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“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.

Reinventing. Transforming. Scaling – that is what Cloud Native can mean for businesses today!
Cloud-Native can help businesses achieve phenomenal success and improve their ability to deliver more features faster to their customers. It can bring in a major competitive advantage.
This technology increases the velocity of the business and the method to structure their teams to take advantage of automation and scalability.
Are you a business that is starting a digital transformation journey? Or are you wondering what Cloud Native is and why you need it?
This blog describes the advantages of Cloud Native capabilities to speed up your productivity and increase your company’s innovation output. It also discusses upcoming trends to look for.
Read more: Unlocking Opportunities with Cloud Continuum!

Can Moving to a Cloud-Native Approach Improve Business Agility?

Most organizations today are in the midst of a massive data transformation to out-innovate their rivals. The Cloud Native approach allows organizations to build modern applications by leveraging its benefits based on the pay-as-you-go pricing model.
Here is how moving to a Cloud-Native approach improves your business agility:

1. Increased Reusability Reduces Development Costs

Moving to the Cloud Native approach enables developers to build apps that function like building blocks that can be used later for other projects. It makes it easier for developers to access and reuse components created for earlier projects.
How does this improve business agility?

• Simplified development process: Instead of spending time on building the common framework, developers can spend more time on a project’s specifics. This means they can develop more sophisticated applications in less time.
• Faster delivery: All deliveries are time-sensitive. A cloud-native approach enables you to seize the time-sensitive opportunity by reducing the time to market.
• Testing made simple: Cloud-Native uses microservices that present fewer problems. When the load on the pipeline is lightened, the testing is simplified.

2. Better Customer Experience 

Two types of customers are affected by the Cloud Native approach – external customers (those who purchase from you) and internal customers (those development teams).

• Internal customer: Your internal customers or the development teams maintain and manage the systems that your external customers use. Fostering agility in your internal teams improves employee engagement and in turn rewards external customers. Developers are smart people who want to spend their time solving complex problems instead of focusing on just ‘keeping things running.’ The Cloud Native approach automates predictable problems, making better use of your internal team. This allows them to focus more on driving innovation.
• External customers: Building and delivering solutions in response to customer needs will attract and retain customers, in effect building enduring success. Cloud-Native helps find and fix problems faster. It is especially beneficial to businesses with apps that required frequent updates. Cloud-Native gives you a reliable way to deliver those updates in a seamless, resource-efficient manner. This means there is little or no disruption of services during updates while improving responsiveness to the demand they might have.

3. Improved Business Continuity

Downtime can be detrimental to a business’s survival. However, Cloud Native offers a remedy to this. Moving to Cloud-Native keeps operations lean enough to survive whatever turn the market takes.
It also improves business continuity and aids in disaster recovery as it reduces downtime and increases resource availability. It allows employees to work from any location and enables integrated and automated backups. It can also unify processes on a single interface and improve visibility. 

4. Ability to respond to shifting market demands

Cloud-Native is a significant means of spotting an opportunity a moment before a competitor. It provides businesses the ability to respond in hours to sudden changes in the market.
Cloud-Native apps are ideal instruments in turbulent or hypercompetitive markets. Whether a business needs new ways to connect with customers or is undergoing digital transformations, Cloud Native apps enable them to take advantage of sudden opportunities in the market.
Read more: Cloud-Native Application Development: How It’s Powering App Delivery

A Look into The Cloud Native Upcoming Trends

Here are the most relevant Cloud-Native trends businesses can watch out for:

1. Serverless Computing 

Serverless computing is a next-gen technology that ensures agility, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. Essentially, it is a new way of running applications and services that enables developers to focus on building customer-centric applications and optimizing application design.
The operational cost of serverless computing is much lower as it enables IT and development teams to work together. It allows them to share the responsibility of developing and maintaining a product.

2. Distributed Cloud or Multicloud

Another noteworthy trend is the adoption of distributed cloud. It is a method that combines the benefits of the public cloud with an organization’s ability to maintain governance of the infrastructure.
Distributed cloud or Multicloud allows businesses to use the infrastructure of multiple cloud providers simultaneously. You can leave IT management to the providers by deciding the location of the individual services and data archives.

3. Composable application

In the future, businesses will have to free themselves from the rigid divisional barriers that are not compatible with the flexibility of organizations.
A composable application will allow for a more modern software design and organization model. This will allow businesses to quickly create and dispose of the features that are according to the specific business needs.

