Despite being introduced almost a decade ago, cloud technologies only gained a good momentum in the last couple of years. Businesses that contemplate leveraging powerful technologies to accomplish their goals now look up to the cloud. But like every technology there is, the cloud is also constantly evolving. Strategic businesses need to be aware of such changes and trends in order to plan ahead and properly utilize the cloud for its countless benefits. 

That said, here is a list of major cloud computing trends that enterprises should keep an eye on this year. 

Exponential growth in cloud solutions

Software as a Service (SaaS) opened a flexible, more budget-friendly opportunity for businesses to use basic cloud services. But with the growth of IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service), the number and types of cloud solutions also expanded. Cloud computing solutions are expected to become even more affordable this year, enabling even SMBs and startups to accomplish their goals at an even faster pace than before. 

The potential of SaaS in accounting for a good majority of cloud-based workloads for 2017 exceeded the predictions made for the same in 2016. Considering such a performance, it’s safe to assume that cloud services will grow even more this year. SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, and XaaS (Anything as a Service) would be integrated more into business processes. 

Increased cloud storage capacity

As much as this is the age of the cloud, this is also the age of data. While cloud services become an integral part of businesses, we can also expect a proportional increase in data storage. There will be more data centers online, and the increase in storage capacity of the cloud would impact various industries across the globe including cloud hosting Dubai. 

Businesses will be able to store large data sets at a reasonable budget, facilitating the utilization of big data analytics to dig through the data and reveal insights on customer behavior, security vulnerabilities, strategic investments etc. 

The rise of 5G

With data poised to grow exponentially this year, the demand for faster and better internet connections would increase. 2018 should see an increase in effort from network providers to improve network connections. This means we may also move from the gigabyte LTE 4G speeds to full 5G connectivity faster than we imagined. 

If the internet quality and network connection speed increases, people will soon start expecting responsive, fast-loading services and applications. This is cue for businesses that want to prepare for such an evolution with responsive SaaS and PaaS services and websites. 

Augmented cloud security 

Despite the cloud’s ridiculous growth and dominance last year, we still witnessed a number of cyber-attacks that probably could have deterred even more businesses from moving to the cloud. This raised concerns regarding the security of cloud infrastructures. 

With cyber-attacks becoming increasingly complicated, cloud security analysts will also have to take it up a notch to become even more efficient in detecting and closing cloud vulnerabilities. 

Conclusion

Though cloud is now primarily the platform of choice for large applications of larger enterprises, we can expect a monumental shift this year where even smaller businesses would be able to take advantage of the technology, especially with IoT coming into the picture. Cloud will nevertheless keep on improving, debuting newer technological advances accessible to all kinds of businesses. An endless parade of exciting, innovative, and unique solutions could be on their way.