KUALA LUMPUR - Cloudflare, Inc, the connectivity cloud company, has collaborated with Microsoft to make it easier for companies to run artificial intelligence (AI) in the location most suitable for their needs.
"Together, Cloudflare and Microsoft will build the railroad tracks that AI traffic and tasks will move on, to tailor AI inference to the exact needs and demands of every organisation,” said its chief executive officer and co-founder, Matthew Prince in a statement.
Meanwhile, Microsoft General Manager of Data, AI, & Emerging Technologies, Rashmi Misra said: "With Cloudflare’s combination with Microsoft’s experience in training and deploying the world’s most advanced AI workloads through our Azure cloud, businesses will gain access to a new level of flexibility and performance for AI inference.”
As inference tasks become more and more distributed, this collaboration will enable businesses to seamlessly deploy AI models across a computing continuum that spans device, network edge, and cloud environments, maximising the benefits of both centralised and distributed computing models.
By leveraging ONNX Runtime, a cross-platform accelerated machine learning, across these three tiers, Cloudflare and Microsoft can ensure that AI models can be run anywhere. AI model training requires significant computational and storage resources in close proximity to one another, making centralised cloud platforms the best environment for the intensive calculations needed in model training.
While training will continue to be centralised, inference tasks will be increasingly performed in more distributed locations, specifically on devices themselves and on edge networks.
Microsoft’s AI capabilities and hyperscale cloud infrastructure combined with Cloudflare’s hyper-distributed edge network will empower businesses to drive innovation and efficiency across the entire AI lifecycle.
As a result, businesses will be able to find the best location for AI tasks; navigate changing needs; and deploy on Cloudflare in a few clicks - BERNAMA