4. Law-code or No-code

The ability to perform multiple business operations with minimum dependency on the technology team is key to business growth and sustainability.
Using Kubernetes, organizations can create flexible solutions that extensively use low-code or no-code tools. Given that, the non-technical team is free to focus on their roles without specific programming skills.
Read more: A Comprehensive Guide To Modern Cloud Application Development

Become Future Ready

The Cloud Native approach proposes a truly effective model and makes business innovation through the integration of applications.
To embrace the benefits of the cloud, be ready to embrace changes within your entire project lifecycle.  In other words, adopting Cloud Native applications means being ready to welcome future developments in cloud services.
It means opening the doors to opportunities for the future digital business. The cloud-native approach not only helps business innovate faster but help them react to marketplace events with more agility. Wondering how to make this happen for your business?
Let’s have a chat!

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 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

A Quick Guide on the Cloud Service Models – Saas, IaaS, Paas!

The world is changing, quickly and fast; and to adapt to these growing changes, businesses are experiencing unprecedented stress on maintaining a robust and cost-effective IT Infrastructure. But thanks to Cloud Computing and its various service models – Saas, IaaS, Paas, businesses now have the option to move beyond on-premise IT Infrastructure for improved processing and storage capacity.

The future of computing is in the cloud! Missing out on it can definitely slow down the progress and performance abilities of a company. But before we dig deeper on how to seamlessly deploy Cloud Computing, let’s shed some light on what is cloud computing and what are cloud service models?

What is Cloud Computing?

If simply put, Cloud Computing is a model that offers convenient, on-demand network access to a pool of shared resources. This may include data storage, databases, servers, networking, tools, or any other resources that can be accessed through the internet. Speaking of cloud server models, cloud computing is offered in various service models, each of which satisfies unique business requirements. These servers are mainly of three types: Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS), about which you will read in detail below.

Once signed up with cloud service models Saas, IaaS, and Paas, one can leverage wider possibilities to bring flexibility and efficiency to support greater business growth. Enterprise cloud platforms like InfinCE makes this transition to the cloud even more seamless, providing the right security, control, and flexibility to scale and adapt with time.

Over the years cloud services have witnessed exponential growth worldwide. The global cloud computing market size was valued at USD 274.79 billion in 2020. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.1% from 2021 to 2028. With the COVID19 pandemic giving rise to remote work culture, and with many industries gaining opportunities from advanced technologies like AI and machine learning, cloud computing is turning key with its ability to empower businesses with the flexibility to innovate and transform with growing technologies.

Fig: U.S. Cloud Computing Market, Source – Grand View Research

What these reports signify is a steady adoption of cloud services by businesses across the world to tackle the entire range of operations they do. Application development in cloud computing provides an extensive, flexible, and affordable way to implement cloud service models. Meanwhile, numerous leading players in the information technology sector now compete to deliver flexible cloud services for both the public and enterprises.

Increasing competition means better delivery of services and innovations, which can deeply benefit scaling up your business. Hence, now is the right time to deploy a cloud model into your business infrastructure.

What’s Ahead?

• Why does your business need Cloud Computing?
• What are Cloud Service Models?
• Adopting Cloud – Choosing between SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS
• SaaS
• IaaS
• PaaS
• What should you know about DaaS?
• Why is it important to choose the right Cloud Service Model?
• How can Cloud support your Custom Software needs?
• Cloud Service Models SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS: What fits your business?

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2020 Turning The Year Of Multi-Cloud Adoption for Enterprises

There has been a lot of hype going on around businesses adopting multi-cloud strategies that make use of public, private, and hybrid cloud services. Businesses, especially the mid-market and enterprise-level industries can utilize multi-cloud strategy as a smart investment by leveraging the benefits of its resilient performance and virtual infrastructure.

A multi-cloud strategy is all about adopting a mixture of IAAS (Infrastructure As A Service) services from multiple cloud providers and sharing workloads among each of these services which are reliable, secure, flexible, and of course cost-effective. 

Why Must Businesses Opt For A Multi-Cloud Strategy?

Businesses can adopt a multi-cloud strategy to acquire an optimal distribution of assets across the user’s cloud-hosting environments. With a multi-cloud strategy, businesses can have access to multiple options such as favorable Service Level Agreement terms and conditions, greater upload speed selection, customizable capacity, cost terms, and many more.

