Technology has enabled businesses to continue operating this year, and the cloud has taken center stage going forward, it will only play a larger role in the enterprise.

According to CloudTech, public cloud spending is expected to grow from US$229 billion in 2019 to US$500 billion in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.3%.

Key players Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba, and are expected to grow yet bigger, and by the end of 2021, 60% of companies will leverage containers on public cloud platforms and 25% of developers will use serverless.

As this market continues its growth and evolution, here are three trends to watch in 2021.

A cloudless server is a technology that implements functions in the cloud on a necessary basis. Enterprises rely on serverless computing because it provides space to work on core products without the pressure to operate or manage servers. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella favors serverless cloud and he believes serverless computing can not only respond and focus on back-end computing but also become key to the imminent future for distributed computing.

Serverless was among the top five fastest-growing PaaS cloud services for 2020, according to the Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud report.

Choosing between public, private, or hybrid cloud environments, has proved challenging for some organizations each offers advantages and disadvantages when it comes to flexibility, performance, security, and compliance.

According to Gartner, in 2019, the actual number of companies using hybrid cloud was 58%, up 6% from 2018. Hybrid cloud benefits include speed, control, and security. In terms of speed, it optimizes the network to reduce the latency and speeds up the data so that it can reach where it needs to be. For control, companies can customize the end of their hybrid cloud model, optimize it, and adjust it according to their needs rather than trusting a third-party cloud provider.

The continued demand for hybrid cloud could lead the worlds biggest providers to partially break out from their walled garden approach. By collaborating and introducing some interoperability, they can continue to satisfy multi-cloud demands. This will enable better data sharing and access between partners, who may be working across diverse applications and standards.

A virtual cloud desktop refers to the software requirements of a device being fully managed by cloud service providers. The user just needs to have a screen and some basic hardware while the rest of the processing power will be seamlessly handled by cloud-based services.

Virtual cloud desktop users only pay on cloud usage, eliminating costs associated with acquiring powerful new hardware, updating the existing hardware, and the disposal of redundant computing equipment.

Sometimes known as desktop-as-a-service, this model of computing is offered by Amazon via the Workspaces platform and Microsoft with Windows Virtual Desktop. Google also offers functionality through its Chromebook devices. In practice, this can increase efficiency across a workforce by ensuring everyone is using up-to-date, synchronized technology.

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3 cloud computing trends to watch in 2021 - TechHQ

The highlight ofAmazon Web Services Inc.s annual re:Invent conference is always the marathon three-hour keynote by Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy, and despite the show going virtual this year, itll be the same today.

As he always has, the longtime leader of Amazon.com Inc.s cloud computing company will debut adizzying array of new and upgraded services, which AWS is keeping close to the vest until Jassys keynote starts at 8 a.m. PST today.

But in an exclusive video conversation, Jassy (pictured) revealed more than a few hints of whats coming: He offered a deep dive into the processors AWS Annapurna operation has designed, the challenges and opportunities of serverless computing, its plan to democratize artificial intelligence and machine learning, and its let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom strategy for purpose-built databases.The conversation was lightly edited for clarity.

Look for more strategic and competitive insights from Jassy in my summary and analysis of the interview, as well as in two more installments coming in the next week or so, and in thefirst partthat ran Monday. And check out all the re:Invent coverage through Dec. 18 by SiliconANGLE, its market research sister companyWikibonand itslivestreaming studio theCUBE.

Q: Whats your vision on the compute piece of cloud at AWS?

A: Theres three basic modes of compute that people run. There are instances, which is really the traditional way people run compute and often when people want to have deeper access to the resources on the machine. And then theres the smaller units of compute that are really coming on strong and growing at a very rapid clip in containers. And theres serverless. I think all three are there to stay and are all growing at a very rapid rate.

