Tag: Cloud Application Development
In the digital age, cloud investment is your business’s propulsion, offering flexibility, scalability, and a competitive edge. However, many companies don’t fully reap the cloud’s benefits. The cloud’s potential remains untapped.
So, why is cloud investment crucial, and how does it contribute to a company’s success? Let’s explore! We’ll help you master cloud investment.
The Cloud: More Than a Buzzword!
In a rapidly evolving tech landscape, the cloud isn’t just jargon; it’s your business compass. It’s a dynamic virtual ecosystem transforming operations. But here’s the key point: merely having cloud infrastructure in place is just the starting point.
To truly unlock its potential, you need to understand how to maximize your cloud investment. Whether you’re a startup seeking growth or an enterprise aiming for efficiency, the cloud is your golden ticket to success.
Studies predict the global cloud computing market will surpass $2,321.1 billion by 2032, driven by a consistent 16% CAGR from 2023 to 2032. Companies of all sizes are increasingly recognizing the advantages of cloud technology, and you should, too!
So, let’s dive right in!
Unlocking the Cloud’s Potential
Why don’t some businesses make the most of the cloud? Their approach often holds the key.
Imagine having a sports car with a powerful engine but only using it for leisurely drives. That’s what it means to have cloud technology but not know how to utilize it fully.
Common pitfalls include choosing the wrong cloud model, neglecting data security, failing to optimize costs, and missing out on scalability. These elements can turn your cloud investment into a business powerhouse when managed effectively.
In the following sections, we’ll delve deeper into each area, providing you with a map to unlock your business cloud investment’s full potential.
Know Where You Stand!
Did you know? A staggering 92% of enterprises now utilize multiple cloud services.
Your business’s cloud potential is significant, and your cloud journey is pivotal for your business’s success and growth in today’s digital era. With the right approach, you can unleash the full potential of the cloud, boost efficiency, and drive innovation. Here is how you can know where you stand in your cloud potential
Step 1: Assess Your Current Cloud Environment
The first step in grasping your cloud potential is evaluating your existing cloud setup. Regardless of whether you’ve already transitioned to the cloud or are contemplating it, it’s crucial to gain a clear understanding of your current position.
- Cost Efficiency Metrics: Review your cloud spending. On average, organizations wasted 35% of their cloud budget in 2021.
- Performance Metrics: Measure your cloud infrastructure performance. Downtime carries a significant financial burden. Companies experiencing frequent outages and brownouts incur costs 16 times greater than those with fewer instances of downtime.
- Security and Compliance: Assess your security measures. The average cost of a data breach is $4.45 million.
Step 2: Establish Clear Objectives
Once you’ve gained a comprehensive view of your current cloud environment, it’s time to set precise goals for your cloud strategy. In a 2021 survey conducted by Gartner, a notable 80% of organizations indicated they had either transitioned to a cloud-first strategy, were planning to do so, or were considering it. Your objectives could include:
- Cost Optimization: Trim cloud wastage and streamline spending to enhance cost efficiency.
- Scalability: Ensure that your cloud environment can smoothly adapt to shifts in workload or demand.
- Innovation: Foster innovation by tapping into the cloud’s capabilities for data analytics, AI, and machine learning.
Step 3: Harness Data and Analytics
Data-driven decisions are the linchpin of maximizing your cloud potential. Leverage analytics tools to gain insights into your cloud usage and performance. This approach can assist you in spotting trends and identifying areas that require improvement.
Large enterprises are now prioritizing cloud adoption, aiming to move 60% of their operations to the cloud by 2025, underscoring the critical role of data-driven decision-making in business.
Step 4: Seek Expert Guidance
Do not hesitate to seek guidance from cloud experts on your cloud journey. Organizations achieve greater success in realizing their cloud goals when they have access to cloud experts. Collaborate with cloud service providers, managed service providers, or cloud consultants to navigate the cloud landscape effectively.
Step 5: Continuously Monitor and Adapt
Cloud technology is continually evolving. Routinely monitor your cloud environment and adapt to changes. This iterative process is pivotal in making the most of your cloud investment.
Now let’s understand why is embracing the cloud vital for future-readiness.
Read more: Cloud Application Development: Empowering Your Business in the Digital Era!
Why Embrace the Cloud for Future Readiness
In our dynamic business world, cloud adoption is more than a choice; it’s a strategic necessity. Let’s explore some reasons:
- Scalability and Flexibility: As your business grows, you can seamlessly adjust your cloud resources to meet increased demand. This flexibility ensures that you’re prepared to adapt to changing market conditions and accommodate rapid expansion.
- Cost Efficiency: The cloud allows you to pay only for the resources you use. This eliminates the need for heavy upfront investments in hardware and reduces operational costs. A well-managed cloud strategy can result in significant cost savings, which is vital for long-term sustainability.
- Innovation Acceleration: Cloud platforms offer a plethora of tools and services for data analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and more. Leveraging these capabilities can spark innovation, drive competitiveness, and enable your business to stay at the forefront of your industry.
- Global Reach: Cloud services allow businesses to reach customers and partners around the world. This global accessibility is crucial for international expansion and remaining competitive in a global marketplace.
- Security and Compliance: By migrating to the cloud, you can benefit from their expertise and state-of-the-art security protocols, enhancing your ability to protect sensitive data and adhere to industry regulations.
- Competitive Edge: Access to cutting-edge technology and the ability to swiftly respond to market changes can be differentiators in a crowded marketplace.
- Sustainability: Cloud providers are increasingly focused on sustainable practices. By migrating to the cloud, your business can reduce its carbon footprint through more energy-efficient data centers and shared resources.
How Can Fingent Help in Your Cloud Journey?
At Fingent, we understand that each business’s cloud journey is unique. We are committed to helping you unlock the full potential of your cloud investment. With a deep understanding of cloud technologies and a proven track record in cloud consulting, we offer:
Tailored Solutions: We’ll work closely with you to understand your business needs and provide customized solutions that align with your objectives.
Expert Guidance: Our team of cloud experts is always ready to assist you at every stage of your cloud journey, ensuring a smooth transition and ongoing success.
Innovation and Efficiency: We leverage the latest cloud technologies to drive innovation, enhance efficiency, and optimize costs, helping your business thrive in today’s competitive landscape.
So, take the plunge, make the most of your business cloud investment, and watch your business soar to new heights. The cloud is your oyster; it’s time to unlock its treasures! Give us a call today.
- Companies can save 20% of the total annual cost if they migrate to the cloud.
- Hyperscaler Cloud Services can enable businesses to experiment, build, innovate, and run any form of application.
- Hyperscaler adds immense value when creating custom software applications with a specified focus on the data center hardware and software needs.
Organizations of a variety of sizes are now able to reinvent how they operate and move more quickly and more agilely, thanks to the cloud. The move to the cloud has fundamentally changed how we perform our jobs, communicate, and interact. It is quickly becoming a requirement to be competitive in today’s digital environment.
Custom software applications powered by the cloud are a force to be reckoned with, and the benefits become manifold with hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and Google. What are these hyperscalers, and how can they supercharge your business? Let’s find out.
What are Cloud Services?
In very simple terms, cloud computing is access to computer services such as servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, intelligence, and more by means of the cloud (the Internet). With cloud computing, you can store and access data and programs on remote services hosted on the internet rather than the computer’s hard drive or local server. Cloud computing can be done with cloud services, which are essentially software programs that are hosted by third-party providers who make them available to users over the internet.
Studies recently revealed that, on a worldwide scale, 94% of all companies will use some kind of cloud computing service in 2023 to help them run their business operations. This is a 14% jump from 2020.
A major reason for this wide shift from on-premises servers of the companies to cloud providers is the ‘Pay as you go’ service offered by them, meaning that you only have to pay for the service that you are utilizing. However, the cloud offers more, much more!
How Does the Cloud Work and How Does it Benefit Businesses?
Just like any other IT solution, cloud services also rely on hardware and software. Users typically need just a computer, a stable internet connection, and operating systems to access cloud services.
Benefits To Businesses:
- Cost Reduction: This is a major factor that makes this technology desirable. On average, 20% of the total annual cost can be saved by companies if they migrate to the cloud.
- More Storage: Many tools are available on the cloud with the sole purpose of providing more storage capacity. Some examples include Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, and iCloud Drive.
- Higher Security Barricades: Another attractive feature of cloud services is their tight security regulations. A report by Salesforce states that 94% of businesses claimed to have seen an improvement in security after adopting cloud services.
