the sensitive nature of customer data or a completely monolithic code structure. Other times, the cost-effectiveness analysis does not justify it. However, if your priorities include scalability, reliability, or speed, it might be the optimal solution. In such cases, I could help migrate critical parts or even the entire system.