Pandemic Effect on Cloud Adoption
Accelerated customer demand
Covid-19 pandemic has affected the efficacy of every industry world-wide yet it showcased an exceptional opportunity in the cloud computing arena.
Cost optimization was a continual priority for every organizations always, however this pandemic hit has further elevated its significance. Today, start-ups and enterprises are looking into deploying flexible cost models, with pay-as-you-go services offered by most of the public cloud providers. As expected, the companies started looking into OPEX model in order to deal with uncertain market conditions. Many of them started adopting the high-performance cloud architecture that provides features like performance consistency, network isolation, fast provisioning, transparency and control for corporate data.
The cloud spending grew by 37% to $29 billion (Reference link) in the first quarter of 2020. The companies look at cloud computing as the most efficient way to work during this Covid-19 challenge.
Conferring to the statement by Gartner:
“The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated cloud adoption to the point where it is the de facto new normal. Enterprise architecture (EA) and Technology innovation leaders should reject any new project that does not follow “Cloud First” as a guiding principle.”
A big shift happened to the cloud during the pandemic on the below areas of cloud computing.
Collaboration
Cloud collaboration improved massively during this pandemic period with corporate documents kept in a central, cloud-accessible location. Employees working remotely can work on a document without having to send an updated version by email or any other means. It improved access to large files, better brainstorming and possibilities on real-time updates. Most companies adopted Cloud Collaboration services like Dropbox, Microsoft One-Drive, Google Drive etc. to keep the team organized, delegate tasks to the employees and also to enable centralized communication. Other collaborative services like video conferencing, team messaging, screen sharing, whiteboard etc. has been proved very effective for the productivity of remote workforce.
Workspace
IT environment run on real-time motion, well managed and integrated into the business processes in different organizations where the systems are well developed, established. The pandemic has enabled startups, small business units and large enterprises to adopt the digital workplace culture to have full advantage of the benefits of self service, automation and analytics, and help the modern workforce utilize IT support in a comfortable and intuitive manner.
The digital workspace supported the productivity and aided new sources of efficiency for many companies during this time.
Serverless
During the pandemic Serverless computing went from a good idea to a fantastic idea. The public cloud providers like AWS and AZURE now offer serverless computing for containers, databases, and artificial intelligence. The benefit in a post-pandemic world is speed to deployment and change, which means that you create an architecture in no-time.
The businesses that do not prepare for the post-pandemic run on cloud computing will operate in crisis mode during the transition. Those companies may encounter shortages in services and struggle to obtain the necessary hard goods and employees to handle the post-pandemic surge in demand.