If I look at instances, we have an unmatched array of instances, not just the number of instances, but just if you look at the detail. We have the fastest networking instances with 400 gigabit-per-second capabilities and the largest high-memory instances of 24 terabytes, the largest storage instances. Weve got the most powerful machine learning training in instances and the most powerful inference instances. We have a very broad array of instances with more coming in the next few weeks that will further extend that differentiation.

But I think that one of the things that our customers are really excited about, and its changing the way they think about compute on the instance side, is the Graviton2 chips that we have built and launched in our families, like our R6G and M6G and T4G. Weve used Intel and AMD processors in our instances for a long time. And I actually expect that we will for a very long time. Those partnerships are deep and matter and will be around for a long time. But we know that if we want to continue to push the price-performance of these chips and our customers want us to, were going to have to design and build some of those chips ourselves.

Q: Whats behind doing your own chip designs?

A: We bought a business, the Annapurna business, and they were a very experienced team of chip designers and builders. We put them to work on chips that we thought could really make a big difference to our customers. We started with generalized compute and we built these Graviton chips initially in the A1 instances we launched a few years ago, which really were for scale-out workloads like the web tier or microservices, things like that. It was 30% better price-performance and customers really liked them, but there were some limitations to their capabilities that made it much more appropriate for a smaller set of workloads.

We didnt know how fast customers would pick up those Graviton chips, butthey adopted them a lot quicker than we even thought. And a customer said, Can you build a chip that is a version of that that can allow us to run all our workloads on it? And thats what we do with Graviton2, which if you look at the performance of what weve delivered with Graviton2 chips in those instances I mentioned, its 40% better price performance than the latest processors from the large x86 providers. Thats a big deal. So we have customers trying to move as many workloads as they can as quickly as possible to these Graviton2 instances.

Q: The Annapurna team doesnt get a lot of public attention. What else has it been doing?

A: Weve also put that Annapurna team to work on some hard machine learning challenges. We felt like training was something that was reasonably well-covered. The reality is when you do big machine learning models at scale, 90% of your cost is on the inference or the predictions. So we built a chip to optimize the inference called Inferentia. And that already is growing incredibly quickly. Alexa, which is one of biggest machine learning models and inference machines around, already has 80% of its predictions being made through Inferentia. Thats saving it 30% on costs and 25% on latency.

So were continuing to build chips. We have the scale and the number of customers and the input from customers that allow us to be able to optimize for workloads that really matter to customers.

Q: Turning to containers, whats your strategy given all the competition there?

A: Most providers have a single container offering, which is a managed Kubernetes offering. But we realized with builders that they dont believe in one tool to rule the world. Different developers and teams have different tastes and different interests and different needs. So if youre a developer that wants to optimize for using the open-source Kubernetes framework, then youll use our Elastic KubernetesService (EKS), and its growing incredibly quickly. If youre somebody who wants to optimize for the container framework that has the deepest integration with AWS, youll work on our Elastic Container Service or ECS. Because since we own it, we can launch everything right from the get-go without having to run it through anybody else. So you have deep integration.

And if youre running containers without thinking about servers or clusters, then you run Fargate. By far, the largest number of net new container customers to AWS get going using Fargate because its serverless and they dont have to worry about it. You and I talked about it a few years ago at the Cube. I remember on your show I said that if Amazon were starting from scratch today, that we would build it on top of Lambda and on top of our serverless services. I think it was Stu [Miniman] who said, Youre not serious about that. I said, Oh no, I am serious about it.

Q: How serious are developers about it?

A: In 2020, half of the new applications that Amazon built were built on top of Lambda compute. I think the next generation of developers are going to grow up building in this serverless fashion, which is a combination of having event-driven, serverless computing service like Lambda and a bunch of enabling services like API Gateway and our Event Bus, Event Watch and things like Step Functions for orchestration workflow. But also all the services that can set event driven serverless triggers. We have 140 services at this point, which is seven times more than anybody else has.

You can really build end-to-end serverless workflows and applications that you couldnt a few years ago. I think compute is totally being reinvented and were working hard to help customers have better capabilities, more cost-effective and more agile.

