It is an opportunities galore in cloud computing services

The global cloud computing market is estimated to grow to $1 trillion by 2026, a compounded annual growth rate of 18 percent per annum. This is an information technology service delivery model in, which third-parties provide computing resources and software tools via the internet.

It offers several benefits in comparison to on-site hardware including speed, scalability, lower cost, mobile support, less network support and the ability to work remotely.

A key factor that is promoting adoption of cloud computing is the current Covid-19 menace that has forced people to work from home. Companies and governments are adopting hybrid systems where staff work remotely a couple of days while using the office for the rest.

To access company resources and software remotely, companies are subscribing to cloud computing products such as Zoom and Microsoft 365.

The main factor contributing to cloud computing growth is the financial benefits such as budget savings and increased productivity. By migrating to the cloud, firms enjoy better information security and save up to 15 percent on IT costs.

Through cloud computing, companies are able to automate customer relationship management activities, human resource processes, accounting, data processing, and customer service tasks. This helps them cut the length of time and resources spent on respective departments thereby optimising their resources towards their revenue-generating activities.

As a Kenyan, you can benefit from cloud computing products by subscribing to services such as accounting software, video telecommunications software, cloud data storage, social media management software, teamwork collaboration software, and contact management.

You can also benefit by investing in cloud computing stocks. These are companies that are directly involved in offering cloud computing products.

As a business or organisation, you can transition to the cloud using either of two approaches. They are private or public cloud. Public cloud services are offered via a third party and are shared across varied subscribers. Public cloud services relieve you of the hustle of managing such resources.

On the other hand, private cloud service refers to computing that is dedicated solely to your business. Your firm handles the cloud resources overheads. Some organisations usually adopt hybrid systems where their most crucial data is processed and stored on a private cloud while the rest is processed and stored on a public cloud platform.

Cloud computing products can be classified into four overlying groups. They are software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, and artificial intelligence as a service.

Software as a Service is a distribution model where a cloud service provider hosts and offers end-users applications on the internet.

A third-party cloud provider may host this application by an independent software vendor or the cloud provider might also be the software dealer for larger companies such as Microsoft.

Infrastructure as a service is a cloud computing deal where enterprises rent or lease servers for computing and storage. This way, an organisation can host its data centre and apps on the infrastructure provider’s platform.

Platform as a service is a complete development and deployment environment in the cloud, with resources that enable you to deliver everything from simple cloud-based applications to sophisticated, cloud enterprise applications.

An organisation purchases the resources it needs from a cloud service provider on a pay-as-you-go basis and accesses them over a secure internet connection.

Artificial Intelligence as a service allows its use on a cloud-based platform to solve an organisational challenge such as customer service or product recommendation. It is a way to get machines to do the same kind of work that human brains can accomplish, but in this case, on a cloud-based platform.

Though on minimal circumstances, cloud-based platforms can be hacked or experience malfunctions that may lead to significant business losses. Your organisation may also experience Distributed Denial of Service attacks, whereby hackers send unprecedented volumes of traffic to your web-based application, thereby crashing the servers or delaying service delivery.

In conclusion, if you move your organisational computing to the cloud, you will save costs, improve your data security, and allow your staff to work remotely, thereby saving the time spent on traffic and improving workforce productivity.

Kamau, is a research and markets analyst Scope Markets Kenya. [email protected]