Read more: Advance your business software development with Cloud Native. Download the complete 451 Research now and strategize a successful Cloud Native adoption process.
Hyperscalers: What Are They, And How Do They Add Value To Cloud Services?
Hyperscaler got its name from the data processing method known as “hyperscale computing,” which allows software architecture to expand and scale on an enterprise level. Hyperscalers enable their clients to experiment, build, innovate, and run any form of application—from a social network to a smart city to online banking—while controlling costs and operating with agility by offering users access to a ready-made, scalable infrastructure. Some famous examples of hyperscalers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). These technologies combined are reported to have an estimated 65% control over the cloud market.
Benefits Of Hyperscaler Cloud Services:
- Scalability: They can provide virtually unlimited computing resources, which enables organizations to scale their services and applications swiftly without worrying about hardware constraints.
- Global Availability: Users can easily access content with lower latency through hyperscalers, which boosts efficiency and user satisfaction.
- Security: Hyperscaler clouds provide a high level of security by frequently investing in infrastructure reliability, disaster recovery, and cybersecurity.
Value Added By The Big Three: AWS, Azure, and Google
Let’s now talk about these three hyperscalers:
AWS: Four primary elements of value—cost savings, employee productivity, operational resilience, and business agility—are measured and tracked by AWS to assist enterprises in developing an in-depth case for the cloud.
Azure: Azure is the only consistent hybrid cloud that delivers exceptional developer productivity, offers extensive, multi-layered security, including the most conformity coverage of any cloud provider, and costs less than AWS.
Google: Google’s solution provides a complete data foundation for unifying all workloads and overseeing the entire data life cycle. It can process data anywhere and is designed with and for AI, so you can obtain the most up-to-date tools for machine learning analysis, prompting, adjusting, training, and deploying unique foundation models—all while being connected to your business data.
How Can Custom Software Applications Benefit From These Hyperscalers?
Hyperscalers generally oversee the in-house technical skills of an IT team needed to customize data center hardware and software in accordance with the company’s business model and applications. This adds immense value when creating custom software applications.
AWS:
AWS offers many tools you can use to build custom SaaS applications and third-party SaaS solutions.
- Cognito: enables organizations to provide extra sign-in alternatives to their users.
- AD Connector: adds an extra degree of security.
- Quicksight: is a BI solution that you can use to provide simple insights to the people who work with you.
- Cost Explorer: displays and analyzes your costs and operations.
- Aurora Serverless: takes care of routine database chores, including provisioning, patching, backup, recovery, failure detection, and repair.
Azure:
Azure services can assist you throughout the process of custom software application planning, development, delivery, and operations.
- Github: It is a programming solution for collaboration and version control that allows you and others to work on projects from anywhere in the world.
- Azure Pipelines: Works with any language or platform and is used to simultaneously deploy services to multiple targets.
- Azure Boards: This tool lets teams organize, monitor, and talk about their work across the whole development cycle.
- Azure Monitor: This helps improve the responsiveness and availability of your services and apps.
- Visual Studio: This can be used to connect applications and services to Azure and create services that operate in the Azure cloud.
Google:
To help you create high-quality apps as quickly and dependably as possible, Google provides a wide range of resources.
- Firebase: It is used for cloud communications, performance monitoring, and authentication validation.
- Web: It offers information to assist you in enhancing your site’s organization, how it appears in Google searches, and the effectiveness of its user interface.
- The Cloud: Here, you can access services like BigQuery (for processing large, ready-only data sets), Compute Engine, and Cloud Storage.
- Tensor Flow: This tool is mostly used for machine learning and gives developers access to a variety of workflows and high-level, logical APIs to build machine learning models in a variety of languages.
Why Should You Choose Fingent?
Fingent is one of the top providers of technology solutions around the globe right now, serving customers from four different continents. To assist you with your projects, we provide top client-centered personnel who can help you with any of the three types of Cloud services – SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
With our team of experts, you can scale up or down as you need and manage and integrate cloud environments according to your business needs. We provide excellent pre- and post-development support by monitoring performance and making any necessary adjustments, and we are accessible at any level of development.
Give us a call, and let’s talk about how to get your business to succeed on the cloud.
“Cloud computing is really a no-brainer for any start-up because it allows you to test your business plan very quickly for little money. Every start-up, or even a division within a company that has an idea for something new, should be figuring out how to use cloud computing in its plan.” – Brad Jefferson, Animoto CEO.
Cloud Application Development, originally known as the modern cloud, was first invented in the 2000s. Today, “The Cloud” denotes servers that can be accessed through the Internet and the crux software and databases that are the backbone of those servers.
The cloud has consistently grown from its genesis and is currently the backbone of many leading organizations. In this article, we will look at Cloud Applications developments, their basic framework, advantages, best practices, challenges, and benefits.
What Is Cloud Computing?
As the name suggests, cloud computing is the distribution of various software services and the ability to access them proffered by cloud service providers to users or customers over the internet. These infrastructures include tools and applications like software, servers, data storage, networking, artificial intelligence, analytics, and databases. They essentially provide faster progress, more flexibility, and drastically reduce operational costs.
Read more: Choosing the right Cloud Service Model for your business – IaaS, PaaS, SaaS.
Types Of Cloud Services
There are three main types of cloud settings that are used widely for their efficiency and are generally referred to as “models for cloud development.”
1. IaaS –
Infrastructure-as-a-Service offers access to essential network structures on the cloud, like storage space, virtual servers, links, and networks for enterprises. All of this can be done without the business needing to purchase or maintain the internet infrastructure.
IaaS is also the oldest and most basic cloud computing model. Examples of businesses that utilize IaaS include Google Compute Engine, Azure Virtual Machines, and AWS EC2.
2. PaaS –
In Platform-as-a-Service service, developers can build or create a cloud application development framework and customize the software however they desire. In the PaaS model, software developers or services rent a cloud solutions company to develop an application.
The cloud solutions company then uses the infrastructure and operating systems to create development tools that offer better computing, database, memory, and data storage. Some examples of PaaS providers are Windows Azure and AWS.
3. SaaS –
Lastly, the Software-as-a-Service model delivers cloud software that grants users access to the internet without needing to install or maintain them. It is well known for its applications that can be built or developed even on a local terminal and deployed to a cloud-based server. Slack, MailChimp, Gmail, and Salesforce are a few examples of SaaS products.
Benefits Of Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing is by far the most cost-effective path that small or large organizations can take. Saving as much money as possible and cutting costs is a vital requisite for any business, and Cloud Computing can evidently help there. Aside from this, Cloud Computing also has other benefits:
1. High Availability
High availability in a system is undoubtedly a strong benefit for an organization as it will face negligible downtime. Downtime in cloud-based services is counted in seconds instead of minutes or hours.
“The primary benefit of moving an organization’s services to the cloud is near real-time deployment capabilities in a highly available architecture.” – John Breth Founder/Managing Principal at J.B.C.
2. Faster time to market
In a cloud-based application, developers can create new instances or retire them in mere seconds, allowing them to efficiently accelerate development with quick deployments. Cloud computing also supports new innovations and provides a platform for the easy testing of new ideas and designs without hardware limitations or slow retention processes.
3. Reliability
Reliability refers to how well a service can keep up with the promises it makes while performing tasks. It also fortifies highly available databases from randomly corrupting data records or deleting reports. Cloud computing proffers regular upgrades, updates, and damage control patches and tests its applications to make sure its services are perfect as promised.
4. Data loss prevention
Data loss is a major headache for most organizations and can lead to many complications, but Cloud computing can help here as well. With cloud computing, your data backup is up-to-date and disaster recovery is exceptionally fast. Uploading data into the cloud for storage can help prevent data loss even during emergencies, such as hardware malfunction, malicious cyber attacks, or simple user errors.
5. Automation
A great vantage in the world of technology is automation. This makes machines with quick automation a highly sought-after commodity. Every Google Cloud, IBM, AWS, and Azure product has a built-in API interface that makes it programable. Developers simply need to create, configure and demolish cloud-based resources with Software Development Kits (SDKs) written in Java, Python, JavaScript, and C++.
What is Cloud Application Development?
Now that we know the amazing benefits of the Cloud, let’s get into what Cloud Application Development is.
Cloud Application Development essentially is the creating, testing, deploying, and running of software services in the cloud. They are called cloud software because these applications are built in a cloud-based environment. Cloud Application Development involves various stages of software development; each of these stages devises the application to go live and hit the market successfully.