Q: One surprise success is the partnership between AWS and VMware, which many people back in 2016 when it was announced by you and VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger thought was VMware simply capitulating to Amazon. Hows it going, and does it represent a trend?

A: Youre right that VMware Cloud and AWS, or VMC as the offering is called, has been a huge success for both VMware and for AWS. There are a lot of things that they were purported to make it easier to do hybrid that really were a lot of hype and no traction. The traction on VMC is very significant, even just in the last year double the number of nodes, double the number of VMs and big enterprises making their move to the cloud through VMC together.

Because most of the world is virtualized on VMware, to be able to use those same tools that youve used to run your infrastructure on VMware for many years to deploy and manage your AWS deployments is super-attractive. Thats why its compelling, but I will tell you that everybody aspires to have partnerships like that. We have a lot of them and lots of other companies do, but I would say that there arent that many partnerships that work as well as the way its working with VMware and AWS.

Q: Why did it work out that way?

A: It takes both companies really willing to lean in and to commit engineering resources together, to build something and to get your [people in the field] connected. You cant just make a press release and then just let it go and fire, forget. Those teams are meeting all the time at every level. And both Pat and I are very passionate and supportive and prioritize it. And we meet frequently together and with our teams. And I think those teams really function as one. I think our customers are seeing that. Even if you aspire to have a unique partnership like that, it takes a lot of work.

Q: How are developers viewing AWS now? How would you grade yourself in terms of ease of developer use and developer satisfaction?

A: Well, if you rate it based on how people are voting with their workloads and the amount of applications and workloads people are running on AWS, I think were doing quite well. But I would also argue thats not necessarily the right bar. I would say that we are perpetually dissatisfied with making it as easy as possible for developers to abstract away as much of the heavy lifting as you can. And I think were going to be working on that forever.

If you look at containers and you look at serverless, which is the smaller units of compute that more and more customers are moving to, even though weve radically improved how easy it is to get going and customers are moving really fast and Fargate is this totally different serverless offering nobody else has, I think we have a long way to go to get to where we want to be.

Q: What are some of the challenges of serverless?

A: If you use containers and serverless together, or Ill say Lambda on the compute side, you actually want to be able to deploy both of them from the same tools. Nobodys made that easy. No ones made it possible today. Just think about the challenge, John, in the difference in deployed containers than traditional instance-space servers. The traditional instance-space applications, its one code base. You use infrastructure as code tools like Cloud Formation, you build a CI/CD pipeline to deploy it. Its a block of code. If you have to change it, you change the block of code.

Thats very different than containers where people are building in these smaller chunks really of microservices where they all have their own code. They all have their own CI/CD pipelines. There are lots of teams that are actually operating on these that end up comprising a full application. For just one application where you have all those microservices, its really hard to keep them consistent and deploy in a high-quality way to track what everybodys doing that contributes to that application. And theres loads and loads of those. There are no tools today, really no tools, that do that well. And thats something that really matters to developers and something were working on.

Q: Last year on theCUBE, we were riffing on the fact that theres going to be thousands of databases out there, not one database to rule the world. First, I wanted to ask how customers are viewing database licensing issues that may affect which clouds they use.

A: For many years, most companies only ran on relational databases. And when you were in the neighborhood of gigabytes and sometimes terabytes of data that mightve been OK, but in this new world where were in the neighborhood of terabytes and petabytes, and even sometimes exabytes, those relational databases are not appropriate for a lot of those workloads.

If you look at their commercial-grade relational databases, which have really had all of the workloads on them back when people were running relational for everything, theyre basically Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. And if you look at those two companies and those offerings, the offerings are expensive, proprietary, have high amounts of lock-in.

And then they have licensing terms that are really punitive where theyre constantly auditing their customers. And when they find things, they try to extract more money from them or theyll let you off the hook if you buy more from them. And I think those companies have no qualms about changing the licensing terms midstream to benefit themselves.