How Can Businesses Make A Multi-Cloud Adoption Decision?

Multi-cloud adoption decisions are based on 3 major considerations:

• Sourcing – Agility can be improved and chances of vendor lock-in can be avoided or minimized by sourcing. This decision can be driven by factors such as performance, data sovereignty, availability, regulatory requirements, and so on.
• Architecture – Architecture is a major decision-driver as many modern applications are mostly of modular fashion that can span multiple cloud providers and obtain services from any number of clouds.
• Governance – Businesses can now standardize policies, procedures, processes, and even share tools that can enable cost governance. By adopting services from multiple cloud providers, enterprises can now ensure operational control, unify administrative processes, and monitor their IT systems more effectively and efficiently.

Better disaster recovery and easier migration are the other key benefits that drive enterprises to adopt multi-cloud strategies.

Related Reading: Cloud Computing Trends To Expect In 2020

Top 7 Reasons To Adopt Multi-Cloud For Your Business

• Ability To Find The Best-In-Class Multi-Cloud Providers

Businesses administrators can bring in the best-in-class cloud hosting providers for each task that best suits their requirements. In a recent survey by Gartner, 81% of respondents said that the multi-cloud approach proved beneficial to them. Businesses are free to make their decisions based on the sourcing, architecture, and governance factors as mentioned above.

• Agility

According to a recent study by RightScale, organizations leverage almost 5 different cloud platforms on average. This figure shows the transformation of enterprises increasingly towards multi-cloud environments. Businesses struggling with legacy IT systems, hardware suppliers, and on-premise structures can benefit from adopting multi-cloud infrastructures to improve agility as well as workload mobility amongst heterogeneous cloud platforms.

• Flexibility And Scalability

With a competent multi-cloud adoption, enterprises can now scale their storage up or down based on their requirements. A multi-cloud environment is a perfect place for the storage of data with proper automation as well as real-time syncing. Based on the requirements of individual data segments, businesses can depend on multiple cloud vendors specifically. For improved scalability, enterprises must focus on achieving the following 4 key factors:

1. A single view of each cloud asset
2. Portable application design
3. The capability to automate and orchestrate across multiple clouds
4. Improved workload placement

•  Network Performance Improvement

With a multi-cloud interconnection, enterprises can now create high-speed, low-latency infrastructures. This helps to reduce the costs associated with integrating clouds with the existing IT system. When businesses extend their networks to multiple providers in this manner, proximity is ensured and low-latency connections are established that in turn improves the application’s response time along with providing the user a better experience. 

• Improved Risk Management

Risk management is a great advantage that multi-cloud strategies can provide businesses with. For instance, consider the case where a vendor has an infrastructure meltdown or an attack. A multi-cloud user can mitigate the risk by switching to another service provider or back up or to a private cloud, immediately. Adopting redundant, independent systems that provide robust authentication features, vulnerability testing as well as API assets consolidation ensure proper risk management. 

• Prevention Of Vendor Lock-In

With a multi-cloud strategy, enterprises can evaluate the benefits, terms, and pitfalls of multiple service providers and can choose the option to switch to another vendor after negotiation and careful validation. Analyzing terms and conditions before signing a partnership with a vendor can prevent vendor lock-in situations.

• Competitive Pricing

Enterprises can choose between the vendors and select the best-suited based on their offerings such as adjustable contracts, flexible payment schemes, the capacity to customize, and many other features.

To learn more about adopting an effective multi-cloud strategy and the benefits it offers, drop us a call and talk to an expert. 

A Look Into The Cloud Computing Trends for 2020

“Fewer, but larger, public cloud platform providers and a maturing SaaS ecosystem will dominate enterprise cloud spending” – The Public Cloud Market Outlook, 2019 To 2022 Forrester Report.

Organizations are recognizing the importance of cloud computing and are adopting the technology steadily over the past few years. With recent technological advancements creating new excitement around the idea of cloud computing, the adoption is now skyrocketing! 

According to Gartner, the worldwide public cloud services market will gain a positive growth of 17% in 2020. That is an increase from $227.8 billion in 2019 to 266.4 billion in 2020. This makes it vital for organizations to identify the forces that will shape the cloud computing market this year. This article will help you with this as we discuss five specific trends that will transform cloud computing in 2020.

Why Keep Up with Cloud Computing?

