Second Decade of Cloud Computing

From the era of affordable computing in the ‘80s to the present era of software available as a service, there has been consistent progress in technology and how we use technology. These technology leaps have led to companies delivering superlative customer experiences and solving customer problems like never before. The Cloud has in fact paved the way for a fundamental shift in the way organizations and consumers use technology.

Gone are the days when organizations needed to allocate vast budgets to their IT systems. The consideration of huge capital and operational costs has now become a thing of the past. Companies now pay on the go for cloud services. This is now also the time of handheld devices and browser-based web solutions accessible anywhere, anytime. Information on the go is the new normal.

On the other hand of the spectrum, innovators have identified numerous market possibilities and gaps that cloud can fill. Cloud has become an enabler for companies to gain access to high power computing resources and technologies. Global and local companies both have grown to adopt many utility based pay-as-you-go cloud solutions. Not only does this widen the scope of cloud based solutions but also brings in market consumers that in the past did not pursue IT as aggressively.

A Brief History of Cloud

In its initial years, the cloud was frowned upon and there was much skepticism around it. But as more and more companies leveraged the cloud to improve their businesses models nimble startups too looked at the cloud to move to market faster. Too keep up with this demand for computing resources IT at companies big and small also started looking at migrating to the cloud as it offered scalability and availability at a fraction of the cost.

The Cloud became a disruptor not only because as a technology it focused on less complexity for the consumer but also because it brought down cost. This was a classic comparison between a simple subscription based model v/s owning the entire infrastructure for computing and networking. In terms of technology, on-demand computing also made sense because it offered scalability quickly.

Internet companies that used cloud to offer new services like Gmail, YouTube and Facebook are now Tech behemoths and disruptors in their own right. Early adoption of cloud was key for these companies to help innovate; it was a risk that paid off well.

In 1999, Salesforce became a pioneer in the industry by introducing to the world a web browser based CRM solution. They were the first to bring the cloud application to the market with salesforce.com. Their solution was available on the internet and the idea of using internet for applications became a norm since then. With Amazon Web Services, Amazon also entered the market offering a range of services and apps which were on cloud. This was the time when organizations started to cautiously evaluate the cloud as a possible solution to their computing needs. 

Evolution - IaaS to PaaS

To say the least, focus will shift from infrastructure management to platform management. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will no longer be sole concern in the world of IT management as companies are now looking at moving to cloud based Platform as a Service (PaaS).

PaaS has gained adoption because it offers customization minus the usual complexity. Startups and big organizations have both come to the conclusion that solutions with PaaS are less complex and can be deployed sooner.

Innovation companies like Google, Amazon are riding the wave and offering customized applications, analytics and digitization solutions so that customers can enjoy a more holistic approach. PaaS is still growing in acceptance and impacting industries every day. The cloud on its own has also evolved over time and its wide market adoption is enough proof to vouch for its growth.

The Second Decade of Cloud

Enterprise Cloud has become the norm now without a doubt. With cloud solutions from Salesforce, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, delivering easy to use cost effective solutions to leverage the power of the cloud. This has ushered in a new era of cloud-based apps that small organizations and teams within big organizations can use to manage and work effectively.

Evernote, a cloud based app for saving notes helps make quick notes on the go via a mobile app or while seated at your work desk via a traditional desktop. Qualtrics is a cloud based survey platform for customer feedback. Okta is another cloud based single sign on app for all the business tools that users use every day, so instead of remembering all the passwords, just one does the job. Mozypro ensures scheduling of recurring backups of data to the cloud. It's a great tool to avoid loss of data and ensure data recovery. These simple yet powerful apps make life easier now for the average office worker, improving his quality of work and workplace efficiencies multifold.

With increased access to high computing devices and services, there is a visible growth in the number of digital companies offering products, services and solutions across the spectrum. Creative space on the internet is also on the rise and continual digitization of major services has led to a wide gap in the industries making online presence a mandate. All these are shaping the cloud constantly and helping it evolve. Several new models and services are cropping up each day to meet the needs of the cloud consumer.

The second decade of cloud has brought a lot of innovation and competition. Cloud solutions have proven to be a key ingredient for revenue growth for organizations big and small. This has led to stiff competition where almost every industry is vying to introduce and implement cloud either as a service or for their internal IT systems. This race for digital excellence is speeding with cloud as its vehicle for business transformation.

With this increase in digitization, big data and its implications for business transformations are expected. With cloud supporting almost all business functions today, the large amounts of data gathered will eventually become a source of knowledge. AI which was once a very niche area with only a few large enterprises having access to it, is now a commodity that is readily available to users at the click of a button to compute tasks and predict possible future occurrences based on historical and statistical data.

The future of Cloud Computing

The future of cloud looks like a picture with several cloud solutions which are hybrid in nature. Hybrid is in-fact how the cloud will evolve into and what companies will focus on leveraging in the next decade. Most cloud solutions even today tend to focus on specific business problem and the trend will seemingly continue.

Their utility like consumption model will exist and gain rather wide adoption. This should make space for solutions that bridge gaps between fragmented cloud solutions like the challenge that a lot of users are presently also facing, but on a wider scale.

Migration to cloud would be an industry norm without a doubt. Successful business transformation stories through cloud will be a reality. Best of breed cloud solutions would be in demand. Specific cloud solutions catering to challenges related to infrastructure including encryption, authentication, network segmentation, data integrity and data management across multiple public clouds will crop up. Since cloud will become prevalent across businesses, cloud will also adopt wider focus on usability and interfaces.

CSS Corp is ready for the second decade of Cloud

CSS Corp is a leader in cloud migration with solutions designed specifically to assess, migrate and optimize the cloud. Our automated and industrialized approach to migration helps moving workload   to IaaS, PaaS platform quickly. CSS Corp is also engaged in developing AWS contact center based solution leveraging analytics and AI services offered by cloud. 

CSS Corp’s Cognitive Customer Experience Platform which is changing the way companies engage with customers leverages the power of the cloud to deliver superlative experience to customers. Our next gen contact center solutions are cloud based giving us the flexibility to run and optimize based on demand and nature of workload the CRM is also integrated with sales force.