Cloud computing is a rapidly growing technology that many organizations are adopting to enable their digital transformation. As per the latest Gartner report, the cloud tech services market is projected to grow 17.3% ($206 billion) in 2019, up from $175.8 billion in 2018 and by 2022, 90% of organizations will be using cloud services.
In today’s world, Cloud technology is a trending buzzword among business environments. It provides exciting new opportunities for businesses to compete on a global scale and is redefining the way we do business. It enables a user to store and share data like applications, files, and more to remote locations. These features have been realized by all business owners, from startup to well-established organizations, and they have already started using cloud computing.
How Cloud technology helps businesses
Reduced Cost
One of the most obvious advantages small businesses can get by shifting to the cloud is saving money. It can provide small business with services at affordable and scalable prices. Virtualization expands the value of physical equipment, which means companies can achieve more with less. Therefore, an organization can see a significant decline in power consumption, rack space, IT requirements, and more. As a result, there is lower maintenance, installation, hardware, support & upgrade costs. For small businesses, particularly, those savings are essential.
Enhanced Flexibility
Cloud can access data and related files from any location and from any device at any time with an internet connection. As the working process is changing to flexible and remote working, it is essential to provide work-related data access to employees, even when they are not at a workplace. Cloud computing not only helps employees to work outside of the office premises but also allows employers to manage their business as and when required.
Also, enhanced flexibility & mobility in cloud technology can lead to additional cost savings. For example, an employer can select to execute BYOD (bring your own device). Therefore, employees can bring and work on their own devices which they are comfortable in..
Secured Data
Improved data security is another asset of cloud computing. With traditional data storage systems, the data can be easily stolen or damaged. There can also be more chances for serious cyber attacks like viruses, malware, and hacking. Human errors and power outages can also affect data security.
However, if you use cloud computing, you will get the advantages of improved data security. In the cloud, the data is protected in various ways such as anti-virus, encryption methods, and many more. Additionally, to reduce the chance of data loss, the cloud services help you to remain in compliance with HIPAA, PCI, and other regulations.
Effective Collaboration
Effective collaboration is possible through the cloud which helps small businesses to track and oversee workflow and progress for effective results. There are many cloud collaboration tools available in the market such as Google Drive, Salesforce, Basecamp, Hive, etc. These tools allow users to create, edit, save and share documents for workplace collaboration. A user can also constrain the access of these materials.
Greater Integration
Cloud-based business solutions can create various simplified integration opportunities with numerous cloud-based providers. They can also get benefits of specialized services that integrate with back-office operations such as HR, accounting, and marketing. This type of integration makes business owners concentrate on the core areas of a business.
Scalability
One of the great aspects of cloud-based services is their scalability. Currently, a small business may require limited storage, mobility, and more. But in future, needs & requirements will increase significantly in parallel with the growth of the business. Considering that growth does not always occur linearly, cloud-based solutions can accommodate all sudden and increased requirements of the organization. Cloud-based services have the flexibility to scale up or to scale down. This feature ensures that all your requirements are served according to your budget plans.
Cloud Computing Trends in 2019
Hybrid & Multi-Cloud Solutions
Hybrid Cloud will become the dominant business model in the future. For organizations, the public cloud cannot be a good fit for all type of solutions and shifting everything to the cloud can be a difficult task as they have certain requirements. The Hybrid Cloud model offers a transition solution that blends the current on-premises infrastructure with open cloud & private cloud services. Thus, organizations will be able to shift to the cloud technology at their own pace while being effective and flexible.
Multi-Cloud is the next step in the cloud evolution. It enables users to control and run an application, workload, or data on any cloud (private, public and hybrid) based on their technical requirements. Thus, a company can have multiple public and private clouds or multiple hybrid clouds, all either connected together or not. We can expect multi-cloud strategies to dominate in the coming days.
Backup and Disaster Recovery
According to Spiceworks report, 15% of the cloud budget is allocated to Backup and Disaster Recovery (DR) solutions, which is the highest budget allocation, followed by email hosting and productivity tools. This huge percentage impacts the shared responsibility model that public cloud providers operate on. Public cloud providers, like as AWS (Amazon Web Services ), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud are responsible for the availability of Backup and DR solutions and security of the infrastructure, while the users are in charge for their data protection and compliance.
Serverless Computing
Serverless Computing is gaining more popularity and will continue to do so in 2019. It is a procedure utilized by Cloud users, who request a container PaaS (Platform as a Service), and Cloud supplier charges for the PaaS as required. The customer does not need to buy or rent services before and doesn’t need to configure them. The Cloud is responsible for providing the platform, it’s configuration, and a wide range of helpful tools for designing applications, and working with data.
Data Containers
The process of Data Container usage will become easier in 2019. Containers are more popular for transferring data, they store and organize virtual objects, and resolve the issues of having software run reliably while transferring the data from one system to another. However, there are some confinements. While containers are used to transport, they can only be used with servers having compatible operating system “kernels.”
Artificial Intelligence Platforms
The utilization of AI to process Big Data is one of the more important upgrades in collecting business intelligence data and giving a superior comprehension of how business functions. AI platform supports a faster, more effective, and more efficient approach to work together with data scientists and other team members. It can help to reduce costs in a variety of ways, such as making simple tasks automated, preventing the duplication of effort, and taking over some expensive labor tasks, such as copying or extraction of data.
Edge computing
Edge computing is a systematic approach to execute data processing at the edge of the network to streamline cloud computing. It is a result of ever increased use of IoT devices. Edge is essential to run real-time services as it streamlines the flow of traffic from IoT devices and provides real-time data analytics and analysis. Hence, it is also on the rise in 2019.
Service mesh
Service mesh is a dedicated system layer to enhance service to service communication across microservices applications. It’s a new and emerging class of service management for the inter-microservice communication complexity and provides observability and tracing in a seamless way. As containers become more prevalent for cloud-based application development, the requirement for service mesh is increasing significantly. Service meshes can help oversee traffic through service discovery, load balancing, routing, and observability. Service meshes attempt to diminish the complexity of containers and improve network functionality.
Cloud Security
As we see the rise in technology, security is obviously another serious consideration. With the introduction of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) security concerns have risen much higher and are the essential thing to look after. Many businesses are shifting to cloud computing without any serious consideration of its security compliance protocols. Therefore, GDPR will be an important thing in 2019 and the organization must ensure that their data practices are both safe and compliant.
Conclusion
As we discussed above, cloud technology is capable of providing better data storage, data security, collaboration, and it also changes the workflow to help small business owners to take better decisions. Finally, cloud connectivity is all about convenience, and streamlining workflow to help any business become more flexible, efficient, productive, and successful. If you want to set your business up for success, this might be the time to transition to cloud-based services.
Author Bio
Amarendra Babu L loves pursuing excellence through writing and has a passion for technology. He is presently working as a content contributor for Mindmajix.com and Tekslate.com. He is a tech-geek and love to explore new opportunities. His work has been published on various sites related to Big Data, Business Analytics & Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, Data Science, AI & ML, Project Management, and more. You can reach him at [email protected]. He is also available on Linkedin.
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