Cloud computing is a significant part of digital transformation and businesses count on cloud services for agility and efficiency.

The Covid-19 pandemic transformed businesses and the economy itself. We saw a spike in digital transformation during the pandemic since it shut down offices, laid social distancing norms, introduced remote working, and demanded agility and resilience. Many industries embraced digital transformation and automation to enhance business growth to retain their space in the economy. Going digital became the 'new normal' and cloud services had a crucial role to play in this transformation.

Cloud was not new and it had established its significance in the pre-pandemic days by offering cost-efficient services, scalability, and flexibility to businesses. Amazon AWS defines cloud computing as the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing.

Cloud services can be used in software development, customer-facing web applications, data storage, and processing, etc. The beneficiaries of cloud computing range from business giants to common people who use Google Drive or Apple iCloud.

The post-pandemic world would depend on the cloud more than it used to since the rapid digital evolution last year has changed the working environment and lifestyle. According to Forrester predictions, the global public cloud infrastructure market will grow 35% to 120 billion dollars in 2021. Many of us would think if the cloud is worth such hype, so let us look at some of its benefits and decide how important is the cloud in the coming years.

Benefits of Cloud Computing 

• Flexibility and low cost are the prime factors that aid the reign of cloud computing in the coming years. Cloud offers 24×7 services with maximum scalability. Businesses can adopt cloud services on-demand and at any point of their journey. Cloud services offer a certain amount of freedom to their clients wherein it is possible to address fluctuating bandwidth without complicated IT updations. Cloud enables faster scaling up or down of IT infrastructure. The flexibility of the cloud is vital in the near future that expects agile businesses.

Cloud services can be implemented with minimum costs and maintenance. Since the pandemic resulted in a cash deficit, many industries look for cost-efficient options to transform their business. Cloud is a pay-as-you-go-service and hence, you do not have to worry about paying for what you don't want.

• Cloud services offer great accessibility that enables people to operate the cloud from their own spaces. The remote working ecosystem is going to stay for long and with cloud services, there are no geographical limitations. Anybody can access it from anywhere and this provides companies better connectivity among employees even during a crisis. Cloud is lauded for its mobility that enables anybody to access the services from their smartphones or personal laptops. Cloud does not need a set of infrastructure or machines. We can literally carry it with us and maybe that's why they are called the cloud.

• Hybrid cloud is another developing feature, which will benefit industries soon. Hybrid cloud systems increase the flexibility of cloud services and provide better options since they can be accessed from various vendors. Dependability on third-party service providers will reduce as the hybrid cloud allows companies to customize their cloud end according to their specific requirements. Hybrid clouds can reduce IT development costs in the long-term.

• Today, all organizations are concerned about data security. Increased digitization might also increase data vulnerability. Last year there were several reports of cyber breaches and hacking since industries were in crisis. The coming years will demand the best safety practices to protect data. Cloud can be considered one of the best data backup space which is secure enough to keep hackers away. Data recovery becomes easier with cloud computing in place.

Cloud Computing is Here to Stay

Cloud computing offers a wide range of benefits to industries in the post-pandemic recovery stage, which demands agility and resilience. The integration of cloud computing with AI, big data, and IoT can be leveraged to attain new heights of innovation. Cloud services can easily take over on-premise infrastructure and increase business efficiency. Business enterprises have already taken their roads to digital transformation and cloud computing will underpin them on their way to success.