Q: Examples?

A: Just look at what Microsoft did with SQL Server over the last year or two where they basically told customers who had bought SQL Server licenses they couldnt use them on any other cloud than Microsoft. Now, is that better for customers? Hell no. Is it better for Microsoft? I think they think so. I happen to think its really short-term thinking, because customers really resent that. And as quickly as they can flee, they will.

But I think customers in general are really fed up and sick of these commercial-grade, old-guard database providers who change the licensing terms whenever they want and the pricing whenever they want to suit themselves. And I think its why so many companies have moved as quickly as they can to those open-source engines like MySQL. Its why we built Aurora, which is 100% compatible. They have additions for MySQL and PostgreSQL. Thats why its the fastest-growing service five, six years running.

So I think that customers are fed up with it. Theyre moving as fast as they can. We have an accelerating number of customers who are looking to move away, not just from Oracle, but from SQL Server, because theyre really sick of whats happening and they dont trust those companies anymore.

Q: More broadly, whats up with all these new databases from Amazon and others, and whats the value for customers?

A: In this new world, theres so much more data. Whats happened over time is that people realize that relational databases are more expensive and complex and overkill than they need for a lot of use cases, and that theyre better off with these purpose-built databases, like key-value stores, or in-memory databases, or graph databases, or time series databases, or document databases, all those types of things.

Most companies have got these central data lakes to run analytics and machine learning. And yet at the same time theyre using more and more of these purpose-built databases and purpose-built analytics services like Athena and Redshift and EMR and Kinesis and things like that. A lot of customers are trying to come to grips with, How do I think about having this data in the middle and this data in all of these external nodes, which I need to do for a lot of my applications for operational performance?

What a lot of customers are asking for help on is how to move that data from the inside out, from the outside in, and from those purpose-built databases on the outside, along the perimeter to other outside databases. Because if you can actually take some of those same views from databases and materialize them into other spots, they open up all kinds of opportunities, which today are really arduous and hard to do. And thats another area that were really squarely focused on.

Q: One of the things weve always said is that the huge thing about cloud is horizontal scalability. You can have purpose-built databases, but if you can tie them together horizontally, thats a benefit, and you can still have vertical specialty for the application. So are the old guard, these old mission-critical workloads, going to be replaced or cloudified or what?

A: An accelerating number of companies are not just building their new databases from the get-go on top of things like Aurora or the purpose-built databases we have, but are migrating away from those older guard databases as fast as they can. Since we built our database migration service, we have over 350,000 databases that have moved.

The Database Migration Service actually makes it quite doable to move the data and the database to another source and the Schema Conversion Tool we have allows you to move those schemas. And the last piece the customers really want help with is how to move that application code thats unique to some of these databases. Because some of these old-guard databases have built these unique dialects that work just with their particular database engine.

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How AWS is computing the future of the cloud - SiliconANGLE News

Written by Kate McDonald on 06 December 2020.

Pulse+IT's weekly round-up of international health IT news for the week ending December 6: Germany's digital transformation, dawn of digital medicine, phishing vaccine cold chain, pyjama time charting, Japanese doctors go digital, consult prep tool for patients, standardising patient addresses, linking vaccination records, Fitbit predicts COVID onset, rapid hospital at home

Want to see the future of digital health tools? Look to Germany.Harvard Business Review ~ Ariel D Stern ~ 02/12/2020

In late 2019, Germanys parliament passed the Digital Healthcare Act (Digitale-Versorgung-Gesetz, or DVG) an ambitious law designed to catalyze the digital transformation of the German health care system.

The dawn of digital medicineThe Economist ~ Staff writer ~ 02/12/2020

The pandemic is ushering in the next trillion-dollar industry.

IBM uncovers global email attack on Covid vaccine supply chainCNBC ~ Noah Higgins-Dunn ~ 03/12/2020

The companys task force dedicated to tracking down Covid-19 cybersecurity threats said it discovered fraudulent emails impersonating a Chinese business executive at a credible cold-chain supply company.

