2016 was a year of evolution for many small and medium-sized businesses ascending to some form of cloud services. With cloud SMB services market projected to compound to $208.6B in 2018, there is no question, cloud service providers will be a catalyst that can scale your business easily. Cloud service providers are always improving their offerings and meeting the concerns of security.
As more CIO’s start to become more comfortable with cloud computing products that power their business, we will start to see more mission critical applications moved to the cloud in 2017. Here are some cloud computing trends your business should look at with great focus for 2017.
1) Security will see a rise in priority
It always has been a concern for companies moving to the cloud in 2016 and it will continue, and for good reason. With every big hack of 2016, it proves the focus on layered IT security and encryption needs to be even greater than it was before.
Microsoft Azure and other cloud providers are dedicating vast resources to ensure layered protection to your infrastructure.
2) More focus on cost control
As your cloud environment matures and you reach steady state with users, a pay-as-you-go model can exceed pretty high costs. Cloud service providers can help you optimize your costs with lower expenses that adapt to your specific business.
Look for providers that don’t bind you to an agreement with multiple years of contracts. Flexibility and agile scalability is a great benefit that will help you grow in a competitive cloud landscape.
3) We’re Going Serverless
The term “serverless” is a bit of a misnomer, as you will still have applications running on a cloud server. The big change here is there is absolutely zero responsibility for you to maintain a physical server in your office. Monitoring and daily maintenance will all be provided by your cloud service provider. Speedier applications at a fraction of the cost are attractive advantages SMB’s can utilize.
2017 could be the year of migration for your business and workforce. The good news is you’ll be spending less time managing these systems and more time overcoming things like security breaches and adapting to a fast growing workforce by leveraging your operations to the cloud. Cloud service providers can address every issue to any solution while capitalizing on scalability, agility, and cost-efficiency.