The biggest beneficiaries of cloud applications are business owners. This technology allows businesses to simplify their operations and gradually enhances their bottom line. Cloud-based applications also provide flexibility and enable you to adapt to the latest business trends in order to keep up with competition. Hence, most businesses have started to transition from on-premise to cloud-based software development methods.
Read more: Cloud Native: The Modern Way To Develop Software
Cloud Application Development Framework
Cloud App Development Framework is the tools and technologies needed to create, control, and administer cloud applications. The tools provided by Cloud Application Development Framework include developmental tools, middleware technology, administration managing software, and various other Cloud Applications.
Some of the more popular Cloud Application Development Frameworks are:
1. Java
Java frameworks, such as J2EE, Hibernate, and Spring are generally used by beginners because these frameworks make the whole development of strong cloud computing applications process very easy.
2. Azure
Azure is a famous platform that provides excellent security to cloud computing applications. Developers using this framework can easily integrate applications, systems, and data.
3. Google Cloud
The Google Cloud Architecture Framework is most famous for its best practices of secure, efficient, resilient, high-performing, and cost-effective applications.
Advantages Of Cloud Application Development
There are many advantages of Cloud Application Development but listed below are 5 of the most important and prominent ones:
1. Scalability
Scalability in terms of Cloud Computing refers to the ability of the application to increase or decrease IT resources when demands change. It is one of the greatest features of the cloud as it allows users to scale many machines and processing power simultaneously, making it a highly flexible service.
2. Cost Effectiveness
Business owners should be very mindful of their expenses and making smart decisions in order to curb extravagant expenses should be second nature to them. Cloud Application Development is extremely cost-effective as it follows a pay-as-you-go technique. Here the costs of using the cloud application are reflected directly in the needs of the customer, making the initial transition to a cloud service less complicated and pocket-friendly.
3. Security
The Cloud is widely famous for its airtight security and the secret lies in its method of data encryption and transfer of data over networks and storage databases. A report by RapidScale claimed that 94% of businesses noticed a big jump in security after switching to Cloud Computing Applications, and 91% stated that the Cloud makes it easier to abide by government compliance requirements.
4. Flexibility
Cloud Application Development proffers organizations with extreme flexibility and overall agility. Its top-notch flexibility and improved freedom make a significant impression on the overall efficiency of an organization. A survey conducted by InformationWeek said that “65% majority of respondents stated that the ability to quickly meet business demands was the most important reason a business should transition to a cloud-based environment.”
5. Accessibility
Due to its previously discussed scalability and flexibility, Cloud Application Development is highly accessible. The Cloud grants users the ability to quickly and easily use and store information anywhere on the internet. An internet cloud infrastructure is reportedly known for increasing an organization’s overall productivity and efficiency simply by making its data easily accessible.
Best Practices For Cloud Application Development
The better a Cloud Application Development process is, the more resilient and reliable its application is most likely to be:
- Understanding Business Needs And Requirements:
It is very important to first analyze your business needs and requirements before making any drastic investments. Understand the premise of your technological needs and check your organization’s budget before making the transition to cloud-based application development.
- Leveraging The Right Cloud Services And Tools:
Leverage your option in Cloud Services and look for the most beneficial and trustworthy service. Each service has its own data and supports a specific business goal. Ensure that these goals align with your own business goals.
- Building For Scalability And Flexibility:
Remember to keep maximum scalability and flexibility in mind when developing your Cloud Application. We have already seen how important these two factors are when it comes to the overall success of a business.
- Emphasizing Security:
Security of the highest quality is the most important factor when developing a cloud application. Secure your business data and emphasize to your partner the importance of data protection. Look for solutions that will respect your need for top-notch security and will provide it perfectly.
- Implementing Automation And Monitoring Tools:
Artificial Intelligence and many more emerging technologies are on the brink of changing the course of the world completely. Ensure to reap the benefits of these technologies as much as you can while developing a cloud application. These technologies can acutely benefit with automation and monitoring of cloud-based applications.
Challenges In Cloud Application Development
Just like any internet application, even cloud applications have their fair share of challenges during development. Listed below are a few of those challenges:
1. Security and Compliance
Security and Compliance of information is the biggest challenge in cloud application development because of its complicated nature and various operating conditions. These security issues can be rectified by employing encryption, security hardware, and security applications. Users should never cut corners when it comes to security practices when developing a new Cloud Application.
2. Integration With Legacy Systems
Since enterprise solutions have new applications that replace the legacy side of older applications and since these legacy systems were built without an API approach, it results in the older applications not being able to process newer, more modern technology applications such as IoT apps, Saas apps, and other similar applications.
3. Resource Management
The scale of modern data centers, the diversity of resource types, and their independent features, and in addition to this, the wide range of objectivities differ from one cloud ecosystem to another. All of these factors, put together, create a wedge in resource management.
4. Choosing The Right Cloud Service Provider
Finding a cloud service provider that is good at communicating and interpreting your business needs is rare but integral. It does not matter how long you take to find this perfect partner, patiently scrutinize all your options and look for a capable service provider.
Best Practices For Cloud Application Development
The better a Cloud Application Development process is, the more resilient and reliable its application is most likely to be:
1. Understanding Business Needs And Requirements
It is very important to first analyze your business needs and requirements before making any drastic investments. Understand the premise of your technological needs and check your organization’s budget before making the transition to cloud-based application development.
2. Leveraging The Right Cloud Services And Tools
Leverage your option in Cloud Services and look for the most beneficial and trustworthy service. Each service has its own data and supports a specific business goal. Ensure that these goals align with your own business goals.
3. Building For Scalability And Flexibility
Remember to keep maximum scalability and flexibility in mind when developing your Cloud Application. We have already seen how important these two factors are when it comes to the overall success of a business.
4. Emphasizing Security
The highest quality security is the most important factor when developing a cloud application. Secure your business data and emphasize the importance of data protection to your partner. Look for solutions that will respect your need for top-notch security and will provide it perfectly.
5. Implementing Automation And Monitoring Tools
Artificial Intelligence and many more emerging technologies are on the brink of changing the course of the world completely. Ensure to reap the benefits of these technologies as much as you can while developing a cloud application. These technologies can acutely benefit with automation and monitoring of cloud-based applications.
Use cases – Cloud Application Development
1. Enterprise Applications
Major examples of Enterprise Applications are Enterprise Dynamics 365, WordPress, and BambooHR, among many others.
2. Mobile Applications
Amazon, Shopify etc, are examples of mobile cloud computing and when we use our phones or tablets to track our account balance or make a purchase on e-commerce platforms, we interact with these applications.
3. IoT Applications
IoT device systems, including Google Nest or Alexa, are examples of IoT applications running on a cloud base. They collect data on the house’s energy usage, analyze the gathered data and make suitable suggestions to the homeowner on how to manage energy consumption.
4. E-commerce Application
Elastic Beanstalk from Amazon Web Services is used for its online storefront, web apps, and API structure. With this application, online vendors need not know anything about network maintenance to launch and control customized applications quickly.
How Can Fingent Help?
Fingent top custom software development company is a world-renowned service provider with stable markets and satisfied customers on four continents. Our experts utilize the latest and fast-emerging advanced technology to make your project development process easy and flawless. Their experience in cloud-based technology will aid your business in exploiting all aspects of the cloud. We have our own unique approach to developing a cloud application and have countless customers with happy reviews to back them up. Give us a call, and let us get talking.
For more than a decade, businesses in all industries have undergone a digital metamorphosis. This evolution is marked by a transition from on-premises software solutions to cloud-based computing technology.
By leveraging cloud-computing resources, businesses can gain access to scalable assets, increase organizational performance, and optimize digital agility.
It’s a mistake to think about cloud solutions primarily as software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. While these technologies are a valuable component of business modernization, they’re only the tip of the iceberg.
Businesses that create their own cloud-native applications can truly harness the power of discrete cloud technologies to deliver long-lasting competive advantages. As their name implies, cloud-native applications are “native” to the cloud computing environment. In other words, cloud-native software development involves creating applications in components optimized for deployment in the cloud instead of a physical computing environment.
What Is Cloud-Native Development?
In simple terms, cloud-native software development is the process of creating applications using core cloud-computing principles and resources. The architecture of cloud-native applications is highly scalable, responsive, and dynamic.
Cloud-native applications are designed to be deployed and run in cloud computing environments, and as such, they offer a number of benefits to developers. Some of the advantages of developing cloud-native applications include:
- Scalability: Cloud-native applications can easily (and often automatically) scale up or down to meet changing demand with consistent performance levels, making them well-suited for applications with fluctuating usage patterns.
