Coronavirus pandemic has indeed changed the world. The way of living, and increased focus to build immunity has become the new normal. The quintessential question remains, how do businesses across the world assure its stakeholders of an uninterrupted business continuity amidst the pandemic scare?

The answer lies in harnessing the powers of Saas (Software as a Service) and Cloud computing. Preferred by businesses across multi-channels, cloud computing has become the toast of large, medium and small-scale organisations for their IT requirements to access key business applications, and upscale their operational capabilities.

Cloud adoption has become mainstream, a technology becoming immensely popular after the COVID-19 pandemic, allows businesses convenience, and does away with the expenditures on-

• Training and Knowledge transfer

• Infrastructure

• New Software Accreditation

Cloud has opened floodgates of opportunity for the major cloud infrastructure service providers like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure taking businesses to next levels without affecting their critical operations. Cloud services assure optimisation, reduced costs, speed and enhanced collaborated capabilities which can be accessed anywhere, a boon for enterprises whose workforce is working remotely.

The Rise of the Cloud

In a bid to adapt cloud build applications and relocate existing digital assets, global C-Suite is expected to increase their investment into cloud services. Over the years, cloud-managed service landscape is increasing gaining eyeballs and becoming competitive. Estimates point that over 60% of enterprises will deploy some form of external service provider's cloud-managed service offering. Demand for strategic cloud service amidst the Coronavirus crises signals to an affirmative shift towards positive business outcomes.

The rise of the cloud can be ascertained by the growth cloud services technology is forecasted to achieve over the years. Analytics Insights Forecasts an increase of 21% CAGR in the global cloud market over a five-year period from 2020-2025.

Analytics Insights Forecasts

Worldwide Cloud Service Revenue Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)

Estimated by Analytics Insights forecast, worldwide cloud service revenues to grow from US$281.4 billion in 2020, US$334.7 billion in 2021, US$401.0 billion in 2022, US$483.8 billion in 2023, US$588.0 billion in 2024, to a mammothUS$719.6 billion in 2025.

The common cloud computing solutions harnessed by organisations in their BCP plans include BPaaS (business process as a service); IaaS (infrastructure as a service); PaaS (platform as a service); and SaaS (software as a service) ensuring business goes normal as virtual work is the new norm, and business processes are reimagined.

The Choice of the Cloud

Businesses need to adopt a more subtle and personal approach to cloud computing models. The strategic choice between public, private and hybrid cloud computing models will be driven by their objectives and commercial models they are operating in. Enterprises must re-evaluate their existing service models and brace to adopt new offerings of cloud computing.

While most enterprises focus on Hybrid cloud (a mix of public and private cloud) for their scalability, private and public clouds are not left far behind. Coronavirus has shown how important is scalability essential for upgrade, compliance and cost benefits.

The choice of the cloud adopted by industries is tough to answer, then a simple yes or no. This is a contentious question faced by each enterprise. While hybrid cloud comes with the essence of both public and private clouds, it must be evaluated before deployment. Experts in the business believe that public cloud expansion is inevitable, the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic will accelerate it.

The Case for Cloud Vendors

Cloud vendors are also reacting to the change, established cloud vendors are already responding to the change this pandemic has bought to business continuity. Leading research firm quotes that cloud services will offer a distributed ATM-like presence across businesses to serve a subset of their services for the continuity of business functions.

This new business normal gives a strong ground base for new cloud computing models to evolve. The adoption of public, private and hybrid cloud deployments will be increasingly influenced by support to remote mass working capabilities, critical business functions, and how businesses adapt to the normal in the post-COVID-19 era.