Staggering explosion of cloud in 2020

The cloud has become the enterprise technology hero of 2020. Coronavirus pandemic confirmed any kind of backburner considerations shot to the front of IT stakeholders' brains.

Businesses were ready to adapt to remote working because of cloud infrastructure, which enabled them to be flexible and scalable to a highly unprecedented business climate. The best possible customer experiences could be provided while being prepared and ramp up faster once the economy rebounds. In 2018, the computing market's worth was US$272 billion. The pandemic expected to stimulate the cloud computing market to a lurch US$623.3 billion by 2023, representing a compound annual growth rate was of 18%.

In a wave of COVID-19-fueled investments, cloud-computing startups came up with new investments and customer accounts, with many companies adapting to cloud-related projects to be ahead of the competition.

As per market intelligence firm CB Insights, cloud-computing funding deals worldwide reached a three-year high of 97 during the second quarter, with investors investing around US$3 billion into startup deals between April and June. Synk Inc., for instance, an application security company that secured US$200 million in venture funding earlier this month makes it easier for software developers to establish security around their cloud-baed applications. Synk now has nearly 1,000 small and large business clients, which is more than double its portfolio in 2013.

The venture was funded of worth US$150 million in January. The latest funding brings its valuation to over US$2.6 billion. The pandemic is truly a game-changer for the cloud market, said Chief executive, Peter McKay. "You throw COVID-19 into the mix, and it's like digital transformation on steroids. It's a massive accelerant."

The development in cloud-computing startups this year has recorded an increase in remote working, and the desire for enterprises to invest in operating expenses instead of capital expenses in unprecedented times.

Some other large cloud-computing investments deals of this year include data-management company Cohesity, which fundraised a US$250 million in April, Innovium Inc., a data-centric technology firm that announced US$170 million in July, and enterprise database management firm Cockroach Labs that announced US$86.6 million in May.

Early-stage technology startups have also seen growth partially due to the pandemic. FireHydrant Inc sells software, which helps operations teams manage and respond to events that occur on their platforms. It also includes website and e-commerce outages.

Demand for FireHydrnt's incident-management tools went up during the pandemic as customers predominantly host their IT infrastructure in the cloud.

Kelley Mak, an investor in FireHydant and principal of a New York-based enterprise technology venture-capital firm Work-Bench, said, "COVID-19 has accelerated the need to digitally transform, and at the end of the day, that cloud transformation introduces the requirements for new tools."

Snowflake and Sumo Logic's successful debuts in enterprise technology have also bolstered investor interest in cloud-computing startups, while retailers like Wayfair and Etsy are told to rely on cloud computing more than ever, as they try to take advantage in the surge of online shopping.