Aggregated mostly around Amazon, Google and Microsoft, the cloud market underwent a profound change in the recent past. The pace for cloud adoption and innovation will inevitably continue to accelerate across industries and regions providing new opportunities, and new levels of quality and efficiency. The question you must be asking is: What is in store for the cloud computing market and how should you prepare for it in 2020?

1. Shifting Gears from Multi-Cloud to Hybrid-Cloud

2019 has seen how organizations routinely deployed workloads across multiple clouds. In order to achieve expected outcomes in business, organizations will have to adopt the right and appropriate cloud strategy. A hybrid cloud computing structure uses an orchestration of local servers, private cloud, and third-party public cloud services to achieve desired results. According to The RightScale 2019 State of The Cloud Report, the hybrid cloud adoption rate was estimated at 58% last year.

In this transitional era, the hybrid-cloud will become an integral part of the long-term vision for industries on how they will meet their needs. It can provide a seamless experience to enterprises and help them solve complicated challenges around latency. Customers too won’t have to deal with two different pieces of infrastructure; on-premise and public cloud. Thus, the shift to a hybrid-cloud will make things easier for both the organization as well as the customers.

Related Reading: Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure: How It Benefits Your Business

2. Serverless Computing 

“Serverless computation is going to fundamentally change not only the economics of what is back-end computing, but it’s going to be the core of the future of distributed computing,” says Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer at Microsoft. This comment clearly shows what the future of serverless computing is. 

Serverless computing ensures that developers must only focus on their core product without worrying about operating and managing the servers. This is an advantage that moves enterprises to adopt serverless computing. According to Gartner, more than 20% of global enterprises will deploy serverless computing technologies by 2020.

3. Cloud Security will Become Paramount

Many organizations feel that cloud computing could pose security issues. They might have concerns about regulatory and privacy issues, along with compliance and governance issues. Consequently, security features of public data have become the key focus in 2020. It will not be just about access controls or policy creations. Aspects such as data encryption, cloud workload security, and threat intelligence will gain priority as part of an organization’s security measures. 2020 will also see security features such as privileged access management and shared responsibility models.

According to Kristin Davis of 42crunch.com, 2019 became the year where API Security threats came to notice. As the year progressed, we have observed a lot of high profile API breaches and vulnerabilities, including the ones at Facebook, Amazon Ring, GitHub, Cisco, Kubernetes, Uber, Verizon, etc. In their October 2019  report, Gartner estimates that by 2021, exposed APIs will form a larger attack surface than UIs for 90% of web-enabled applications. In 2020, we expect API security getting to the top of the agenda of a chief information security officer. Also, DevOps tools and processes are expanding to DevSecOps, to lower the risks and implement security by design. 

Mihai Corbuleac, Senior IT Consultant at StratusPointIT predicts security acquisitions to make more headlines in 2020, it has made the headlines over the last year. It is because all cloud companies that can’t develop in-house modern security solutions have to look to buy them.

Related Reading: How Secure is Your Business in a Multi-Cloud Environment

4. Digital Natives

As the workforce evolves, the expectations of the workers will definitely increase. Those joining the workforce will be well-acquainted with cloud computing and its advantages. Such workers are called ‘digital natives.’  

Organizations will have two sets of workers as a consequence: those who have adopted digital best practices and those who have not. This would call for a need to train the second set of workers, which is called ‘reverse mentoring.’ The adoption of cloud computing and related technologies will enable organizations to integrate both the workgroups into one unified workforce. 

5. Quantum Computing 

Quantum computing requires massive hardware developments. This opens up the potential to exponentially increase the efficiency of computers in 2020. It allows computers and their servers to process more rapidly than ever before. Quantum computing also has the potential to limit energy consumption. It requires lesser consumption of electricity while generating massive amounts of computing energy. Best of all, quantum computing can have a positive effect on the environment and the economy. 

Are You Keeping Up the Pace? 

Whether you are a large organization or a small one, cloud computing will remain a compelling, fast-moving force in 2020. Adopting cloud computing technology will enable organizations to mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities. Ultimately, organizations will have a number of decisions to make with regards to cloud computing. It will include deciding when and how to adopt cloud computing technology, as well as for deciding on the specific model they would like to adopt. 

Related Reading: Cloud Migration: Essentials to Know Before You Jump on the Bandwagon

With years of experience in helping clients transform their business by the power of the cloud, Fingent can help you understand and implement this technology seamlessly in your business. Contact us to know more.

