Cloud computing continues to grow and evolve, with Gartner predicting that spending on cloud services will top $425m in 2022 – and it’s not hard to see why. The global cloud computing infrastructure continues to form the backbone of just about every digital service from social media and entertainment through to IoT and business infrastructure tools.
A cloud-hosted infrastructure makes everything faster and lighter, and with ultra-fast networks coming into widespread use that’s essential. The volume and diversity of data that can be streamed will keep growing, essentially meaning that services will become more accessible – in turn driving more and more of them onto cloud services.
So what can we expect for the rest of the year?
Flexible working
Cloud computing is an ideal solution for most SMEs because it gives them greater agility, and better resilience and crucially allows them to stay more connected – the latter of which has grown in importance over the last two years.
Cloud computing allows SMEs to overcome or even bypass the limitations of a physical office by allowing employees to access apps, programmes, software and information remotely – giving them the freedom to work from where they want. As we saw with the pandemic, that agility is vital to keeping the company and also for the welfare, productivity and happiness of staff.
With the vast majority of organisations now prioritising flexible working, investment in cloud-based solutions that support that will continue to grow. And as flexible working becomes the norm, it’ll also be necessary for organisations wanting to attract the best talent in their field.
Hybrid cloud
Hybrid cloud is a best of both worlds solution for businesses in which applications run from a combination of different environments. It’s growing in use for a couple of different reasons. Traditionally, when companies used to migrate to the cloud they would have a choice between using easily accessible pay-as-you-go public cloud solutions or more customised and flexible private cloud infrastructure. A private cloud effectively meant the company would have its own cloud and data wouldn’t leave its premises – typically for security reasons.
For SMEs, a hybrid cloud is a good option. It’s easily customised to meet the specific demands of your business, making it pretty versatile. Data that needs to be quickly and frequently accessed, perhaps by customers, can be kept on the public-style servers, while sensitive or more mission-critical data, can be kept and monitored on private-style cloud environments.
You also benefit from the added security you’d get from a private, in-house server but without the cost of servicing and maintaining it. Moreover, you get far greater flexibility with a hybrid approach than you would with public or private alone, which is ideal if you’re planning to grow your organisation.
Serverless
Serverless cloud is a relatively new concept that gives users a lot of flexibility but without the hassle of running their own servers. On the technical front, it offloads all management responsibility for infrastructure onto the cloud provider. That means that users don’t have to worry about things like scheduling, scaling, and patching.
For the user it’s pretty useful. Serverless will automatically scale resources up or down in response to demand, dropping to zero when an application isn’t running. It automatically provisions resource to run apps on-demand or in response to specific events.
The bottom line is that users never pay for idle capacity – they only pay for the capacity they use, when they use it. For SMEs who are often running on tight budgets or looking to manage costs more effectively, that’s ideal. It also removes the need to buy extra servers (public or private) if there’s a sudden or anticipated spike in capacity – which can be the case with growing businesses.
For more information on cloud computing services in London, contact us at [email protected] or call +44 (0) 203 137 7273