Cloud Computing Today: What You Need to Know
27 Dec 2021
The fourth industrial revolution and move to cloud computing were already well underway before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Growth has accelerated rapidly over the past year and a half with companies racing to embrace digitalisation in order to maintain operations when faced with pandemic policies like shutdowns, lockdowns, working from home and remote medical consultations.
Another growth driver was the rollout of track-and-trace systems and vaccine passports and the need to secure stressed supply chains. Indeed, a recent report by Research and Markets forecasts that the global cloud computing market will expand to US$832.1 billion by 2025 from US$371.4 billion in 2020, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17.5%.
It’s clear that what was once the distant future, is now the near future. Therefore, businesses need to reappraise their digitalisation plan and accelerate it where necessary to keep up.
What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is a way of providing information, applications and computing resources to clients through the internet. It does not require physical systems, but uses remote networks instead. Cloud platforms can meet the different and changing needs of many kinds of organizations. Cloud computing is becoming more and more important and central for how organizations work. It offers the simplicity and security that businesses need to manage complex processes, and the flexibility that they need in a changing digital world.
The benefits of migrating to the cloud
Most large enterprises have already implemented cloud computing and improved operations as a result.
A large real-estate developer embarked on their cloud migration path four years ago to move all their core infrastructure to the cloud. Following this implementation, the group saw an 87 per cent leap in active users of their mobile app. It counted over 35,000 downloads so far, with 1,000 new ones coming on board monthly. The cloud infrastructure also enabled elastic scaling to meet massive amounts of traffic such as when a campaign—including airline mile rewards—went viral, meeting the one-month programme’s KPI of 2,000 app upgrades in two hours.
It has accelerated its mobile app build release time from one hour to 10 minutes and paved the way to ongoing innovation in promotional campaigns and customer offerings.
Small and medium-sized businesses are now playing catch-up.
Challenges for businesses migrating to the cloud
The reality is that cloud computing is complicated and the journey to full implementation will take a long time. The business challenges for making the move include a disconnect between IT and the business as employees need to spend more time on non-core activities, while IT needs to concentrate on core services like security and services. Also, migrating to the cloud will require spending time learning how to operate a hybrid environment and equipping employees with the skills that will enable them to work in the cloud.
Another challenge is a potential increase in data governance functions, and the administrative burden this places on a business. However, expert third-party solutions providers are well-versed in helping firms navigate these issues, and the benefits of migrating to the cloud far outweigh the costs, as the example above illustrates.
Ensuring data security
A survey earlier this year by the Cloud Security Alliance that polled some 1,900 IT and security experts, found that network security comes top of respondents’ list of concerns about cloud migration.
Some businesses have balked at running operations in the cloud as it means that proprietary and sensitive data would be offsite. Also, some have struggled with the challenges of ensuring data security over multiple environments. However, over the decade since the global bank mentioned above adopted its cloud solution, a range of controls, policies, systems, and infrastructure has been put in place to make the cloud a secure environment. Importantly, though, businesses should be aware that the onus is on them to vet their cloud provider for security.
The due diligence process for picking a cloud provider should err on the side of caution. Some of the criteria to judge a provider’s security chops include vulnerability scanning, network access controls, identity management, forensics and incident response and cloud security posture management. A transparent, reliable, expert and highly experienced third-party provider will be able to provide optimal security.
The cost and feasibility of migration to the cloud
IT costs have skyrocketed for businesses, so enterprises must carefully weigh up the cost of switching to the cloud versus the gains. The advantages of cloud computing are various, so businesses must spend time and money on deciding what is right for them. Cloud migration could mean increased investment and reinvention. However, the gains are very often worth it, not to mention that companies that do not migrate will find they are up against stiffer competition from companies that are leaner.
Just how well a company handles its migration to cloud computing, could determine its ability to grow. Some of the benefits cloud computing provides users are improved productivity, secure data storage, quick scalability, better collaboration, and the automation of mundane tasks. These free up employee time so they can focus on higher-value tasks.
Final thoughts
For long-term sustainable growth, companies need to develop solutions that span the information firmament created by the Microsofts and Googles of the world. For small, medium and large businesses alike, this requires a move to cloud platforms that are truly integrated with enterprise applications. It’s a question of when, not if.