Ambient documentation with Epic helps reduce clinician burnout at Monument HealthHealthcare IT News ~ Bill Siwicki ~ 03/12/2020

The goal of its Nuance deployment is to significantly reduce after-hours pajama time charting while introducing the voice of the patient to the EHR, says its CIO and CMIO.

Google Health and HHS' AHRQ detail new pilot project helping patients prep for their doctor's appointmentMobiHealthNews ~ Dave Muoio ~ 02/12/2020

The tool would help patients develop health questions for their clinician, and reminds them to bring along any necessary test results or other materials.

The pandemic is inducing Japanese doctors to go digitalThe Economist ~ Staff writer ~ 02/12/2020

Telemedicine and electronic record-keeping are at last on the rise.

New ONC initiative aims to standardize patient address formatsMedCity News ~ Anuja Vaidya ~ 02/12/2020

Launching in 2021, the ONC's Project US@ aims to enhance efforts to correctly link patients with their health data a key part of interoperability by standardizing the way patients' mailing addresses are formatted.

Thousands of US lab results and medical records spilled online after a security lapseTechCrunch ~ Zack Whittaker ~ 02/12/2020

NTreatment, a technology company that manages electronic health and patient records for doctors and psychiatrists, left thousands of sensitive health records exposed to the internet because one of its cloud servers wasnt protected with a password.

Electronic flu vaccine notifications service expandedDigital Health News ~ Hannah Crouch ~ 01/12/2020

A service that sends information about flu vaccinations electronically from pharmacies to GP practices has been expanded ahead of winter.

Fitbit study predicts onset of COVID-19 and hospitalization likelihoodMobiHealthNews ~ Mallory Hackett ~ 01/12/2020

Consumer wearable devices can be key tools in predicting the onset of illnesses like COVID-19 by using health metrics like breathing rate, resting heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), according to findings published in npj Digital Medicine from Fitbit.

Brigham and Womens, Biofourmis launch hospital-at-home solution nationwideMedCity News ~ Anuja Vaidya ~ 01/12/2020

In January, Brigham published a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine that showed the efficacy of its home hospital program, which utilized the co-developed solution.

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International health IT week in review: December 6 - Pulse+IT

After peaking above $270 in 2018, Baidu (BIDU) shares have been stuck in bull market purgatory, spending most of the last 18 months under $140.

That punishment could be ending soon as the company reinvents itself and recovers from government restrictions on its advertising revenues.

Here's what I wrote on June 13 when I profiled BIDU as the Bear of the Day...

Baidu, the $40 billion web search and marketing portal that used to be considered "the Google of China," especially as they forayed into AI technologies and self-driving cars, rallied over 16% since their strong Q1 earnings report on May 18. But guidance was cloudy enough to cause analysts to lower estimates and drive the stock into the cellar of the Zacks Rank.

BIDU shares didn't remain in the cellar of the Zacks Rank for long though as analysts re-worked their models based on company guidance and the conference call. And it gave me the green light to begin a new position. Here's what I wrote in the Buy Alert for my TAZR Trader members on July 6...

It was my plan this weekend to buy BIDU this morning, but little did I know Alibaba (BABA) would wake up like a beast too. Both have gapped higher and should run as BABA will enter a new phase of its bull market and BIDU is the AI-focused player in Chinese big data. Start with a 5% position this week and we'll add on any gap fills back toward $125.

Flash forward to this month's Q3 report, and the now $47 billion BIDU has ascended to a Zacks #1 Rank Strong Buy as analysts raise estimates and view the business transitions as gaining traction.

After a strong earnings beat and raised guidance, the Zacks EPS Consensus for this year jumped 10% to $8.25 in the past two weeks.