- High availability: Cloud-native applications can be designed to be highly available, meaning they can withstand failures and continue to function even in the event of a hardware or software failure.
- Elasticity and Agile development: Using independent microservices isolates the effects of changes, making it easier for developers to iterate on their products and respond to customer needs.
- Cost efficiency: By leveraging the economies of scale offered by cloud providers, businesses can reduce their infrastructure costs and invest in building and improving their applications.
- Integration with cloud services: Cloud-native applications can easily integrate with other cloud-based services, such as databases, messaging systems, and analytics tools, which can simplify development and improve the functionality of the application.
Overall, the main advantage of cloud-native applications is that they are designed to take full advantage of the capabilities of cloud computing environments, which can help developers build and deploy applications more quickly, efficiently, and at lower costs.
Additionally, many cloud-native applications are “cloud-agnostic,” meaning they can be run on a range of cloud providers (hyperscalers) or function in multi-cloud environments. Much of the appeal of cloud-native software development lies in the ability to yield adaptable and versatile applications. Sometimes applications can benefit from services that are only available from certain cloud providers, which risks “vendor lockin,” so it pays to consider the trade-offs carefully.
Read more: Can Moving to Cloud Native Improve Business Agility?
Why Modern Businesses Need Cloud-Native Development
Like on-premises computing resources, software created with traditional application-development practices are bound by the limits of that technology. As such, they can’t provide the quality of experience that modern audiences expect.
Additionally, applications developed in an old-school environment often need re-factoring to try to match the performance of cloud-native alternatives when the former is introduced to a cloud environment.
By leveraging cloud-native development services, modern businesses can facilitate their digital transformation on a faster time horizon. Cloud-native processes enable businesses to serve their customers better and deliver a frictionless user experience.
Top businesses in virtually all industries leverage cloud-native development. Those that neglect to do so will fall further behind these trailblazers and find it challenging to maintain a foothold within their respective markets.
Adopting cloud-native processes is no longer an optional step—it’s become necessary for businesses that want to thrive in the digital marketplace.
Top Benefits of Cloud-Native Software Development
Your business can tap into the multiple benefits of investing in cloud-native software development. Specifically, your organization can:
1. Streamline the User Experience (UX)
When the goal of cloud native is to develop applications that can serve your business while adjusting to the speed of changing technology, the end user is always the priority.
Because of the improved speed of development and the ability to make changes during the development process, cloud native puts UX first. While there are many ways to enhance the UX, investing in cloud-native development is one of the most effective approaches.
2. Improves Development Strategy
Cloud-native applications enable developers to leverage two essential UX-centric methodologies: continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD).
Continuous integration is the process of merging code changes using automation. Multiple developers can merge code changes into a centralized project to streamline app development and generate a cohesive, fully functional product.
Continuous delivery addresses post-release application software updates. Instead of occasionally pushing out massive updates, CD involves delivering smaller updates more frequently. This short-cycle approach improves software delivery and performance while yielding a super UX.
Moreover, microservices can be easier to implement with quality assurance automation, which elevates achievable levels of code quality.
3. Protect Business Continuity
Making dynamic, user-friendly applications a central part of your business model can give you a competitive edge in the modern marketplace. However, if your application goes down, customer frustrations will mount, and your brand could experience lasting reputational damage as a result.
Since cloud-native apps can tap into stand-alone, scalable cloud resources, these products are far less likely to experience extended outages due to spiking utilization. Developers can more rapidly isolate and remedy the issue, as well as rapidly test changes when a cloud-native app experiences downtime, thereby protecting business continuity.
4. Meet Evolving Demands for Services
In the digitized marketplace, it seems as if customers’ expectations and demands are in a constant state of flux. Unfortunately, it can be difficult — if not impossible — to pivot rapidly using legacy application development processes.
Cloud-native architectures can give your organization the agility it needs to respond to sudden shifts in customer expectations. For instance, you could add a new feature that enables customers to communicate easily with your brand. You could also frequently update your app’s capabilities to improve overall performance and stay relevant in the digital marketplace.
Read more: Cloud-Native Application Development: How It’s Powering App Delivery
When Should Businesses Shift to Cloud-Native?
The short answer is “yesterday.”
In the long run, cloud-native software development outperforms traditional application development practices at every turn. Cloud-native development reduces risk, has broader scalability, and allows developers to make changes more quickly. Most notably, the speed of delivery is far and above one of the most compelling advantages of shifting to a cloud-native approach.
Your organization is undoubtedly using cloud-based computing resources in at least some capacity. You can complete the transition by modernizing your cloud-native development processes, too. Doing so will empower your business to regain a competitive edge within your respective industry.
At the same time, one should consider the downsides of cloud applications. Some cloud-native applications can be more complex than traditional applications, due to the need to integrate with multiple cloud-based services and manage distributed systems. This can create more opportunities for something to fail.
While cloud native applications can be cost-effective they can also be more expensive than traditional applications in certain situations, particularly if they require a large number of resources or if they have high usage patterns.
The Nexus Between Cloud-Native Development and Business Modernization
Today’s customers want the freedom to interact with brands across multiple touchpoints. This holds true whether your target audience consists of individual consumers or business-to-business (B2B) clients.
Modern businesses live up to this customer expectation by providing their clients access to user-friendly, intuitive, and dynamic applications. These organizations can expand their reach in the digital marketplace, connect with a broader audience, eliminate friction from purchasing processes, and generate more revenue, all by transitioning to cloud-native development.
Conventional, monolithic application development practices often present a significant hurdle to large-scale integrations, digital transformation and business modernization efforts. Your business can’t achieve its digital transformation goals without fully embracing the cloud-computing environment and its many resources.
Examining the Business Impact of Cloud-Native
The notion that cloud-native software development is the new gold standard isn’t just pure conjecture. This fact is supported by numerous case studies and research projects, including a recent business impact brief by 451 Research.
In the brief, the organization’s team reported that:
- 64% of companies develop at least half of their applications using cloud-native technology
- 49% of companies have partially or fully adopted Kubernetes
- 55% of companies have partially or completely adopted containers
451 Research analysts concluded that cloud-native software development has gone beyond the development process and evolved into a full-fledged methodology. As such, it should continue gaining momentum among brands passionate about actualizing digital transformation.
And that’s just the barest overview. Managers can review 451 Research’s business impact brief by downloading the report.
Why Choose Fingent for Cloud-Native Development?
Fingent’s suite of cloud-native software development services is designed to deliver maximum value to our clients. When leveraging Fingent’s cloud-native development services, your organization will experience:
- Consistent, High-Quality Results: As a client-oriented cloud-native development firm, Fingent focuses on providing high-quality, consistent results that exceed expectations. Our robust, agile teams and dynamic quality assurance practices ensure that our deliverables expressly meet your needs and address your most significant organizational pain points.
- Best-of-Breed Solutions: Fingent’s unique approach enables us to provide world-class cloud-native software development services that produce best-of-breed solutions. These cost-effective solutions will align with your budget and delivery timetable. With Fingent, you won’t have any last-minute surprises like budgeting issues or missed deadlines.
- Prebuilt Services: Fingent’s talented team can build truly custom solutions for your organization. However, we can also expedite development by leveraging prebuilt frameworks, applications, and microservices for common functions that are a staple of virtually all industries. Some of these prebuilt services include cognitive AI, shipment, and payment service functions.
- Pay-as-You-Go Models: With Fingent, you can transition away from speculative technology spending — that is, purchasing new machines and acquiring more infrastructure in anticipation that you will succeed. While it’s important to believe in your business and plan for its success, tying up resources on unneeded equipment for months or years will only harm your bottom line. But Fingent enables you to break the cycle of speculative spending and rely more on operational expenses (OPEX). Instead of letting new hardware gather dust in the data center until its eventual use, you can access additional servers on-demand via a cloud-native infrastructure.
- Scalability: As your business grows, you must have the flexibility to support additional users at a moment’s notice. However, scaling IT capabilities can too time-consuming, and costly if you are limited by monolithic software architectures.Take advantage of Fingent’s expertise to create your cloud-native capabilities that are able to support more users in more locations, all while accommodating a dynamic array of devices.
