A cloud application is a software program that enables the local and cloud-based components to work together, relying on remote servers for processing logic accessed by a web browser.
Operated by a cloud services infrastructure provider, cloud application servers are located in remote data centers.
Cloud-based application development tasks for official purposes can be
- file storage and sharing
- order entry
- inventory management
- word processing
- customer relationship management (CRM)
- data collection
- financial accounting
Working process of cloud apps
Data storing and compute cycling occur in a remote data center operated by a third-party company. The back end supports multiple access methods and ensures security and integration. Cloud applications work offline and can be updated when online, it provides quick responses and doesn’t reside on local devices.
Benefits:
- Cloud applications can be updated, tested, and deployed rapidly providing fast-time market agility benefiting in cultural shifts in business operations.
- Infrastructure management is possible by third-party cloud providers, thus simplifying operations.
- Application Programming Interface (API) access third-party data sources and storage services.
- Using API is accessible to keep cloud applications smaller for processing or analytics computations.
- Components can be implemented on a gradual basis by refactoring legacy and on-premises applications to a cloud architecture.
- Cloud-based applications are cheaper than equivalents on-premises installation to operate and maintain.
- World-class security experts hiring is accessible in massive scale infrastructure.
- Centralized data managed by IT operation personnel can be easily backed up regularly.
As the inherent benefit of cloud-based solutions is being acknowledged by enterprises, it is gaining rapid momentum. Delivering a highly flexible, scalable, and versatile productivity environment is what cloud-based application solutions are potential for.
Keynotes from “The Cloud Adoption in 2020” Report
- Some sort of cloud solution or service is being used by approx 88%of the organizations.
- Estimated that in the next year, around 45% of respondents are expected to transition 75% of their current applications to the cloud.
- Only 10% implied that they do not use any sort of cloud infrastructure in their current IT purposes.
Criteria for “Cloud Adoption in 2020” Report
The study conducted by O Reilly Media with a sample size of 1283 IT decision-makers insight that
- Around 21% of the enterprises (big or small) are entirely hosting upon cloud applications.
- 49% are still running on conventional methodologies, premise structure.
- 39% of the enterprises choose a hybrid method i.e. both public and private cloud.
- 54% of the participants reported that they use a multi-cloud environment relying upon more than 1 (Cloud Service Provider) CSP.
The largest cloud service provider in the market in terms of share is Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Areas of Concern:
Some of the areas of concern that were arisen by the respondents during the transition to cloud infrastructure are:
- Cloud security was one of the major and critical concerns during the transition to the cloud by nearly 65% of the respondents.
- Monitoring is also one of the key concerns during migration to cloud services and infrastructure.
- Kubernetes-related skills integrating and optimizing productivity applications were described as a necessity by 56% of the respondents.
The trend of micro services is gaining a lot of momentum, micro services focus on easing the updating, patching, and scaling the solution according to the needs of the enterprises.
Site Reliability Engineering, SRE is a technique to manage, troubleshoot, and automate cloud operations to become a mainstream technology over the coming years.
Highlighted Challenges
Some of the challenges that are faced priory are being raised up by the users to derive an alternative for it. These challenges are:
Human Capital: The human capability is ignored when migrating entities focus more on the technical aspects of the cloud transition. Requisite skills must be identified so that the migrating entities could provide the right cloud infrastructure.
Outsourcing complex aspects of transition companies by experts is also a productive idea.
Capacity Building of Existing Human Resources: Even after taking the help of the professionals or experts, you need to develop skills and build the imperative capacity of the existing resources is a must because ultimately they’ll be the ones to take charge of it in the future.
Underestimating Complexities: Mostly migrating entities take the transition process very casual which ends up creating other complexities, which need to be fixed. Underestimating complexities or taking them for granted might end up to a major and critical issue like massive cost overruns or the inability to accomplish a task within the timeline.
Techsaga Corporations, a Software Development Company focuses on maintaining the productivity of enterprises at the top and looks after all the complications and casualties that can or did happen.
After completing the planning phase, identifying the right CSP is the most critical step which should be taken care of with consolidation.