Why Businesses With Matured Cloud Footprints Should Move To The Hyper Hybrid Cloud?

The Cloud is no longer an option. It is the revolution that has become inevitable for businesses and more and more businesses are recognizing this and moving their data into the cloud. They are implementing mature cloud strategies that call for comprehensive cloud management solutions. They need a solution, which can handle the scale and complexity involved in advanced integration and orchestration. The hyper-hybrid cloud becomes extremely important here and is paving new operational avenues for all businesses. 

This blog explains the reasons why and how your business can benefit from moving on to the hyper-hybrid cloud.

Understanding What Hyper-Hybrid Cloud Is

The hyper-hybrid cloud is the best of two cloud services, private and public. Let’s break it up to get the complete sense of the term. 

In business terms, the word ‘hyper’ means greater, or more than usual, and ‘hybrid’ means mixed. As the name suggests, hyper-hybrid makes use of both on-premises private cloud, as well as third party public cloud resources but with increased diversity, and complexity. 

The hyper-hybrid cloud forms an inter-routed plumbing system, as it were, between private and public clouds with greater flexibility according to the businesses demand, needs, and cost changes. It also provides virtualization and virtualization software management so that businesses can easily visualize hardware assets and move them to a private or public cloud as the need may be. This is the reason why many industries are moving towards the hyper-hybrid cloud instead of getting locked in with only a private or public provider.

Related Reading: Core Challenges While Enterprises Move to Hybrid Cloud and DevOps

Should Your Business Move to the Hyper-hybrid Cloud?

With the massive array of options available at hand, businesses are adopting a “multi-cloud” strategy as opposed to the cloud strategy. This means that they are adopting a hybrid cloud with at least one public cloud and one private cloud. What they need is a system with multiple applications and infrastructure services on both the cloud platforms with flexibility and maneuverability. That is what ‘the hyper-hybrid cloud’ is.

Although some businesses are successful with public cloud providers, a few others have found it necessary to keep some resources private due to cost, performance, and compliance considerations. Consider these questions to check if your business is suitable for a hyper-hybrid cloud model:

• Is your business serving a number of verticals, each with a different IT security and performance requirement?
• Do you want to optimize cloud investment without compromising the value proposition of private or public cloud technologies?
• Do you want to improve security on existing cloud solutions?
• Do you want a cloud solution where you can conveniently switch between public and private clouds depending on your needs and what the market offers?

If your answer is yes, then moving on to the hyper-hybrid cloud is your best option.

Related Reading: How Secure is Your Business in a Multi-Cloud Environment

Five Incredible Benefits of the Hyper-hybrid Cloud

• Flexibility: Varying IT demands can be managed with greater flexibility. The distribution of workloads across private and public infrastructure based on performance, cost and security can be easily handled in line with your business policies. 

• Increased automation and consistency: As your business grows, you cannot afford to spend too much time on your resource utilization projects which must remain accurate, nonetheless. The hyper-hybrid cloud helps your business automate processes by implementing rules which allow you to access the resources according to your business requirements. This way, it ensures that the process is consistent even if it must be repeated over multiple environments. 

• Scalability: When it comes to managing intensive workloads, the hyper-hybrid cloud is highly scalable. It can scale down to utilize the private cloud or scale up to utilize the public cloud according to the need of the hour.

• Enhanced security: Since the hyper-hybrid cloud integrates the public cloud model with on-premises cloud hardware, it provides your business total control over systems, security, and policies. Similar to a private cloud model, the hyper-hybrid operates behind a firewall. The security of sensitive information is guaranteed as it operates from a private cloud. At the same time, this allows your business to manage the day to day enterprise operations on a public cloud that can easily be scaled according to your needs. 

• Well balanced: The hyper-hybrid cloud structure makes it easy to divide the workload between both the cloud computing models and provide the maximum capacity to accommodate the demands of your business. It enables your business to stay competitive with the aid of such a versatile platform. 

Related Reading: Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure: How It Benefits Your Business

Experiencing Success With Hyper-hybrid Cloud

The hyper-hybrid cloud plays a crucial role in helping your business respond to the changing market needs and demands. It is both beneficial and critical for a business that wants to enhance productivity and security, and improve scalability and consistency. Fingent can help you successfully meet the challenges of implementing a hyper-hybrid cloud solution. Talk to us to understand how we can solve your dilemmas related to cloud platforms.