Cloud technology is transforming virtually every aspect of IT and environment. The pace of change is sweeping across all business processes and influencing enterprise policy decisions and strategy planning processes. It can be safely assumed that no organization can hope to have a competitive edge without developing cloud capabilities.
Cloud adoption- the present and future
The extent of cloud adoption can be easily gauged by following the way cloud based services have been growing year after year. It is also interesting to note that the growth is compounded by the presence of Managed Service Providers.
In terms of cloud IT expenditure, it has been pointed out in one of the studies that percentage contribution of cloud IT expenditure to the overall IT spending is expected to grow year after year.
The report from International Data Corporation specifies further that public cloud IT infrastructure will a major growth driver of global expenditure on cloud based services. This also leaves room for hybrid cloud services that are supported by growth in private and public cloud expenditure.
One should appreciate that the tools developed to ensure performance of traditional services were never developed with focus on digitalization. This has opened up vast opportunities for development of cloud infrastructure monitoring tools to help webmasters and entrepreneurs ensure optimum performance and seamless availability of cloud architecture.
IT administrators need to focus on improving agility, availability, performance, and cost efficiency of web projects by adopting hybrid cloud architectures. In spite of extensive debates and arguments about usefulness of cloud computing in the past, we have now standing at the threshold of IT revolution that will be dominated by cloud computing.
According to Gartner report, the global IT service industry is driven by cloud computing due to massive increase in demand for cloud assisted services and an equal rise in the supply o cloud solutions by Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
Rapid and consistent adoption of cloud services by small, medium, and large organizations is also propelling growth in the number of cloud service providers and is boosting the variety of cloud solutions offered by these vendors.
Cloud computing can be considered as a game changer for small and medium enterprises because cloud enables these businesses to acquire high end capabilities that were only available for large organizations. Cloud empowers these enterprises to get access to resources as per the demand and improve their service offerings by ensuring greater accessibility and flexibility with cost optimization.
Relevance of cloud computing for SMEs
Instant deployment of applications and access to burstable resources boost competitiveness of small and medium organizations and these can be at par with large multinationals in terms of product launches, customer reach, marketing strengths, supply chain management, customer relationship management, and so forth.
Enterprises need to confirm that they are getting access to the vital characteristics of cloud computing such as:
• Remarkable elasticity
• On-demand provisioning of resources
• Metered service
• Pooling of resources
These are the basic distinguishing features of cloud services. It is essential to examine the service providers based in these parameters. Cloud services empower organizations to be more resilient in their responses to market dynamics. Managed Service Providers can offer cloud services off the shelf to their clients, thereby making them proactive.
On demand provisioning of cloud services can help enterprises adapt to ever changing customer preferences and adjust to the changing market scenario. These organizations are able to acquire new customers with better efficiency and nimbleness.
Cloud computing has helped organizations move their IT workloads to off-premise locations. This has ensured greater availability of resources including space and manpower. Enterprises can ensure proper utilization of their IT manpower for development of business rather than keeping them engaged in server maintenance and other mundane activities.
Hanging paradigms of mobility and accessibility are forcing organizations to embrace cloud computing. There is a lot to gain by moving to cloud because organizations can reduce their capital investments and use utility based cloud services for better optimization of operational expenses.
Cloud computing has stated percolating down to smaller enterprises in a steady and consistent manner. The pace of cloud adoption is expected to accelerate further with advent of smart and user friendly cloud applications.
There are multiple players that are shaping up the cloud revolution. These can be listed as customers, IT administrators, Managed Service Providers, telecommunication industry, cloud platform providers, SMEs, Internet Service Providers, and so forth. The entire gamut of these players is collectively ensuring that more and more enterprises begin their journey towards cloud.
