Last year we witnessed an impressive increase of public cloud use in various business sectors. We saw that IT managers rely heavily on cloud services in more than 40% of surveyed cases. Compared to 2015, where we had less than 20% of IT executives who were cloud dependent, this is a substantial increase. The question now is, what’s going to happen with public cloud in 2017? what are the public cloud trends for 2017?
We have every reason to believe that there are a number of companies willing to embrace the benefits of public cloud services this year, but with some hold back due to concerns regarding security.
Your business isn’t utilizing public cloud?
Here’s a proven recipe to stay behind your competitors: stay away from the public cloud and see what happens. Alternatively, some businesses labeled as conservative are quickly changing their technology strategy once confronted with some of the well-known benefits associated with the public cloud, such as cost efficiency and flexibility. It seems that a desire to achieve a competitive advantage overcome all potential security concerns and prejudices related to new technology solutions.
The cloud data centers map will never be the same
The providers of cloud services are thinking globally, but also acting locally. That’s the reason why a growing number of cloud-related infrastructure has been built with local objectives in mind. Furthermore, in order to meet the growing demand, some cloud providers have been placing smaller data centers in more than one location globally. Take AURO for example, the first Canadian enterprise public cloud, which boasts two data centers in both Vancouver and Toronto.
Still have some security concerns?
Security is definitely the main obstacle when it comes to public cloud adoption on a much wider scale. Public cloud services are also aware of this problem, and are working around the clock to reach the security standards reserved for the public cloud sector. For instance, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are making significant investments when it comes to their cloud security components. In addition, they are promoting public cloud as a reliable and secure option that contributes to customer trust and confidence in this type of service.
Final thoughts
The lack of public cloud solutions in your company puts you behind you competitors for 3 to 4 years, maybe even more. Moving your applications into the cloud can help your business scale with your customer base and maximizes your ROI and shift your fixed costs to variable operational costs. Public clouds often offer no-commitment, pay as you go pricing models. With the cloud, you can also geographically disperse your data to use different locations as a backup source.