- Speed of Delivery: Fingent can help you stay on top by providing an expedited speed of delivery via cloud-native solutions. Skip the need to field a development team with the right mix of skills but assigning your project to Fingent. We facilitate an accelerated speed of delivery by shifting away from a “big bang” approach to project management when practical and instead focusing on achieving meaningful milestones across the project’s development life. We have the deep bench of personnel needed to keep projects moving ahead at the optimal speed.
- Transparent Project Management: At Fingent, we always keep our clients in the loop. We’ll routinely provide you with updates regarding the status of your cloud-native development project. We pride ourselves on setting firm deadlines and adhering to them.
If you’re ready to achieve business modernization and make your organization a standout player in your industry, take advantage of Fingent’s cloud-native services. Contact us to discuss your latest project.
Although rapid change has become a necessity of life in this world of instant gratification, obsolescence-avoidance and generating value from technology over a long period of time are critical. Modernizing a business model is an ongoing project. The faster you can build and distribute your product or service to your customer, the more competitive you are.
This is what cloud-native is built to handle!
The rapid growth of virtualization technologies and the popularity of distributed frameworks hastened the trend to migrate applications to the cloud. Cloud-native is a powerful new application-building approach using independent components (microservices, and other concepts) that are fast and simple to test and modify.
Are you pondering over a shift to the cloud? This blog will help you understand all you need to know about cloud-native. We are also listing out key benefits you can expect in your cloud journey.
What are Cloud-Native Apps?
Cloud-native apps are tools and applications that function in the cloud. These are highly scalable and fast. Cloud-native apps use the Platform as service tools and agile methodology to transform the entire software development process. Cloud-native apps are hosted using services from the hyperscalers (e.g., AWS, Google, Microsoft) but need not be bound to a particular cloud vendor.
Cloud-native apps should not be mistaken for another tool or another platform. It is a complete shift to a set of different practices, design, accelerated production environment, and more. It means a transformation within the entire development team of an organization.
Read more: Cloud-Native Application Development: How It’s Powering App Delivery!
Why Is Cloud-Native Important Today?
Today’s digital marketplace needs to deal with several challenges. And cloud-native computing paradigm is an apt response to those challenges. To stay relevant, businesses are expected to respond quickly to changing customer needs, and new market opportunities, and keep up with the emergence of disruptive technologies.
Cloud-native gives an organization the flexibility it needs to meet growing business requirements by addressing concerns about software reliability, security, and data management.
Let us delve deep into two important aspects: agility and reliability.
1. Agility
Regardless of what the business is, all organizations must ensure their technology continues to provide value. In software, agility is demonstrated by quick responses to new demands, made possible by reducing the time taken to deliver new features and resolve bugs.
Cloud-native practices enable organizations to respond quickly and scale up or down to handle increased or decreased demand. With modular and flexible software businesses can pivot easily when they face challenges and respond faster to customer demands, market trends, and employee preferences.
2. Reliability
Building software around cloud-native practices helps you create simpler and highly scalable applications that are more reliable and secure.
But the advantages go beyond that.
You can utilize the native security offerings provided by cloud providers. These security offerings extend the cloud provider’s security knowledge and learnings into your application, increasing your security.
In a nutshell, improved agility will help you move faster and react more quickly to security vulnerabilities that impact your applications and your organization. Thus, you will be less likely to fall victim to threats from bad actors.
Read more: Can Moving to Cloud-Native Improve Business Agility?
Increasing Business Benefits of Cloud-Native App
Different industries benefit differently from cloud-native technology. These features are what will set your business apart from your competing organizations. However, these benefits support the goals of all industries of varying sizes and scopes. Here are key benefits:
1. Reduced rollout time
The top goal for any business is a quicker time to market. Reduced rollout time offers a competitive advantage allowing businesses to embrace the current trends. Over the lifetime of an application, cloud-native practices result in faster product development and launch for updates of bug fixes and new features enhancements.
2. Cost-effective
Legacy architecture confined organizations to fixed resources regardless of their involvement in the software development process. This led costlier process as the backup was an additional service.
In cloud-native infrastructure, all solutions are designed to function on the cloud. This reduces costs on backup, maintenance, development, and usage of resources. Opting for pay per use model can drive down costs considerably.
3. Ease of management
Using a serverless platform enables straightforward infrastructure management as it does not need configuring an on-premise network and storage. With the growing popularity of cloud-native platforms, companies can reduce the time for infrastructure setup. Given that, they can now better use existing human resources in more relevant ways.
4. Improved customer experience
Traditional applications required a dedicated team for each task and long periods of time to update the software. With cloud-native apps, you no longer require to spend so much time and resources for an enhanced customer experience. The majority of customers use mobiles, and cloud-native applications take a mobile-first approach. It places emphasis on customer experience far greater than the traditional applications.
5. Reduced vendor lock-in
It is essential to choose a vendor who assures performance, security, and maintenance. However, one may have to stick to the same vendor due to the time and effort invested, even when they deliver poor quality service. With cloud-native infrastructure, you can avoid vendor lock-in by allowing services from multiple cloud providers.
6. Reusability and serverless platforms
The cloud-native infrastructure uses serverless platforms to upload portions of the code. This allows the development team to reuse the individual parts of a project’s code as they develop a new project. Since each part of the cloud-native services function contains its own logic, it saves the development team time and expense.
7. Easy troubleshooting
Cloud-native infrastructure has an inherent fault-tolerant mechanism. How does this work? The entire application is divided into microservices. Each of these microservices acts as a separate service function, which makes tracing the origin of the issue is much easier. Once the issue is tracked, it is isolated and fixed at the source. Testing microservices is faster because each one has limited interaction with the rest of the application. That means far fewer opportunities for the introduction of “unexpected” side effects.
Build Your Cloud-Native App with Fingent
With applications at the center of almost every business strategy, all industries have become software companies. Businesses that hope to be leaders in their space need the competitive edge provided by high-quality, custom-built software – developed and deployed fast.
Fingent top custom software development company understands how this journey requires investing in processes, infrastructure, and architecture to compete in the current, fast-changing marketplace. Fingent is uniquely positioned to partner with companies to deliver solutions. Let us bring our experience as applied technologists to help you maintain the technology effectiveness that meets the operational challenges and customer expectations of your business.
Applications are at the front and center of business strategy today. Software-driven business transformation requires new apps that can be developed and delivered faster. Organizations need a new platform to support these changes – one that can deliver high-quality apps.
Globally, cloud platforms are redefining the way enterprises scale their businesses. Enterprises are under tremendous pressure to develop and deploy applications faster and more efficiently. Cloud-native applications help tech-savvy enterprises stay ahead of the competition.
Today, cloud-native application development has emerged as an innovative concept. It has altered the way software applications are developed, shipped, and managed. This article discusses in detail what cloud-native application development is. It will also explain how cloud-native application development is empowering app delivery.
What Is Cloud-Native Application Development?
A cloud-native application is designed for cloud computing architecture. These applications are built and hosted in the cloud. Cloud-native application development is an approach that exploits the flexibility, scalability, and resilience of cloud computing. It includes various tools and techniques used by software developers to build applications for the public cloud.
Cloud-native takes full advantage of the cloud computing model. Therefore, it efficiently combines architecture and technology that enable the design, development, and operation of workloads in the cloud. Cloud-native application development empowers you to gain a competitive advantage by quickly bringing ideas to market.
Cloud-native applications have shorter application lifecycles and are highly resilient, manageable, and observable. They speed up the development of new applications, optimize existing ones while connecting all of them.
Cloud-native application development is mostly based on microservices. Microservices are discrete and reusable components that can be used in any cloud environment. It is a multidimensional approach. It represents a cycle where complete focus is on the journey rather than the destination. Hence, it is all about building new applications and modernizing the existing ones on the principles of the cloud.
Read more: A Comprehensive Guide To Modern Cloud Application Development
What Is Cloud-Native Architecture and How It Empowers App Delivery?
Cloud-native follows five architectural features. These features are microservices, APIs (application programming interfaces, containers, backing services, modern design. These help businesses ship products faster, implement their customer’s needs, create value quicker, and aid collaboration between developers and IT specialists. Let’s consider each of them:
1. Microservices
It becomes easier to scale when a monolithic application is broken into many smaller pieces. These pieces are called microservices. Each of these microservices is designed to be autonomous, independent, and self-contained.
This approach is advantageous as each microservice can be deployed, upgraded, scaled, and restarted: without impacting the end-user. Microservices are independent and so you can eliminate dependencies and coordination efforts. The teams can work parallelly, thereby increasing velocity. Microservices enable elasticity-a key attribute of cloud computing.
