By: Juned Ahmed, Co-founder of IndianAppDevelopers Company
In the fast transforming world of business access to information at the right time and right context is increasingly becoming important. It is already the mobile ready business environment that we are accustomed with. Now no longer we can think of typical device and location specific dependency for accessing the information we need. Real time business decisions and greater workforce engagement and higher productivity standard largely depends on the unrestrained access to work process and information on variety of devices including mobile phones, desktops and tablets. Irrespective of the location of employees and the device in use the business process must continue engaging them. This is the precise reason why increasing number of enterprise apps are depending on cloud based accessibility.
- Besides revolutionizing the information accessibility in business environment cloud solutions actually offers more with less cost.
- Cloud solutions to a great extent helps reducing the huge cost incurred by IT infrastructure.
- With cloud based solutions a business can experience far higher flexibility.
- With the growth of the business cloud based tools helps the IT infrastructure to scale up without any extra cost.
- On another level, cloud solutions enable business automation facilitating intelligent and engaging business process.
- Moreover, cloud solution in a business is all set to offer the huge advantage of automated data warehousing and data processing for the real time business needs.
Trends in Adapting to Cloud Based Solutions
Just as enterprise mobile apps revolutionized business workplace and employee engagement, cloud took the mobile ready workplace to the virtual business reality and changed the way we communicate, interact, process and make decisions on business. As more and more companies are adapting to enterprise cloud apps, it is time to take a look at the pace of this adoption. Here are some trends in cloud adoption across businesses.
- New businesses are more adaptive to cloud apps and traditional businesses like banks and insurance companies slower in adapting to this emerging technology.
- Because of the demands of team work and on-the-go collaboration marketing or sales verticals across businesses are most adaptive to cloud based apps and tools.
- According to a recent study by 451 research, in just two years 60% or more of business apps in 47% of marketing departments will have cloud platform.
- 60% or more enterprise apps will have cloud in 34% of companies, according to the aforementioned study.
- According to the same study leading categories for cloud adoption will be respectively Database 57% cloud adoption, e-mail with 54% clod adoption and other business applications like ERP, CRM & industry-specific apps with 49% cloud adoption.
- According to the 451 Research study, cloud based solutions that enterprises are going to invest most in the coming two years include Backup and Recovery predicted for 68% cloud adoption, Disaster Recovery/Site Recovery with 54% predicted cloud adoption, Application development tools & platforms with 47% predicted cloud adoption, and Mobile Services with 47% predicted adoption of cloud.
Cloud based Data Lakes replacing traditional data warehouse
Until the data is queried the schema and data requirements in any large pool of data cannot be defined. This large pool of data demands to be stored over a large IT infrastructure of connected apps instead of localized storing in individual servers. Traditionally data warehouses were built to address specific chain of purposes in a business environment. The use of data was conceived first before beginning to build the data warehouse. Data warehouses were built for addressing a limited number of reports and queries specific to every business.
With the huge pool of data being hosted in the cloud the capacity of addressing queries went to unlimited proportion. With a single pool of huge data which is often referred as Data Lake the cloud service can now serve several businesses by addressing their specific queries in real time. This instant expansion capability and multifaceted approach of cloud based Data Lakes made it the most preferred data warehouse solution for the likes of Facebook, Yahoo, eBay, GE, and Orbitz. Businesses can depend on a data house where from they can access their required data in real time. Facebook having 2 billion users cannot do without cloud based Data Lakes for real time actionable analysis based on instant data feedback.
Concern over cloud security is steadily decreasing
For years security was a major pulling factor for cloud adoption in business, especially for traditional companies with large IT infrastructure. A majority of businesses held themselves back from adapting to cloud environment. The data security concern that held companies back was mainly resulted from their lack of understanding and knowledge of the cloud technology. After few years of consistent growth and rising popularity among new businesses and tech companies now companies can understand the biased nature of such concern. While in 2012 around 73% of the companies in a survey considered data security as their prime concern the figure dropped to 18% in 2014. Although data security is continuing to be a major issue across businesses no longer cloud services are considered as a threat to data security.
In recent years widespread adaptation of major cloud based services like Google Drive and Dropbox by big and small businesses played an important role in changing the conservative mindset towards cloud. Widespread adoption of BYOD and enterprise mobile apps in workplaces further helped reducing such concerns. Actually cloud services coupled up with enterprise apps now is being considered the inevitable horizon businesses need to move towards. For mobile ready companies across the verticals cloud integration seems to hold the future.
Author Bio:
Juned Ahmed co-founder of IndianAppDevelopers Company leading Android application development India. As a head of technical department, Juned focuses on helping both small and midsize businesses mobile application development solutions.