Immediately following the company presentation and conference call, Mizuho analyst James Lee raised his firm's price target on Baidu to $185 from $170, noting that the company's core revenue reached positive growth one quarter earlier than expected and was guided up 5% year-over-year for Q4.

Baidu also launched an expansion into "livestreaming," the new platform rage among Chinese youth for shopping and following influencers, by acquiring JOYY (YY) Live's Chinese business for $3.6 billion. Lee likes this move because it diversifies the revenue stream strongly into ecommerce and subscriptions and maintained Baidu as his top pick in China.

Lee also anticipates the AD (Autonomous Driving) segment's asset value could be unlocked through a strategic investment with leading OEMs, which could provide a 20% upside to the stock price.

I have always believed that AI and AD represented the primary growth drivers for Baidu, not internet search and advertising, as many Alphabet (GOOGL) investors must also believe about their beloved.

But for Baidu, I think these growth levers are stronger here because of the strong Chinese government support for advanced technologies. In early 2018, I described the development of the first urban "AI park" outside of Beijing where Baidu would be the primary R&D company to build and test AD technologies.

Since then, an "AI park" sprung up around Shanghai in 2019. And while NVIDIA (NVDA) gets all the attention as the premier builder of AI hardware and software stacks, Baidu's pedigree in AI is beginning to bear fruit.

More coming up on Baidu's evolution into an AI powerhouse in China, right after we take care of some recent negative news.

Muddy Waters shorts JOYY, calls company "almost entirely fraudulent"

Unfortunately, 2 days after Baidu's strong report, I had to share this update with my TAZR members...

Carson Block's Muddy Waters Research said via Twitter, "MW is short $YY bc we conclude it is a near-total fraud. We conclude its businesses, users, and cash are a fraction of what it reports. We estimate that ~90% of YY Live revenue is fraudulent, and ~80% of Bigo rev is fraudulent...When $BIDU diligences $YY Live, the massive scale of fraud will be apparent. Is BIDU so desperate to show growth that it will pay ~7% of its market cap for an almost entirely fraudulent business? Is China Inc that rotten?. Bigo's rot stems from inception & the lie about who founded it. This lie enabled Chmnn Li to defraud at least $156.1 million of real money from $YY shareholders & YY to fraudulently report substantial remeasurement gains."

YY shares dropped over 25% late on Nov 18, from new highs above $105 all the way down to the low $70s. But they have since recovered to $90 as more is learned about the two businesses. And BIDU, who had just made new 18-month highs above $150, fell back to $140.

The short report claims that YY meaningfully misled investor regarding its financials by misrepresenting how revenues flow between itself and talent agencies. Essentially, YY controls talent agencies that manage influencers on the livestreaming platform and paid more than 50% of the total volume of virtual gifts. To support that claim, the Muddy Waters report points to PRCs Credit Bureau, indicating that the five largest MCNs (talent agencies) on YY contributed only 15% of YY Lives reported revenues.

Here was reaction from Mizuho's Lee...

We do not cover YY, but based on our understanding of the Livestreaming industry, a platform typically has an internal talent agency that acquires, trains and manages influencers, so the claim by the report is not unusual, but materiality of revenues is the issue that YY needs to address, in our view.

In light of this report, we have confidence in Baidu management to conduct additional due diligence on issues raised by the report. At the same time, we believe that the acquisition could be delayed if YY hires an independent advisor to conduct its own reviews, very similar to what IQ did when facing an allegation of accounting improprieties a few months ago. Furthermore, a potential SEC inquiry could also slow the process.

If Baidu cannot move forward with the acquisition due to MAC (material adverse change), we believe that the company could either build a livestreaming platform internally, or seek other acquisition candidates.

Lee maintained Baidu as their top China Internet pick with a $185 price target, based on a SOTP (sum of the parts) valuation, noting that the stock trades at only 4X FY22 Baidu core EBITDA, against their estimated CAGR of 16%. He said the buy thesis has not changed as all previously outlined catalysts are still in play.