2. Containers
Containers are crucial for packaging and running cloud-native applications. Microservices are grouped into container images and deployed onto a host operating system as they are faster and lighter.
Containerization allows the bundling of a cloud-native application into a single unit. This unit may contain libraries, configuration files, or other components that the application needs. The containerization process makes it easy to test, move, and deploy the applications.
Because of its agile nature, you can start or stop a container at a moment’s notice and remove any defective instances. Container system guarantees consistency and increases application portability across cloud systems.
3. Backing services
Cloud-native systems depend on ancillary resources. These resources include data stores, message brokers, monitoring, and identity services. These are called backing services. You could develop them in-house or simply select from a rich assortment of managed backing services offered by vendors. The latter is a better option as it can significantly save you time and labor.
As backing services can be bound dynamically to a microservice, it acts as an attached resource but decoupled from the application and remains interchangeable. In a nutshell, backing services can be attached to and detached from a microservice using a configuration management tool.
4. Application programming interfaces (APIs)
Microservices need an intrinsic mechanism to talk to each other. Plus, Client-facing microservices need to accept and respond to user requests. Application programming interfaces are those software connectors that can send and receive data, metadata, and service requests.
In cloud-native applications, RESTful APIs manage communication between microservices. Furthermore, APIs expose functionality that other software can use. It is a good practice to avoid touching the underlying code. As a best practice, APIs make it is easy to extend or customize applications without disturbing the underlying code.
5. Modern design
Despite having a wide variety of tools and techniques, one cannot avoid all challenges that arise in application development. So, IT teams must develop customized application monitoring and management methods. These methods must suit the organizations’ cloud model and IT infrastructure.
Watch: How InfinCE – A Digital Workplace Orchestration Platform, Can Help you Seamlessly Experience Infinite Cloud For Your Enterprise!
Why Is Cloud-Native Important Now?
Cloud-native is a cost-effective way that brings ideas to market quickly. Here are a few characteristics that make cloud-native critical for business growth:
- Auto-scalability: Cloud-native applications can scale services automatically and independently and do not require daily management.
- Elasticity: These applications and services can scale in-out and up-down as the demand changes ensuring efficient usage of resources.
- Speed of deployment: Businesses receive faster feedback and delivery when continuous delivery and deployment are used. It results in faster shipping of applications.
- Resilience: These services can survive outages and failures and remain online as disaster recovery mechanisms are available in the cloud.
- Cost-effective: As these applications are cloud-based, computing and storage resources can scale as needed. Thus, eliminating the need for overprovisioning. Businesses can use containers to maximize the number of microservices run on the host. It saves time, resources, and money.
- Easy to manage: As cloud-native applications use automation, developers can track all microservices and components as they are updated. The team can focus on a specific microservice without worrying about how it will interact with the other services.
- Visibility: It is easy for the teams to study applications and learn how they function together, as a microservice architecture isolates services.
Read more: Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps To Accomplish A Flawless Transitions
Key Takeaways
Cloud-native application development is here to stay. Businesses will continue to use cloud-native technologies for agility and efficiency benefits. Most importantly, it is a cost-effective way to architect new applications. Businesses must consider the tradeoff between cost, effort, and time involved in moving to a cloud-native architecture.
The transition towards a cloud-based digital-first organization can be hassle-free when you have the right partner to guide you through it. At Fingent, our developers have the experience and know-how to do it right for you.
Give us a call and let’s get talking!
The “cloud” is a part of an evolution in IT services. IT services took the mainframe and turned it into the cloud. In the beginning, the on-premise IT department was the be-all and end-all. Over time, things have changed. There began a shift in service providers, service levels expectations, and experiences.
Businesses that leverage cloud capabilities uncover new possibilities and alternatives to fulfill the everchanging demands of their business. This is the time for businesses to think beyond cloud migration.
Most businesses see cloud adoption as the culmination of the journey. Instead, they must recognize that the cloud is a future-proofing continuum. A technology that provides flexible access to a collection of dynamic, ever-improving services.
The pandemic has hastened the cloud adoption pace so NOW is the opportunity to build on this momentum and continue transforming at this new pace. Why?
Why Do Businesses Need To Think Beyond Cloud Migration?
Soon, any app or infrastructure that is not based on the cloud will be considered a legacy. Cloud is no longer a mere technological approach for delivering applications. It will serve as a foundation for corporate innovation and a sustainable supply chain.
When organizations employ the cloud as a future operating model, they set up a technological base that will assist them today and into the future. The cloud continuum includes various forms of ownership and location. All these are dynamically enabled by next-generation connectivity like 5G.
Cloud continuum helps businesses visualize a path from on-premises to cloud migration. Businesses can apply the continuum concepts throughout their technology stack. This includes everything from infrastructure to network to apps, and beyond.
Read on to find out how cloud continuum strategy can help your business realize its full potential.
Read more: Cloud Security Best Practices | Why is cloud security important?
How Cloud Continuum Strategy Can Help Businesses Realize Their Potential
The cloud continuum is made up of several technologies. Setting clear priorities will support all elements of the business and this will help all in your organization to move together towards your business objectives.
- Achieve best possible results: The cloud continuum strategy enables companies to collect incremental feedback. Such feedback will help businesses adjust their aims to obtain the best possible results. This way they can constantly align their objectives.
- A catalyst to accelerate innovation: The cloud continuum is a readymade strategy. It helps organizations improve decision-making and capitalize on new possibilities to disrupt and distinguish through accelerated innovation. It is a new-age innovation accelerator essential for increased agility and future-ready business advantage.
- Elevate customer experience: Businesses can elevate customer experience to the next level with the cloud continuum.
- Enhanced skill and talent: The cloud continuum strategy will contribute to an efficient and effective work environment. It addresses gaps and continuously adapts to change as a continuum best practice.
- Manage scale awareness: The cloud continuum addresses the challenges an organization faces with regard to computing, performance, and latency limits.
- Improves ecosystem network effect: Improvement of network ecosystem depends on the number of ecosystem personnel and their engagement. The more value drivers you have, the better is quantity and quality of the participants.
Read more: Improve Business Planning with SAP Analytics Cloud!
Keys To Unlocking The Potential Of The Cloud Continuum
Holistic and human-centric cloud continuum strategy depends on speed and change. You need agile techniques that can capitalize on continuous enhancements. Here are four keys that will help you unlock the potential of the cloud continuum:
1. Have a clear vision of your goal
Your cloud continuum strategy must address:
Vision: Establish future goals for a resilient and sustainable business. Also, devise a strategy for technical debt reduction.
Competitive landscape: Every organization has weaknesses and vulnerabilities that a competition seeks to take advantage of. Hence, identify any gaps in the supply chain and competitive ecosystem.
Skills and talents continuum: To achieve your business goals in the future, you need to locate and retain relevant skills and expertise today. The foundation you build today will enable you to define your pathway and help you win the talent war.
2. Establish cloud practices
Be agile and adaptive: Make sure you combine technology adoption with strict discipline. This will allow you to modify your non-technology areas as computational advances. Doing so will help you steer ahead of your competition.
Incorporate mobility into the creation of new processes. This will allow for more flexibility in the future.
3. Deliver extraordinary experiences
Recognize that experience is at the heart of your business: Customer experience and employee experience can be a gamechanger for your business. Hence, ensure to make your investments available and accessible to both your employees and customers.
4. Stick to your cloud continuum strategy
Stay on your business journey by sticking to your strategy: You may face several challenges in helping various departments in your organization to understand and stick to your cloud continuum strategy. However, do not give up on your strategy. Educate and encourage everyone in your organization to comprehend and comply with the strategy.
Do you still feel unsure? Here are some use cases that will help you see how some major organizations were reinvented on the cloud continuum.
Read more: Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps to Accomplish a Flawless Transition
How Organizations Are Being Reinvented On The Cloud Continuum
3M
During the pandemic, 3M plants struggled to gather, transfer, and use the data from their production systems. The organization then pushed the data from the plant’s on-premises SQL Server to Azure SQL Edge. This enabled a faster and more streamlined process. By the end of 2020, 3M was able to double its production of N95 masks.
Sephora
Sephora uses AI and AR to provide extraordinary experiences to all its customers.
Starbucks
Starbucks is well-positioned in the cloud continuum. It continues to innovate and grow despite socio-economic upheavals. It was able to stay ahead of its competition because it collects feedback and adapts its goals continuously.
It also ensures to provide a personalized experience for 100 million weekly customers by creating AI-driven recommendations.
