The power of cloud computing
Is it the future ? And what you should know about it.
The basics of cloud computing.
To understand the future of cloud computing and the importance it will have. We first need to understand the basics of what it is. Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the internet. What this means is you can hire external servers, storage or software miles away from your location. No need to take risks and buy your own and you pay only for what you need.
The perfect example to see the possible future growth of cloud computing is to look at the storage part of things. Everyone uses Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive by now. They were created around 10 years ago, and have been soaring to popularity ever since. The cloud storage global market has grown by a massive 60 million from 2015 and is now at 80 million. And it is not stopping anytime soon as it is expected to reach 97,4 million by 2022 according to market research. Making it one of the fastest growing global markets side by side with renewable energy and Artificial Intelligence. No bad company to be around.
The same is expected to happen for the server and software part of it. It hasn’t reached the markets as big as storage cloud computing has but this is only a matter of time. As big players like Google, IBM and Amazon are getting involved. And we all now they mean business.
All the benefits.
A lot of people can’t grasp just how big cloud computing is. This is because a big share of it happens outside of the regular consumer markets. As companies have the most to gain and make the most use of it. Let’s list the benefits of using this technology as a company.
Cost
Cloud computing eliminates all costs of buying hardware or software. But also recurring costs as electricity, cooling and paying IT experts for managing al the equipment. Those things add up fast.
Efficiency
The cost to performance ratio is simply unbeatable. These cloud computing services typically run the latest and greatest hardware. Meaning great speed can be provided. Another big benefit is you only pay for what you need, so every single cent is put to good use. It allows you to pay as you grow providing a lot of flexibility as well.
Security
Cloud providers also offer strong security and reliability as they have the capacity to regularly make complete back ups and it’s in their own benefit to make their service as secure as possible.
The sky is the limit.
The next exciting step in cloud services is the possibility of cloud gaming. Making the purchase of a high end gaming PC redundant. Saving the consumer a lot of money. Which then goes to the cloud provider to use their cloud service instead. Think of it as instead of buying a PC for around 1,000 euros. You rent one with 100 times as much processing power for a few euros each month.
Google is at the forefront of this technology with their Google Stadia project. Getting 175.000 subscriptions in the first 24 hours of launching. Showing the power of cloud computing to a broad audience. Every game is stored in the cloud, no need for physical discs anymore and no plastic or shipping. Which is always good news in times of global warming.
Video streaming services like Netflix also take advantage of cloud storage. So now we have the Movies & TV and gaming market, both looking at futures in cloud storage. These markets together make for a whopping 404.7 billion euros. So there’s a lot of money to be made. Streaming is taking over all parts of our digital entertainment, and cloud computing is at the center of it.
The ability to deliver software and content on demand like this is something special. Given that everything runs on external servers outside of the consumer’s home and a constant internet connection is required, allows for companies to analyze the data very easily. They are able to collect a lot more useful data of every user and strategize their services accordingly. PaaS is a great example of this. PaaS (Platform-as-a-service) is a cloud environment that helps you build, manage, update and test your application all in one place. Development tools and business analytics are also included. Windows Azure and Google app engine are the most popular PaaS services.
You are using cloud computing every single day in the form of SaaS (Software-as-a-service). Google(Alphabet) has adapted to this in a big way, with Google Docs, Google Slides, Youtube, Gmail, Google Stadia and more all using cloud computing, and so far it has really paid of for them. They have seen their revenue grow each year and their future looks very bright.
Get involved
Cloud computing is already here in more ways than you now and it’s here to stay. And it’s still going to expand in a big way, projections look very promising and everything is pointing towards cloud computing being in the center of the new ways we consume digital products.
Get in now or be sorry later.
