Cloud computing is one of the most powerful engines of economic growth, keeping the world economy growing and supply chains running during the pandemic. Cloud computing has dramatically changed business structures by giving millions of employees remote access to their data and files, enabling thousands of businesses to move their operations externally smoothly and quickly.
In turn, cloud commerce provides retailers with unparalleled flexibility to move their business online and develop new digital experiences faster than ever before. The sudden increase in demand for “remoting” has not only fostered extraordinary creativity, it has also generated plenty of growth opportunities.
In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at how the cloud has shaped the business world over the past few years and what it has to offer in the near future.
1. Epidemic impact: The cloud’s rapidly growing statistics
Forrester research shows that the “big four public clouds” maintained very strong revenue growth during the pandemic (AWS: 29%, Microsoft Azure: 47%, Google Cloud: 43%, Alibaba: 59%), as businesses accelerate cloud migration and roll out a flood of new apps to meet rapidly changing consumer needs.
Moderna, for example, uses AWS to accelerate its vaccine research, while Etsy uses Google Cloud to cater to buyers of its 65 million products.
In short, in the words of Gartner research vice President Sid Nag, “this pandemic validates the value proposition of the cloud,” meaning that the ability to use the on-demand cloud model for business continuity has dramatically accelerated digital transformation and strengthened cloud adoption in many industries.
As the pandemic continues, cloud services are at the heart of all digital experiences. According to Gartner’s estimates, total global cloud revenues are expected to reach $474 billion in 2022, up from $408 billion in 2021, meaning cloud revenues in the relevant enterprise IT markets will exceed non-cloud revenues.
As the enterprise becomes more fragmented and enterprise technology needs become more complex, more and more companies are using cloud services for new initiatives, replacing existing systems, and moving to the cloud.
2. Cloud migration
As businesses increasingly prefer cloud-first or public cloud services to traditional non-cloud services, the so-called cloud shift is taking place. As a result, the proportion of funds allocated to cloud services will continue to grow as companies look to improve operational efficiency while taking advantage of opportunities offered by cloud providers. Gartner expects spending on cloud system infrastructure services to continue to grow rapidly, reaching $122 billion by 2022, while spending on data center systems will continue to decline.
Cloud mobility presents new opportunities as IT enables enterprises to develop new IT architectures and operational concepts that lay the foundation for the next generation of IT solutions. As a result, major technology disruptors such as ARTIFICIAL intelligence, the Internet of things, advanced analytics or edge computing are almost always associated with the cloud base, making cloud computing necessary for the development and enhancement of these technologies.
In seeking to prioritize and balance cloud adoption and renewal approaches to legacy systems, companies should take a sound approach that takes into account their long – and short-term goals, the risks associated with moving to the cloud, and the current environment.
3. Cloud systems and cloud models
Below, we’ll take a closer look at the growing (and maturing) of cloud technologies.
1) Public cloud
The core of cloud computing is the public cloud. With the pace of the pandemic not yet slowing down, and more and more customers adapting to digitalization and becoming accustomed to the speed and convenience of digital experiences, the size of the public cloud market is expected to continue to grow, forcing companies to prioritize customer experience over cost savings. As a result, Gartner predicts public cloud spending will reach $482 billion by 2022 and exceed 45% of all enterprise IT spending by 2026.
2) Desktop as a service
Desktop as a Service (DaaS), the cloud version of the virtual desktop Desktop Interface (VDI), has been steadily evolving into an important part of the “new specification”. DaaS ‘exceptional ability to operate in exceptional environments, ensuring business continuity and delivery of mission-critical applications, enables many companies to maintain their business operations with minimal downtime.
One such company is Vodafone, which kept its 50,000 employees connected during the pandemic through a hybrid hyperconverged deployment of VDI and DaaS, involving Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) on Microsoft Azure public cloud. DaaS technology is being adopted by both private and public companies.
In this way, some universities (such as Robert Gordon in Scotland or Creighton in the US) have been able to convert their entire departments to regular online learning within days. As hybrid efforts drive more DaaS initiatives, Gartner expects the DaaS market to grow 253% between 2021 and 2024, overtaking client-run VDI by 2024.
3) Disaster recovery as a service
Until recently, companies did not even consider moving disaster recovery (DR) operations outside the data center because of inconsistencies in network and security protocols. However, as technology improves and vendors resolve many inconsistencies, viable options have emerged for reliable and resilient cloud platforms to handle secure data storage, backup, and recovery.