Baidu's Industrial AI Frontier in China

I've always admired Baidu for its committed role in AI, especially as I learned more about the vision and ethics of former chief scientist Andrew Yan-Tak Ng. As a technologist and investor, Ng co-founded and led Google Brain and was a former Vice President and Chief Scientist at Baidu, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group into a team of several thousand people.

Ng is now an adjunct professor at Stanford University (formerly associate professor and Director of its AI Lab). Also a pioneer in online education, Ng co-founded Coursera and deeplearning.ai where he has successfully spearheaded many efforts to "democratize deep learning," teaching over 2.5 million students through his online courses.

In July when I bought shares, I highlighted news for TAZR members on Baidu's "new infrastructure" plan for the smart economy (courtesy of company PR excerpts)...

Baidu Unveils Plan to Increase Investments in New Infrastructure to Power the Rise of Industrial AI

Plans to Deploy 5 Million AI Cloud Servers by 2030 and Train 5 Million AI Professionals

Baidu announced that it will increase its investments in cloud computing, AI education, AI platforms, chipsets, and data centers in the coming ten years as part of its efforts to construct "new infrastructure" for the smart economy of the future.

"New infrastructure -- which encompasses emerging technologies like AI, cloud computing, 5G, IoT, and blockchain -- will be the driver for China's economic development in the coming decades," said Baidu Chief Technology Officer Haifeng Wang.

Under the plan, Baidu aims to have 5 million intelligent cloud servers by 2030 and train 5 million AI professionals within 5 years, which will help facilitate the widespread application of AI in transportation, city management, finance, energy, health care, and manufacturing to eventually achieve industrial intelligence.

Deploying 5 million intelligent cloud servers by 2030 is an ambitious target that would create a combined computing capability equal to seven times the total calculable computing power of the world's existing top 500 supercomputers.

Viewing human capital as a core component of the new infrastructure, the Baidu goal to train 5 million AI professionals in the next five years keeps humans at the center of this massive AI R&D. Baidu has been working with more than 200 leading universities in China to develop courses related to AI and deep learning and has already trained more than 1 million AI experts.

It sounds like China might be better paced than the US to migrate college students into jobs of the future.

Baidu has more than 7,000 published AI patent applications in China, the highest in the country. The AI open platform Baidu Brain has made available more than 250 core AI capabilities to over 1.9 million developers, while PaddlePaddle, the largest open-source deep learning platform in China, services 84,000 enterprises.

Baidu's Kunlun and Honghu AI chips are among the highest performing AI chips and are built for a wide range of scenarios. Baidu Cloud is China's leader in public cloud and AI cloud services with more than ten data centers across the country.

This new infrastructure is already allowing Baidu to lead the intelligent transformation of different industries. Baidu's smart finance products serve nearly 200 financial institutions, while Baidu's intelligent healthcare products are deployed at more than 300 hospitals and 1500 grassroots medical institutions.

Baidu Brain for Cities is already in place in Chongqing, Suzhou, and other cities, supporting more intelligent city management. Baidu's new investments will enhance its ability to rollout AI applications in these scenarios, as well as in manufacturing, energy, and transportation.

Bottom line on Baidu: The transformation into an AI powerhouse is real and streaming/social deals won't determine the fortunes of BIDU. I would remain a buyer of pullbacks to $130.

Disclosure: I own shares of BIDU, BABA, and NVDA for the Zacks TAZR Trader portfolio.

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Ignited by referendums and legislation, this industry is expected to blast from an already robust $17.7 billion in 2019 to a staggering $73.6 billion by 2027. Early investors stand to make a killing, but you have to be ready to act and know just where to look.

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Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free reportJOYY Inc. (YY) : Free Stock Analysis ReportNVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis ReportAlphabet Inc. (GOOGL) : Free Stock Analysis ReportBaidu, Inc. (BIDU) : Free Stock Analysis ReportAlibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research

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Bull of the Day: Baidu (BIDU) - Yahoo Finance