Without a crystal ball or a deck of Tarot cards, it would have been next to impossible to predict how cloud computing would shape the early years of the 21st century. While cloud adoption took slightly longer than expected, primarily because businesses like to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to any form of risk, the cloud is now here and here to stay.

Businesses save money, increase productivity, empower mobile, and streamline operations with the help of cloud-based and SaaS products, services, and applications. So, what’s next? What does the next round of evolution hold for the cloud? Here’s what we think the future holds for cloud service providers …

1. AIaaS (Artificial Intelligence as a Service) & MLaaS (Machine Learning as a Service)

You’ve likely heard about the huge strides made in the realm of AI and ML. Computers beat the world’s best gamers in strategy, artificial intelligence creates art and even writes movie scripts, machine learning powers self-driving cars. Yet most companies don’t have the deep pockets, enormous staff, and other resources of Google and other machine learning innovators. But every business will eventually have a practical use for these tools.

Enter: AIaaS and MLaaS. These products will be offered by cloud service providers ‘as a Service’. Cloud services will make their ML platforms available to the masses, just like any other cloud-based system or SaaS application.

2. DevOps Moves Over for NoOps

DevOps has been shaking up the IT world for awhile now, but inevitably the name of the game may instead be NoOps. In other words, development and operations will move to the cloud, and the stand-alone company won’t necessarily even have their own teams for building IT infrastructure, writing software, and handling daily IT operations. All these services will be done by cloud service providers, while the business focuses on what they do best — whether that is running a law firm, providing healthcare, or making widgets. Instead of DevOps, businesses will utilize NoOps — it will all be handled automatically in the cloud.

3. IT Architectures Become Dynamic

Right now, expanding or contracting your IT operations requires either making additional investments in your onsite IT infrastructure or contacting your cloud service provider to purchase more (or less) of their offerings. The future will be dominated by serverless architectures that expand and contract as needed. The system will automatically provision and de-provision resources as required by the users and applications, with no need for human intervention. Not only will this revolutionize the business’ ability to utilize storage space and processing power as needed, but it will also make life a lot easier on cloud service providers serving numerous customers, all with varying and changing needs.

What else does the future hold for cloud service providers and the businesses that use them?