For years you’ve heard how the cloud is coming to save you and how the landscape is demanding hybrid & private clouds more than ever. It’s time we take another look at cloud computing for businesses, and where the landscape is in comparison to when I originally published this article in 2017. See how private and hybrid clouds have grown, and see if your demands can finally be met by these newer computing options
The notion of businesses breaking free of all onsite technology is great in theory but putting everything in the cloud has gone from outrageous, to commonplace today, and many businesses have no clue. With so many applications in a business’s daily process, you may find yourself already operating from within the cloud. Applications like Office365, Adobe Creative Suite, or Google Docs. But what many forget, is migrating to the cloud, is supposed to make your workflow, become smoother and easier. Opening communication and productivity in your business, broadening your horizons from just having the ability of data whenever YOU want or need it.
This opens the possibility for hosting applications like Citrix, Veeam, Microsoft Azure, VMware, and many more who have created workable environments that can quickly scale to become as expansive as needed.
For most organizations we’ve encountered, their first impression of cloud computing usually starts in the migration of email services. With an infinite supply of providers, including industry giants like Microsoft, the services tend to be competitively priced and easier to use than ever.
Migrations can be tricky, especially when migrating from legacy data or equipment to the cloud. The replacement of aging technology provides many as a business driver for looking into what cloud computing can do for you. Though service seems stable as ever, each cloud offering will only be as reliable as your internet connection, your cloud provider will work to keep the maintenance, power, and support under control: not a bad deal for businesses looking to stop buying servers and start working with thinner infrastructure.
When considering this route there are still 2 pitfalls:
- Some Applications AREN’T cloud-ready
Applications that require vast amounts of data to communicate between the server and an end-user’s device have a hard time running in a cloud-based environment, slowing job functions down to a crawl. - Internet connection is STILL extremely important
To cloud computing, if the sole link to your business applications is your internet connection, you better make sure it’s fast, reliable, and redundant. This shouldn’t be a showstopper: as metro areas have multiple carriers of high-availability bandwidth.
How Did This Cloud Article Age: 2017 vs 2020
More companies than ever are looking toward hybrid and private cloud for their infrastructure choices according to a new survey conducted by Gartner and over 2,000 application developers, engineers, managers, and industry executives.
- Most companies, 61.4%, say hybrid or private cloud is their best infrastructure option moving forward in 2020.
- Slightly more companies favor hybrid clouds with 31.6%, over the 29.8% that opted for private clouds.
- More than 3/4 of developers said they prioritized scalability, speed, ease of use, and cost as the top factors when choosing Infrastructure as a Service Solutions (IaaS).
- The cost of migration was the top prohibitive factor when considering migrating to cloud infrastructure.
- The worldwide IaaS market grew 31.3% in 2018 reaching $32.4 billion, up from $24.7 billion the previous year of 2017.
- Only 20% believe they’re using the industry standard, and happy with the performance of infrastructure, w/ no plans to change.
Insights like these help companies understand the marketplace and exactly what the value cloud computing can provide to your businesses. Originally, this article was written and posted in 2017, I’ve gone ahead and updated the statistics below, showing where and how the market has begun to adopt cloud computing across all channels.
Not sure your company is ready for the cloud? Armed with the facts, we can assist your business in the rediscovery of a better way to work, with data viability, teamwork, and reliable solutions your business can enjoy the cloud’s benefits and avoid the pitfalls of cloud computing. It all starts with a discussion – contact us today and we can help you determine what the cloud may do for your business.