Now, more and more enterprises are looking to automated disaster recovery as a Service (DRaaS) platforms on the cloud to help significantly reduce recovery times. The DRaaS market is expected to grow further and reach nearly $7 billion by 2023, according to IDC experts.
4) Mixed clouds
Because neither public nor private clouds meet all business needs — both have security issues, flexibility, and performance issues — 82% of enterprises have chosen a hybrid approach and 92% have chosen a multi-cloud strategy in an attempt to optimize their operations and balance multiple options and available resources (source: Flexara’s cloud state in 2021). The hybrid cloud market will reach $97 billion by 2023, according to MarketsandMarkets.
The evolving hybrid model enables enterprises to upgrade and migrate their current applications by purchasing IaAS-like resources made up of raw computing and storage. Uber, for example, has repeatedly emphasized its emphasis on its hybrid model to ensure continuous uptime and a tight relationship between product development and deployment.
5) Cloud native applications
Gartner predicts that 85% of enterprises will not be able to fully execute their digital strategies by 2025 without cloud-native architectures and technologies. Cloud-native applications are applications built specifically for the platform they run on rather than the operating system or physical server, which means they can connect to each other through apis.
As a result, cloud native architectures are more flexible and resilient; Cloud native technologies such as Kubernetes and containers make it easy to develop scalable, customizable applications. Forrester says that before the pandemic, only 22 percent of developers used containers to build applications on public clouds, and by 2021, that number had risen to 28 percent, clearly showing the shift to public clouds first. According to Gartner, cloud native technologies will soon become ubiquitous and any non-cloud technologies will be considered legacy technologies.
As the cloud native ecosystem evolves, we will certainly see its integration with key players strengthen its position, while changing business models within the enterprise will create new roles and responsibilities to oversee the value stream of cloud operations and their alignment with product strategies.
6) Cloud commercialization
Cloud computing has been the immediate saviour during the pandemic, and it has certainly been a game-changer for many enterprises as they harness its power to ensure business continuity when they need it most.
Cloud computing has proved to be a powerful driver of data integration and integration, as well as the technical foundation for building experience architectures. As companies strive to reclaim their brands from the market in 2022, business technology spending will soar, with companies investing in e-commerce platforms, order management inventory control systems and, of course, cloud computing as it surely bets on “commerce everywhere.”
7) Low code and no coding technology
Low code is an approach to Web and application development based on using as little or no coding as possible. Gartner predicts that 70 percent of new applications will use low-code or no-code technologies by 2025, a significant increase from 20 percent in 2020. IT uses lego-like logic and drag-and-drop interfaces to drive an increase in citizen development and allow business technicians to assemble new applications outside of the IT department without IT help.
8) Cloud Delivered Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is a technology that delivers wide area networks (WAN) and security controls as cloud computing services directly to connection sources (such as users, devices, offices, or edge computing locations) rather than data centers.
According to Gartner, SASE presents an incredible opportunity for the network and network security market as it ensures the anytime, anywhere access needs of devices and users. End user spending on SASE is expected to reach $6.8 billion by 2022, with 50% of enterprises adopting the SASE strategy by 2025.
9) Cloud adoption/transformation engines
Capturing potential value from the cloud requires a special goal-oriented approach and what McKinsey calls a cloud transformation engine. The cloud transformation engine consists of three enablement elements, such as strategy and management, business domain adoption, and infrastructure capabilities.
For example, strategy and management should define and shape cloud transformation strategies to address the economic, architectural, operational and security issues surrounding cloud computing. Business domain adoption is based on the idea that each line of business’s functions and services should migrate to the cloud in a way that creates business value at acceptable risk. Finally, the base functionality involves iteratively building the cloud environment and enabling the developer experience through extensible operational and security automation.
The future of the cloud in 2022
As we clearly see, the pandemic has historically reshaped the digital world, while pouring revenue into cloud providers. Unsurprisingly, the trend of digital transformation and ubiquitous cloud adoption will continue into 2022.
We will see the shift to modern application development, the proliferation of low-code technologies, the widespread adoption of cloud native engineering and, more importantly, industry-specific clouds as a direct result of the evolving global cloud service provider (CSP) market.
In 2022, as the capabilities of CSPS vary primarily by marketing rather than functionality, vendors will strive to compete by offering industry-specific clouds that enable businesses to perform better in their industry-specific verticals.
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