Enterprise technology needs have increased in complexity in the past couple of years as workplaces quickly became decentralized. At the same time, cloud computing innovations are making it easier for enterprises to instantly generate, process and analyze data for better business performance. It allows multiple users to work and share data at the same time. Google Photos is a popular example of the cloud-based tool that lets you store photos and videos on the internet. On-demand computing, innovation, scalability and low operating costs are accelerating the adoption of cloud computing solutions among enterprises and SMBs.

Cloud computing offers opportunities that aren’t available when new software services require the purchase of new hardware or software suites. Cloud computing is essential for the businesses looking for increased scalability, business continuity and cost efficiency. However, simply getting to the cloud doesn’t mean that you will immediately realize improved performance. Instead, it’s an iterative process of optimization and creating security by design. It effectively addresses IT-related inefficiencies, such as latency regarding application deployment, stagnant capabilities, and misutilization of resources.

Operating system-level virtualization by containers

Virtualized servers have enabled cloud adoption by abstracting applications and operating systems under single services. The virtual machine (VM) can run multiple applications through integrated stack or enhanced collaboration. Containers provide an operating system-level virtualization where VM applications run on a single operating system (OS), and reflect a level of abstraction above virtualization. Containers focus on the back-end of application development to interact with the web.

Docker and Kubernetes are the leading providers of orchestration software that provide the scaling capabilities to the enterprises to up and down thousands of containers on a daily basis, providing real-time cost efficiency to the clients. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is an enterprise-friendly cloud due to its excellent capabilities in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) workloads, account management and analytics. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides unmatched services for operations management, building on top of communications and messaging.

Edge and SASE computing are gaining adoption

Edge is the new cloud which bridges the gap between the centralized cloud and end-users, providing the users with low-latency applications and improved content performance. By integrating the network edge into their cloud strategy, developers can easily deploy services in the edge cloud without being concerned of managing more infrastructure or incurring additional operational overheads. Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) will gain adoption in the coming years. The network architecture combines software-defined WAN (Wide Area Network) capabilities and cloud-native network security services, including firewall as a service, secure web gateways, and zero-trust network access.

The rise of shared economy has brought serverless architecture to life in the cloud computing arena. It removes all barriers of a standard IT infrastructure. Users won’t have to purchase or rent the servers, instead, the cloud service provider will handle all this, allowing the organizations with more time and resources to deal with other issues.

Multi-clouds to breakdown barriers between the providers

As multi-cloud environments have started to develop, we will see the beginning of multi-cloud and joint provider cloud offerings that will accelerate go-to-market offerings for businesses. Serverless is the next evolution in Platform as a Service (PaaS) cloud service which offers a true computing paradigm. Developers can design and develop applications to work with serverless, rather than serverless being developed to work with current applications.

Cloud continues to evolve and grow

The ability to use on-demand cloud computing solutions, services and applications is providing impetus to organizations to rapidly accelerate their digital business transformation plans. Cloud services are being used by social media platforms to support their social impact. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Twitter use cloud to store pictures. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Spotify use cloud to deliver us their content. The global retailer Walmart has launched its Cloud-Powered Checking (CPC) to enhance its entire Point of Sale (PoS) capabilities.

Driving agile and efficient IT delivery

Downtime is one of the great concerns of modern enterprises that provide round-the-clock services to the clients. All types of things can put their robust infrastructure out of action, like power cuts and natural disasters. On the other hand, as your data is stored on the internet in a cloud environment, you can access it anytime and from anywhere if you have access to the internet. With cloud, you can be assured of your business continuity, and no longer need to rely on the temperamental old IT resources. Cloud offers a combination of application development, DevOps functions and processes, big data and analytics, backup and disaster recovery, and real-time capabilities that drive agile and cost-efficient IT delivery to the end-users.