Enterprises all over the world are moving their operations to the cloud. If some of you are still asking why, the reasons are quite numerous. First that comes into mind is scalability of cloud-based solutions and their ease of maintenance. Besides that, cloud software typically boasts accessibility via a variety of devices. And another incentive for enterprises to adopt cloud technology is that it reduces the overall costs of software upkeep, due to flexible pricing models (mostly consumption-based and pay-as-you-go) and the fact that it’s the service provider who takes care of upgrades roll-outs.

Cloud Computing: What’s Next

More and more companies across all industry verticals are realizing these undoubtable advantages of cloud computing, be it Software-, Infrastructure-, or Platform-as-a-Service products (SaaS, IaaS and PaaS). The growing demand for such services as well as the rising competition among providers drive the continuous advancements of cloud computing. In this article we provide an overview of top 3 cloud computing business trends. Enjoy!

Enterprises go hybrid

You might say that this trend has been around for quite some time and it’s not such a novelty in 2017. It’s totally true – ever since the emergence of the cloud technology companies have been careful about completely moving to the cloud. Thus, they preferred to still keep some of their operations on premises.

However, now the trend is somewhat different. It’s not a hybrid environment businesses are opting for, but rather hybrid clouds. That is, instead of migrating to public clouds managed by such software giants as Amazon, Google or Microsoft, or choosing, say, VMware to build their own, private clouds, enterprises prefer to split their operations between the two. For example, an enterprise may store all sensitive data on its own private cloud and maintain communication with its clients via a public SaaS.

As you have probably guessed, the top reason why some enterprises are careful about full adoption of public cloud is security concern. There are some industries where companies are obliged to comply with strict security and data privacy regulations. To still leverage the benefits of this technology, they can request an SaaS vendor to build a private cloud for their use only. Meanwhile, the enterprise can still use public cloud apps.

It should be noted that maintaining in-house data centers for a private cloud requires a lot of expertise, as well as financial resources. Therefore, this is mainly the luxury only large-scale companies can afford. So in order to make the process of keeping a private cloud up and running a bit more bearable, a business can choose to have it hosted in external data centers. Some experts choose to attribute this sort of cloud to the public single-tenant type.

Another reason why enterprises may choose hybrid solutions is that, during peak periods in-house data centers may not be able to keep up with the workload, so some part of it can be processed via public SaaS solutions.

Skill set shifted

Another cloud computing trend has to do with developers rather than end users. The rising demand for cloud adoption has resulted in more and more IT industry’s key players embracing the opportunity and starting to provide cloud-related services. For sure, now specialists with particular expertise in dealing with such solutions are valued more than ever. Candidates with DevOps expertise and experience in working with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud platform have significant advantage over their rivals.

Moreover, as cloud technology is still some sort of novelty and therefore not so many educational institutions provide courses in it. So it is only natural that many IT companies launch their own training programs to develop internal SaaS/IaaS/PaaS expertise and teach their employees how to develop, customize, integrate and maintain the software.

Besides, the very nature of software development is changing too. As you already know, cloud solutions provide exceptional scalability, their capacity can be shifted both up and down. Therefore, developers increasingly more often are giving preference to Agile methodologies over the waterfall approach. This allows software engineers to continuously work on the scalability of a single solution and roll out updates with close to zero downtime.

Long-term partnership prioritized

The shift towards the cloud is making some traditional IT services less needed, at least in the previous amounts. Only a couple of years ago IT service providers focused largely on the development and deployment of software solutions and their technical support. And if compared to traditional on-premises software, IaaS/PaaS/SaaS solutions require far less attention on the part of technology professionals once they have been deployed.

That makes IT companies rethink their strategies and seek new ways to build more quality relationships with their clients, aiming for partnership far beyond the point of sale. Customer value is put front and center, like never before. To ensure customer loyalty and build business relationships that will last, developers are willing to walk the extra mile and work closely with their customers long after the deployment of a solution, focusing on the client’s long-term success.

To make it possible, software developers provide detailed guidance on adoption of a solution as well as security consulting. Moreover, most cloud solutions are built so that opportunities for integrations and enhancements are basically limitless. Let’s take Salesforce CRM as an example – a whole lot of companies are now working on the development of companion apps to this platform.

Not to mention that a lot of IT providers offer their customization services to tailor out-of-the-box SaaS solutions to the needs of a specific company and make them work to the enterprise’s advantage.

Among other benefits such extra services bring to the customer is also the fact that they contribute to creating the best user experience. This in turn improves employee satisfaction as it makes their job easier and ultimately boosts productivity.

Cloud Computing Related Services at Softvelopers

As you could see, the cloud computing future holds a lot both for developers and end users. Have a cloud computing project in mind? Share it with us! We at Softvelopers always keep ourselves updated on the latest trends in this sector and have wide expertise dealing with such technologies as VMware ESX/vCenter, Microsoft Hyper-V, Amazon EC2, Citrix XenServer and so many more. Whether you need to implement an SaaS app, integrate it with your existing infrastructure or migrate your operations to the cloud, we are here to help you. Get in touch with Softvelopers to get a quote for your cloud computing project.