Are You Ready For The Cloud Continuum?
The past year has been a witness to how fast an organization can pivot in the face of a crisis. Now is the golden opportunity to unlock your business potential with the cloud continuum. You too can stay ahead of your pack by becoming a continuum competitor. Partner with Fingent top custom software development company and see for yourself how your business will be transformed to be faster, more agile, and more successful. Let’s get talking!
Digital transformation was already happening across every industry, but the pandemic has accelerated the pace. Unfortunately, while many organizations have embraced the reality of rapid change, some of the companies have been slow to adopt new technologies.
Looking specifically at cloud solutions, companies that migrate some or all of their digital assets to the cloud can achieve transformational results. It is helping companies to innovate faster, modernize outdated infrastructure, get better insights from their data, scale globally, and restructure the existing business models to create better customer experiences.
Cloud migration allows easy access to data and applications from anywhere, making business functions smoother and simple to operate. This blog will help you understand why you need cloud migration now and the drivers that boost legacy cloud migration.
Why should you consider migration to the cloud?
Cloud migration can improve the performance and competitiveness of your organization. Often, system performance is poor, and maintenance costs are high. Any incompatibility with new technologies can cause problems when altering these systems as they cannot keep up to date at the same speed at which your business needs to innovate and scale. Additionally, lack of vendor support and regular updates for old systems can compromise the data security, making application migration to the cloud imperative.
Read more: Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps to Accomplish a Flawless Transition
Common challenges associated with cloud migration
Cloud migration can be complex and risky, and many organizations face challenges during the transition.
1. Poor strategy and planning
Many organizations migrate to the cloud without proper planning or a good strategy. For a successful cloud implementation, organizations must plan well. As every application and dataset has different requirements, they will need a different approach to cloud migration. So, enterprises must have a valid business case for every workload it migrates to the cloud.
2. Vendor lock-in
This is a common problem faced by organizations that adopt cloud technology. While cloud providers offer many services, these services sometimes cannot be extended to other cloud platforms. Many organizations that start using cloud services often find it difficult to switch providers if the existing provider does not suit their requirements.
3. Data security and compliance
Data security and compliance are major obstacles to cloud migration. Cloud services often use a shared responsibility model in which they take the responsibility of securing the infrastructure while the organization takes responsibility for security data and workloads. It means you are responsible for configuring the security measures correctly and ensuring that all services and applications have proper security controls.
4. Cost Management
Many companies don’t have clear KPIs to understand what they plan to spend or save after migration, making it difficult to know if the migration was successful from the cost point of view. Additionally, as the cloud environment is dynamic, the costs can change as new services are adopted, and application usage grows.
Read more: A Comprehensive Guide To Modern Cloud Application Development
What are the drivers that encourage cloud migration?
1. Hassle-free digital transformation
With recent advances in cloud computing, leaders can digitize their core functionalities such as SAP, CRM, data analytics, and more. From innovating to improving productivity to unlocking new sources of revenue, the cloud provides endless opportunities to enterprises that migrate away from legacy systems.
2. Accelerate growth
Whether it is organic expansion, mergers, or acquisitions, technology is accelerating organizational growth. Organizations leveraging the cloud can integrate new acquisitions seamlessly with the existing platforms and also scale rapidly using auto-scaling functionality and flexible data management services.
3. Better Security
Data security is turning significant. By migrating to the cloud, enterprises can update their IT infrastructure according to the latest practices and protect their applications from malicious hacking attempts.
While many leaders mistakenly think that the cloud itself makes an organization secure, in reality, it empowers groups to implement governance, strict security policies, and compliance guardrails needed for their operations.
4. Improve business agility
To stay ahead of your competitors, you must be agile. It means you need to have access to flexible and on-demand IT resources. With the cloud, over 99% of resources are available on-demand. Also, enterprises don’t have to wait endlessly for any hardware component and installation. They can lease valuable capabilities from their cloud providers and get to the market faster.
5. Reduce costs
Yet another reason for businesses to migrate to the cloud is to reduce IT costs. You can easily find the right-size resources in the cloud according to your business needs and cut unnecessary costs. Also, companies can adjust capacity needs whenever the need arises and eliminate unnecessary hardware.
6. Merge data centers
With cloud computing, companies do not have to manage their own on-premises data centers. Instead, they can outsource back-end responsibilities to their cloud providers and use their resources for higher-value activities. Additionally, companies can consolidate their operations and distribute cloud services whenever needed, improving efficiency.
7. Leverage modern technologies
Migrating to the cloud allows businesses to leverage new technologies. For example, companies can take advantage of AI and machine learning which are not feasible on-premises. They can also take advantage of complex cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes containers and data lakes easily.
Read more: 6 Reasons Why The FinTech Industry Should Embrace Legacy Cloud Migration
Conclusion
To avail of the migration benefits, you must successfully move your on-premises IT infrastructure to the cloud. As a cloud expert, we help understand the challenges and help you make a smooth transition without disrupting your current operations.
At Fingent, we offer a single control plane for the performance and security products to ensure seamless legacy cloud migration. In addition, we enable easy integration with public, private, or hybrid cloud. So connect with our experts today, and know, how we can help you take your business to new heights with seamless cloud migrations.
The cloud approach is gaining immense popularity amongst businesses due to its scalability, enhanced productivity, and cost-effectiveness. According to Cisco, in 2021, over 94% of workload and computing processes will be hosted on the cloud. While many firms are already implementing and thriving with the Cloud, a few still remain to deploy this technology. This blog is a simple guide to help you understand every aspect of the Cloud, and how your business can drive success with Cloud Application Development!
What’s Ahead?
- Knowing the Cloud!
- What is a ‘Cloud-based Application’?
- Benefits of a Cloud App
- Types of Cloud Application
- Key Features to Consider When Developing a Cloud Application
- Some Examples Of Cloud Application
- Developing a Cloud Application
- A Look at the Tools to Build Cloud-based Apps
- Challenges of Cloud-based Application Development
- A Few Common FAQs
- Conclusion
Knowing the Cloud!
In simple terms, the cloud refers to software or service that is accessed over the internet. The cloud uses data centers to store data, which enables easy access of files and applications from anywhere and from any device.
For businesses, leveraging cloud technology can immensely reduce IT costs and overhead, eliminating frequent updates and maintenance of servers. Cloud computing can also simplify international operations for companies by allowing seamless access and control of files and data from anywhere. Google Drive, Dropbox, Apple iCloud, and Microsoft OneDrive are some widely used cloud services today.
Read more: Why It’s Time to Embrace Cloud and Mobility Trends To Recession-Proof Your Business?
What is a ‘Cloud-based Application’?
In the last decade, cloud computing has experienced a tremendous investment. By the end of 2023, the global cloud market is estimated to reach over $ 623 billion.
Typically, a cloud-based app is an Internet-run program having its components stored online with some or all of its processes carried out in the cloud. These on-demand services allow you to access computer networks, storage, or resources using the internet.
Cloud-based solutions help businesses augment capacity, scalability, and functionality while at the same time reduce maintenance and cost for computer infrastructure or in-house teams.
Common solutions provided by cloud-based applications may include;
- File storage and sharing
- Order entry,
- Inventory management
- Word processing
- Customer relationship management (CRM)
- Data collection
- Financial accounting features
Benefits of a Cloud App
The cloud is creating a huge impact on businesses. According to Gartner, over 60% of companies will majorly rely on the cloud for their operations by 2022. Of course, this means that the cloud has some huge benefits to offer for businesses. Here are a few to highlight.
1. Improved data sharing and security
The data stored in the cloud is easily and instantly available to authorized users. Since the cloud offers easy availability of data, security and privacy are often a concern. That is why the advancements in cloud technology have majorly focused on providing enhanced data security. Many cloud providers now guarantee improved data security, making the cloud the best source for secure storage. Also in case of disaster recovery is inevitable, the cloud provides a streamlined solution to restore and back up data.
2. Improved collaboration
Cloud-based apps and software enable organizations to make collaboration an easy and effective process. These applications provide easy data sharing and editing options allowing employees to work effectively on projects remotely and in real-time. Role-based access control enables better monitoring of tasks, and improves team management, especially when operating remotely. Improved collaborations can help enterprises to reduce time-to-market and enhance customer service. InfinCE is a prime example of how enterprises can use a cloud-based app to improve team collaboration. The app provides centralized management, enhanced visibility, and easy communication that drives operational efficiency and productivity.
