Why businesses should consider cloud computing solutions
The Cloud computing industry is growing today, with the global market value expected to reach $397.49 billion in 2022, according to Gartner.
Most IT companies also prefer cloud applications over non-cloud ones (e.g. on-premise solutions), and non-IT organizations are also starting to catch up and share that view. At TPP Software, our experience also corroborates this trend: more than 80% of our software development projects use cloud technologies.
In this article, let's examine cloud computing solutions and their various models, as well as deployment types including the benefits that the cloud solutions could introduce to businesses.
Public, Private, or Hybrid for The Deployment Requirements
For starters, let's explore the insights on options you have while deploying cloud applications and developing them and what benefits you can achieve using cloud solutions in your business.
Public cloud
When businesses opt for the public cloud solution, a cloud service provider (such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform, among others) offers resources that are usually shared among customers like storage, monitoring, and networking capabilities, etc. Generally speaking, public cloud service runs on remote servers that are managed and maintained by the cloud provider themselves.
With the public cloud, companies usually pay for the costs based on a subscription basis or a pay-per-usage model.
Among the factors which deter business organizations opt for the public cloud are the potential security concerns and instability because of their multi-tenant characteristic. Yet, the right tenant isolation could make public clouds secure and flexible enough to adequately store sensitive information securely as required.
Private cloud
The basic concept of the private cloud is that it is only used by one single business organization.
One of the benefits of using a private cloud is a high-security level, which is ensured by employing a secure firewall system and hosting the cloud within an isolated network.
However, for many businesses like SMEs (small-medium enterprises) which do not have a lot of budget for their IT infrastructure, opting for a private cloud can be quite costly.
The cost for the private cloud option is often higher than using a private cloud due to the management, maintenance, and management of data centers, devices, and software, etc. lie within your organization, and not shared with any other organization. Still, businesses can try to somewhat reduce this cost by using services that could meet your budget requirements.
Hybrid cloud
The Hybrid Cloud solution provides a mix of public cloud and private cloud services. In the case of a hybrid cloud deployment, a certain number of services that do not need to be on-premises, because of data security requirements, can be deployed in the cloud with all the benefits that come with it.
Compared to public clouds, this type of cloud solution provides businesses extra flexibility because your organization is not completely dependent on third-party providers.
Hybrid clouds bring a unique approach to data security since organizations can store their data in a privately isolated environment and use the public cloud for backup and recovery operations.
The drawback for this type of deployment is to ensure a stable connection and transparent data transfer between the private and public clouds.
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, FaaS: What are they for?
IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides business organizations with an infrastructure to build their own application in the cloud. Specifically, the service offerings provide resources such as virtual machines, storage services, and networks.
With IaaS, business organizations can avoid high IT investment costs by only paying for the resources needed. Another great advantage is that with the time taken to purchase the services and get them up and running is significantly reduced, businesses can buy the infrastructure required and have all the necessary resources in an instance - consequently, speed up the application time-to-market.
PaaS
By choosing a platform as a service (PaaS), businesses can quickly acquire the necessary tools for developing, configuring, customizing, testing, and managing applications in addition to cloud storage and other resources such as operating systems. Examples of such tools are databases, application integration, or machine learning services.
The PaaS model is increasingly becoming sought-after with organizations because it reduces coding time, time-to-market, and software development overhead.
SaaS
In the SaaS (Software as a Service) landscape, the software is offered based on a subscription basis and is hosted and managed in the public cloud. Customers companies can pay and get the software running without having to build anything, at the same time they can also find various solutions that can be customized and tailored to meet their specific business needs.
Today, SaaS solutions can meet a plethora of business needs, such as Sales & Marketing (e.g. Salesforce CRM), Manufacturing, HR, and etc.
Why do companies choose cloud computing solutions?
Scalability
Automatic scaling is a great benefit for companies looking to develop cloud applications. This means that the number of cloud Virtual Machines can be changed automatically depending on the load. However, businesses need to be careful not to pay for resources that they do not need or consume more than they actually require.
TPP Software’s experience proves that autoscaling works great for businesses. Our team has developed several cloud solutions for international clients. Specifically, they need to create a highly scalable solution that automatically scales from using 2 to 50 app servers depending on the load. This helped to make the inherently scalable, sustainable, and auditable system.
Cost-effectiveness
Cloud computing accelerates application development by using cloud services instead of writing custom code, which reduces human and financial resources.
Migrating to the cloud also enables more efficient application management and lower maintenance costs. There is no need to maintain hardware or purchase additional equipment as the business operations expand.
Access to advanced technologies
In addition to constantly striving to bring in new services to its offering, the cloud provider offers a wide range of extra services based on advanced technologies such as blockchain, machine learning, and IoT.
Choose cloud computing for your project
Without a doubt, cloud solutions are valuable and essential for your business. However, the knowledge and skills required to deliver and implement such a solution can be quite extensive and difficult to acquire.
Your team should be familiar with DevOps, learn how to work with AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud platforms, and understand the comprehensive cybersecurity measures required.
If you consider creating a cloud app for your business, feel free to contact TPP Software for our cloud app development service offerings.
