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Cloud Computing Emerge From Coronavirus Crisis Stronger Than Ever

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While front-end collaboration, shopping, and gaming solutions are at the forefront of public consciousness, the public cloud and its enabling technologies are backstopping the massive shift to remote work and entertainment. 

Office closures, social distancing, and shelter-in-place orders have led to sustained demand in users of collaboration, shopping, and entertainment services as the entire world transforms personal interactions to virtual ones.

Thus far, that unprecedented shift has gone off. As millions of worldwide work hard to stay productive, the public cloud has enabled video conferencing, remote project collaboration, e-commerce, education, gaming, and streaming video companies to meet unexpected-for demand.

“We have taken measures to prepare, and we are confident we will be able to meet customer demands for capacity in response to COVID-19,”

is the only statement of AWS spokesperson

Businesses and consumers appreciate the resilience that has been shown in recent weeks by front-end applications like Zoom, Skype, and Slack. Still, it’s the back-end infrastructure of AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud that keep those much-needed services running smoothly.

And it’s not just the hyperscalers that are rising to the challenge of a potentially transformative moment in the history of technology.

Due to the coronavirus crisis, the sudden shift to remote work and socialization wouldn’t be possible without software solutions that enable rapid, secure, and consistent application environments.

The cloud applications boom has fundamentally transformed how businesses operate. Virtually every application now runs in the cloud, making it easier than ever to acquire and leverage those applications to make businesses more agile and efficient. The most important that it has enabled a world of mobility where users can be productive from any location, as access to those applications is no longer restricted to being in the office. It has also made possible emergency work-from-home by the coronavirus outbreak.

Cloud services companies allow customers to rent remote computing power, scaling up and down usage, and associated costs, as needed. The cloud has constantly changed the old model of organizations building and owning their servers and data centers, which takes time, requires large up-front capital outlays, and ongoing maintenance costs. It leaves them with excess computing capacity that goes unused except during brief periods of peak demand.

A business running on the cloud that suffers from outbursts in customer traffic to its website can immediately call on servers in a global network of Amazon or Microsoft data centers to handle the load. When the traffic fades, they can turn off those services. Equally, if a company needs to perform a complex analysis or test a machine learning algorithm, it can rent nearly limitless computing power from a cloud provider for a few hours, rather than incurring the cost of owning it.

Sending users data directly to the cloud allows users to connect with speed and security as any amount of bandwidth—even the minimum 1000Mbps provided by Google Fiber, for example.

As you see, the digital world has utterly changed. If you are still using the desktop applications that can’t provide work from home to your employees or do it through a VPN service. It’s about time to think about the transition from desktop to the cloud-based application that will open new opportunities to your company and your customers.

Cloud Computing Trends During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The fact that the pandemic has changed the way companies use cloud technology is undeniable. For six months now, we have been observing the high speed of cloud computing adoption. Let’s take a look at what trends have emerged in cloud computing during the pandemic.

Implementation speed and costs

With the shift to cloud computing, companies have struggled to get their processes up and running as quickly as possible so that they can work anywhere, from anywhere. With this approach, investments in the transition to the cloud began to grow.

IDC reports that cloud infrastructure spending increased by 2.2% in the first quarter of 2020 as the pandemic swept across the world. This figure may sound modest, but it is significant compared to a 16.3% decrease in non-cloud IT investment spending over the same period.

Companies like Alibaba and Azure continue to recruit employees for their cloud divisions actively. The same can be said for cloud collaboration providers such as Cisco and Slack, reflecting the growing demand for cloud services. This trend is apparent. The trend towards the transition to cloud computing will continue since many companies refuse to take employees to offices, which means that cloud technologies will still be needed for remote work.

Adverse trends in cloud computing

Compliance, edge performance, and security were all that cloud services and their customers had to face during the pandemic, as the market pressure was relatively high during this period.


Compliance issues
Many companies that jumped into the cloud in a rush during the pandemic have found their software inadequate for the cloud. In this regard, the pandemic had exacerbated cloud compliance challenges that already existed before the coronavirus threat emerged. This issue was driven by the need to ensure business continuity quickly and, in many cases, cloud regulatory requirements were not met. What remains to be seen is how much effort companies will put in to catch up with compliance rules after reconfiguring their cloud strategies to succeed in the post-COVID world.
Peripheral computing
While we do not have accurate data on edge computing adoption rates, many predict an increased demand for edge computing. Manufacturing plants and retail stores can use such devices to monitor many operations and reduce the mandatory presence of personnel in the field.
Cloud security risks
When working remotely, primarily when company employees work using their home computers and home networks, there is a risk of phishing, malware deployment, and otherwise harming unsuspecting users. There is also a risk that the growing reliance on cloud computing increases IT environments’ overall complexity. In turn, visibility becomes more difficult. There have always been difficulties, but now, due to the huge number of companies using the cloud, this process has become even more complicated.

FAQ

Unfortunately, you will not be able to do this in a couple of weeks. Before starting the transition, you need to plan a strategy, decide which parts of the workflow you need to migrate first, choose a service provider, and much more. You can read more details here
We recommend Amazon Web Services as one of the reliable services for cloud migration. We use it from the start to this day and say that it has a user-friendly interface for auto-scaling, load log monitoring, notification controlling, etc. Also, we can help with cloud migration to any other service. The cloud providers make computing resources and services, such as applications, databases, and storage available and accessible to customers through the public Internet.

  • Choose a reliable partner to help you with your migraine
  • Determine the level of migration you need
  • Choose one cloud or multiple clouds
  • Establish performance metrics that will help you determine how well your migration is going Select the components you want to move to the cloud first
  • Perform the necessary software preparation
  • Create a data migration plan
  • Switch production

To Conclude

The cloud’s value in providing remote access and storage has become even more apparent with COVID-19, ensuring business continuity and reducing risk.

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that:

  •  organizations with strong digital capabilities are better equipped to cope with this new situation;
  • existing digitalization trends are accelerating; many have stressed the speed and depth of this recent transformation;
  • crashes will inevitably occur, and you must be prepared for them.

In this context, the intrinsic characteristics associated with cloud computing architecture have become vital tools to help companies adapt to new conditions and address situations that pose a real risk to the provision of core services.

The cloud is not just a way to maintain service continuity. Still, it is also a tool for improving the out-of-office (such as collaboration tools) combined with other technologies to serve customers and change regulatory requirements. Many companies are changing their long-term strategies, where deep adoption of cloud technologies can be a crucial factor.

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