3. Cost-effective
The cloud space can be scaled up or down depending on your business needs. Cloud service providers allow you to pay per usage of the cloud infrastructure allowing you to only pay for the services you need. Most cloud providers offer seamless concierge support and regular maintenance, which in turn immensely helps reduce the stress and cost of maintenance. Moreover, there is no need to invest separately on devices to store data, as the cloud ensures safe and secured data storage. Put simply, cloud-based apps help enterprises reduce the upfront cost of the IT infrastructure and hence are a cost-effective solution.
Types of Cloud Application
To proceed with cloud application development, you will have to decide what type of app you would want to create. One way to classify the categories is about the differences in the app architecture.
SaaS – Software as a Service
SaaS serves both cloud apps as well as individuals. These apps run on third-party hardware and not on the user’s device. Also, the software is hosted remotely. A big advantage of SaaS is that you don’t have to spend on additional hardware or buy licenses for every software update.
IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
This type of product often requires middleware and app support from the clients. The customer may have to create a custom programming bridge between the application and its operating system. However, with IaaS, one can develop a customized product without building the basic components from scratch.
PaaS – Platform as a Service
This cloud-based app development requires the application code from the customer. PaaS providers allow their customers to use their hardware and basic development software. As this software is updated constantly, developers can use only its latest version. PaaS is flexible and lets the users scale the product as per their needs. Cost efficiency and flexibility are some of the major benefits of PaaS.
Read more: Cloud Migration Strategy: 7 Steps to Accomplish a Flawless Transition
Key Features to Consider When Developing a Cloud Application
The Cloud is a powerful technology, which if leveraged the right way can do wonders for your company. That is why it is imperative to be clear and sure of what benefits you need exactly to derive out of the cloud application development. Here are a few things to consider when fixing the features of your cloud application.
One of the most eminent features of the cloud is that it provides ample space for flexibility and scalability. With the cloud, one can empower safe storage of data that can be expanded as per convenience.
Most users prefer the cloud because of its storage facilities. However, its security is always a concern. When investing in cloud application development, one must highly prioritize app and data security by ensuring a code-based architecture for improved security.
Although the cloud delivers unlimited benefits, cloud hosting comes with a cost. Thus, data size optimization and condensed user requests should be the top priorities while developing a cloud platform.
To ensure you attain maximum benefits from these and the many other features of the cloud, it is imperative that you partner with developers who are highly aware and experienced with the diverse cloud platforms so that you attain software that perfectly suits your business needs. Moreover, following an agile method of development would allow you to collaborate better with your developers, programmers, designers, data architects, and QA managers for improved development efficiency. At Fingent, we ensure client participation at every stage of app development.
Some Examples of Cloud Application
Most of the apps we use today, utilize the cloud in one way or another. Cloud application development has given birth to some amazing tools and services that make operating businesses a little less stressful. Here are a few to point out!
- InfinCE: Provides streamlined and simplified IT Infrastructure, centralized management, enhanced work collaboration, access to unlimited productivity tools, all under a single platform.
- Dropbox or Google Drive: This allows you to store your files on the cloud easily and help others access them from anywhere.
- Figma: This powerful cloud-based design app is gaining popularity due to its collaborative nature.
- Miro: This provides a virtual board that enables you to work with other users in creative and fun ways.
The possibility to collaborate with users from all over the world, even in real-time is one of the biggest advantages of cloud apps.
Read more: InfinCE – Untangling Technology for Businesses
Developing a Cloud Application
Cloud application development involves different stages, each of which matters to enable your app to hit the market. Most cloud application development teams use DevOps practices and tools such as Kubernetes to ensure an effective and successful project.
At Fingent, we analyze your business needs and custom-build apps that solve your business complexities. We can help you seamlessly transit to the cloud and efficiently deploy its benefits to achieve greater business growth and value.
A Look at the Tools to Build Cloud-based Apps
A wrong tech approach can slow down your business development, so the technological stack is of utmost importance when developing cloud-based apps. You can choose a cloud service vendor from market leaders such as;
- Amazon Web Services(AWS) – In 2019, it obtained a 32% market share and became the leading provider. AWS includes over 140 flexible and integrative services. This allows you to build almost any custom app.
- Google Cloud Platform – As a PaaS, it offers you cloud computing, API services, advanced analytics, storage, NoSQL database service, and even virtual machines. It is flexible, affordable and a great platform for start-ups.
- Microsoft Azure- Its solutions are designed for enterprises looking for scaling or having many web products. Its services may include ML modules, mobile back-end, database services, and virtual machines.
Cloud-based app structure
- Another aspect to consider when cloud application development is the data architecture. A cloud app operates as a collection of interconnected services or APIs. So, to get maximum benefits of cloud services, you will have to connect them and at the same time understand the kind of components you have while ensuring that those services are integrated.
- Next, you must consider data organization. Remember, the app architecture must instruct the cloud services about how to decouple the data. This will help you store the app components either on a public or private cloud. As a result, your business will become flexible and enable you to make your web performance better.
- You must develop a communication logic between the data and services of your app. The app components should communicate instantly. If the logic is not well-designed, the customer experience could be poor due to slow loading speed. So, optimize the communication and apply either single-channel streaming or system message grouping.
- Scaling is something you must think of in advance. Create a margin of safety for your operational channels and consider future traffic extensions. Make sure to build an operational model to help back-end components and storage server customers especially in extreme situations.
- The last issue to think about is the security algorithm. Banking, retail, or healthcare have their dedicated standards so make sure your tools meet their expectations. Make sure to check the security algorithms for any vulnerabilities of your cloud-based solutions and the encryption is strong. Also, implement a cloud identity and access management (IAM) approach, to ensure your product is secure and cost-effective.
Read more: 7 Reasons For Enterprises To Implement Multi-Cloud Strategy In 2020
Challenges of Cloud-based Application Development
When you decide to opt for a cloud-based software solution you should figure whether your company can be a cloud provider (SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS) or build an app based on third-party cloud solutions.
If you decide to be the cloud provider, you will have to think of issues such as the data processing logic, hardware, and service security as you will have to host your service and provide the users with a cloud network. If you decide to develop your app on a third-party cloud, you will have to consider the integration and so you will have to choose your provider carefully.
Here are a few challenges that you may come across during cloud application development.
- Reliability: Your cloud software design includes critical operations that need to work if you want your customers to benefit from the solution. Avoid using a cloud framework that cannot maintain important processes. You can consider backup data and operations with a private cloud.
- Scalability: You must ensure to provide a scalable solution with the service you have chosen. If a product can’t be scaled or it falls over due to sudden traffic surges or you are unable to deliver services to a large audience regularly, you are bound to lose potential profits to your business.
- Performance: More data centers mean the better your app will perform. Global providers place their servers in such a way that users can experience the same page loading speed from any location. If the number of servers is less or the custom UI needs more than three seconds to load, the app customer experience is likely to be poor. More loading time means less conversion. The app loading speed is defined by a Content Distribution Network(CDN) which is a part of the cloud app infrastructure.
- Interoperability: The cloud environment should be able to run your app on different devices and integrate other cloud services into your infrastructure. However, as all cloud systems do not communicate with each other, you may not have a chance to mix components from different services.
- Security: Security especially client-side along with storage protection will remain challenging for developers. Security is the biggest challenge when it comes to adopting cloud computing. Cloud apps may include API integrations. These apps also must be easily accessible for users. To raise the security level of your cloud-based app, you will have to leverage strong data encryption, SSL, and reverse proxy.
A Few Common FAQs
1. What are cloud-based technologies?
These technologies are applications, services, or resources that are made available to users on-demand via the internet from cloud computing providers’ servers.
2. How do cloud applications work?
To process logic, a cloud-based app relies on remote servers. This is accessed through a web browser using the internet.
3. What are the different types of cloud computing?
There are three types of cloud computing; public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud.
4. What are the different types of cloud services?
Cloud services are of four types – serverless, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS).
5. What is the difference between a web application and a cloud application?
A web-based application requires some or all the software to be downloaded from the web every time it is run. On the other hand, a cloud-based application function within the cloud and is similar to a web-based application as well as a native desktop application.
Conclusion
From cost reduction and scaling opportunities to higher accessibility of the final product. Cloud application development offers a host of benefits to businesses. However, cloud application development has its own set of complexities if not carried out the right way. A custom software development partner plus a trusted cloud service provider like Fingent can help you seamlessly transit to the cloud with 24/7 concierge support and consultation. Get in touch with us today to discuss your project!