Most enterprises don’t have the time, interest or skill to continually monitor their cloud environments for efficiency—for example, to ensure that their instance sizes are adequate as application usage fluctuates; that they aren’t running idle virtual machines (VMs); or that they aren’t paying more than they need to. To help customers optimize their environments, some providers are incorporating user-facing analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) into their cloud management platforms, providing visibility and recommendations for optimizing the environment. And it’s not only IaaS providers that are utilizing intelligence. Third-party providers of hybrid or multi-cloud management or service broker platforms are also incorporating AI as a way to help enterprises manage their multi-cloud environments.

In this report, we will look at the introduction of intelligence into cloud management platforms. We will look at why it’s necessary; the evolution path of cloud management platforms: from using diagnostic analytics to artificial intelligence; how using analytics improves cloud management; and where providers are in the journey. We will also make some predictions about the future of AI in cloud management.