Long gone is when businesses were focused on a demographic location and cater to a specific audience.
With the world becoming a digital hub, the industrial bandwidth spreads to global levels, allowing businesses to compete against global giants and foster relations with customers from different demographical locations and industries.
And that brings along a plethora of data to be produced, handled, and processed to ensure user-centric and dedicated services.
That’s where cloud computing comes into the picture. App and web development services incorporated with cloud computing offer improved services, better speed and responsiveness, fast data processing and manipulation, and much more.
However, that’s not all. By changing the nature of business, cloud computing has changed organizations’ structure, processes, and work nature.
Our topic for this article is to get insights into how cloud computing is evolving the way businesses work and its impact on organizational infrastructure.
Also, the following are topics of discussion in this article;
- What is cloud computing infrastructure?
- Cloud computing stats and trends
- Benefits of cloud computing
- Impact of cloud computing in evolving businesses and organizations
So, let’s get started.
What is Cloud Computing Infrastructure?
Cloud computing infrastructure is used as a collective term for hardware, software, networking, and storage specifications that enable robust cloud-based applications.
The cloud system virtualizes hardware and software specifications and functionality by stimulating virtual machines or environments.
A system that enables on-demand access to several computing resources, including network, storage devices, software, and many more, enables organizations to have fast-paced performance.
The hardware and software components within cloud computing services help streamline a cloud-based model for organizations.
The Market Segmentation of Cloud Computing
After its advent, cloud computing technology has not seen a fallback and has been observed growing ever since.
Subsequently, of the entire annual IT services spending in 2020, which was 1071 billion U.S dollars (as shown in the image below), $300 billion were generated by cloud computing services.
Image source: Statista
While it represents how big the industry is growing to be, there’s still a long way to go. In addition to this, 94% of enterprises leverage cloud services to enable streamlined yet convenient services to their users.
You might not believe it, but it is expected that by the end of 2025, over 100 zettabytes of data will be stored in the cloud.
Now just in case if you are wondering, what are zettabytes? Well, a zettabyte equals one billion terabytes or one trillion gigabytes.
As the technology is expected to have such unprecedented growth, the majority of tech giants are already investing in providing cloud computing services.
Following are the leading and most used cloud computing services (in no particular order);
- Google Drive
- OneDrive
- iCloud
- Dropbox
- MEGA
Moving on, let’s talk about why organizations and businesses are opting for cloud computing services and what are the major benefits it provides to organizations.
The Benefits of Cloud Computing Services
Cloud computing is not a new concept since it has been integrating into numerous businesses and industries to ensure greater productivity and streamline performances.
As the data collected and processed has grown immensely with the transaction to a digitally enabled world leveraging mobile apps and trending technologies like AI, machine learning, and big data analysis, cloud computing is the much-needed solution.
Consecutively, the following are the benefits of cloud computing fostered by businesses and organizations;
1. Security
Adopting cloud computing solutions prominently comes with a risk of data management and security concerns.
And, this certainly is inevitable. Since cloud computing requires all the program files, data, processors, and everything that goes virtual, security becomes a definite issue.
However, with cloud computing, the host is on a full-time job to monitor and ensure more robust and streamlined security than conventional systems.
Cloud computing helps maintain data security and mitigates internal data theft and unauthorized access. It also helps in ensuring more secure means to protect sensitive data.
2. Cost Saving
With cloud computing services, businesses have easy access to company’s important data. This not only saves a lot of time but also reduces the efforts as well.
Also, with virtual resources maintained by cloud service hosts, the cost of maintaining or even buying new software or hardware cuts down.
Well, as a matter of fact, the cost to transfer to cloud services maybe a little, or maybe a lot more than the cost of maintaining your conventional processor, but in the long run, it saves you plenty of investments.
3. Quality Control
Cloud computing helps maintain data coherence and helps in reducing redundancy that might exist in conventional computing systems.
When files and documents are stored virtually, it helps in maintaining consistency in data, maintain clear records of updates and revisions, and avoid human error.
4. Disaster Recovery
When we talk about the benefits of cloud computing systems, disaster recovery is a prominent feature that comes along.
No matter how under-controlled your business and organization are, there is always something that goes out of place and can negatively impact your business’s credibility and productivity.
However, with cloud-based services data recovery for all types of emergencies, from power outages to natural disasters, everything is in place. Of all the businesses opting for cloud services, 20% of users agree that disaster recovery processes take four hours or less to recover documents.
5. Automatic Software Updates
With digitization becoming the most preferred option, speed is necessary for businesses to sustain in the highly competitive markets.
Leveraging cloud-based services help in achieving that. It enables automated systems that can refresh and update themselves on their own.
Like conventional IT infrastructure, it does not depends on IT professionals to perform a manual update and routine maintenance.
Subsequently, it saves up a lot of effort, time, and cost organizations may spend on IT consultations.
Let’s now move on to the factors that enable cloud computing to transform the infrastructure and architecture of an organization.
How Cloud Computing Transforms Organizational Infrastructure
1. Software
Cloud-based software is offered as a service to organizations which means that there is no need to purchase a new application; rather, all that is needed is to subscribe to the services.
Cloud services allow organizations to connect to the services and use them according to their needs, making it easier for businesses to implement new software and scale it up or down as per their requirements.
The software may then be used for different internal and external performance and management by the organization.
For instance, HR may use cloud services to track employee work hours, check-in and check-out timings, and more.
2. Position
This one comes as one of the fundamental infrastructural changes an organization experiences after moving to cloud services.
While traditional infrastructures use hard drives and web servers confined in a certain place and require internal IT teams to make sure things are smooth, cloud services use third-party servers hosted by external service providers.
This enables businesses to have online servers that are located virtually.
3. User-centric Processing
Since cloud computing uses the internet and allows fast data fetching and processing, organizations can extend their services to be user-centric.
And by user-centric, we mean consistent and smooth services available at all times, as long as a stable internet connection is available.
This has helped organizations and businesses to sustain productivity and user acquisition in times like the Pandemic.
4. Automation
With cloud computing services, it won’t be wrong to say that cloud computing automates the systems and performance of an organization.
And, that is one of the primary differences between traditional computing infrastructure and cloud infrastructure.
Collaborating with external services providers, organizations leverage hosting, storage, processing, and maintenance services without having any internal teams. From internet malware and threats to regular maintenance and updates, IT personnel take care of everything.
5. Cost
Cloud computing helps an organization cut down on additional system maintenance, repairs, and update costs by shifting everything to virtual systems since third-party solution providers provide these services.
Also, the need to buy expensive equipment or hire staff to keep things smooth cuts down.
By cutting down on these expenses, businesses can entirely focus on improving their performance and extend services.
Final Thoughts
Cloud computing services enable businesses and organizations to take the much-needed leap to enhance service provision to enable strong user acquisition.
While the benefits of cloud computing are immense, it is helping an organization to adapt to the digitally transforming world to survive the growing competition.
So, to say that the coming era belongs to automated cloud services won’t be wrong.