From easy access to essential commodities to the ease of continuing business operations, the pandemic has enhanced the role of the digital economy in our lives like never before. It accelerated digital transformation across varied sectors, with an increased focus on IoT implementation, AI-based technology, automation, and, of course, Cloud computing companies.

The remote working situation due to the Covid-19 pandemic has brought cloud computing at the forefront for governments, companies, and individuals. As the ripple effect of the work-from-home model, in the past few months, the cloud service providers have had to accelerate their facilities to ensure seamless work across sectors.

As the scalability of infrastructural facilities and accessibility of critical applications becoming a major need for the business in the current scenario, cloud computing technologies have become more essential than ever.

So, one thing is for sure: cloud adoption and migration is going to be a part of the new normal in the post-pandemic era. But, what will be the Impact of COVID-19 on the Cloud Computing Industry? Let’s find out!

Time to stop believing in cloud computing myths

It is important to burst some widely-believed myths before getting into Post Covid-19 impact of Cloud computing. Cloud computing is not solely about storage and servers. The cloud computing technologies offer a model for allowing an on-demand, convenient, and ubiquitous network access to the pool of configurable resources that are shared among users. The upcoming trends are consistently transforming it into a must-have for businesses.

Cloud computing companies need to remember that their consumers across the digital natives and enterprises continue to look for affordability, even in the post-pandemic world. This is going to be a major factor in driving innovations to cloud computing tech. Reports suggest that cloud spending is going to hit $100.1 billion by the year 2024.

The demand for cloud will continue to rise further

Data localization had already increased the demand for cloud solutions and data centers. However, the Impact of COVID-19 on the Cloud Computing Industry is a clear indication that the demand has increased exponentially due to the pandemic.

Remote working increased the demand for SaaS (Software as a Service), which drove tremendous amounts of traffic to the data centers. Organizations had to look beyond on-premise options to rely on third-party cloud service providers. In fact, the cloud migration services all over the world are expected to increase at a CAGR of 24 percent within 2024.

Cloud computing and data centers are integral parts of the business continuity strategy in the post-COVID world. These strategies are also useful during the pandemic to successfully manage a distributed workforce in the lockdown.

Increased reliance on Cloud computing companies is being driven by factors like scalability, flexibility, and affordable investments. All of these factors have accelerated the rate of cloud adoption among MSMEs and SMEs. The significant rise in the investments in the emerging tech like big data, IoT, ML/AI, and the likes, have led to a rapid increase in cloud adoption.

ITES and IT to drive the growth in the global cloud market

Coronavirus has made most of the IT enterprises to go for the remote working model. ITES and IT enterprises have started relying on their mobile workforce and adopting enterprise mobility services and tools. So, there is a rise in the demand for cloud service providers all over the world.

To understand the Post Covid-19 impact of Cloud computing, it is also important to understand the role of cloud in ITES and IT. Distributed cloud computing technologies have been helping to deal with disaster recovery conditions. The shortage of on-site tech personnel due to the lockdown has made the enterprises reliant on cloud capabilities for checking, maintaining, and monitoring their storage and server installations in the data centers.

Businesses are effectively utilizing the cloud for creating disaster-proof and resilient systems across the world to protect data integrity and cater to the remote workforce. IT enterprises have a greater need for managed data centers to achieve their operational efficiency, avoid network interruption, and enhance security. Leading players cloud service providers have started preparing their post-pandemic response plan for ensuring seamless continuity of operations.

So, the demand for cloud services has spiked globally in this vertical due to:

• Increasing need for disaster recovery and security

• Avoiding the costs of network downtime

• Increasingly mobile workers due to the lockdown

The energy and utility sector showing a decline in cloud adoption

The energy and utility sector is also in the stage of digital transformation. In fact, studying the Impact of COVID-19 on the Cloud Computing Industry will not be complete without considering this sector that is expected to go completely digital in the next three years. The increased need for advanced infrastructure and IT services is driving the transformation in this sector.

But, the countries are on lockdown due to the spread of the pandemic, which has considerably declined the use of energy resources like oil and gas. So, the use of cloud services has also substantially dwindled.

To add to that, production has slowed down because of disruptions in supply chains. This has reduced the need for technologies like smart metering and brought down the overall use of cloud services in this vertical. The Post Covid-19 impact of Cloud computing on this sector would start with getting the supply and production chains in order.

A rapid increase in the adoption of hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud computing technologies are helping businesses to go ahead with flexible cloud models to suit various workgroups. This kind of cloud offers improved IT and data management for deriving increased productivity and better efficiency.

Adoption of hybrid cloud as an Impact of COVID-19 on the Cloud Computing Industry will ensure that companies don’t need added CAPEX to move workloads between the public and private clouds. The businesses can leverage cloud computing technologies to shift to OPEX models and save costs in times of crisis.

Businesses are rethinking their plans for the post-COVID environment for gaining competitive advantage by deriving the benefits from the cloud. Using hybrid cloud services is important to scale the efforts, sustain operations at present, and be ready for future changes.

Paying attention to the managed services

Continuity and agility are crucial for businesses in times of crisis. Getting access to data centers or managing data centers have been difficult at present, which has led the companies to move towards outsourced service providers. The Impact of COVID-19 on the Cloud Computing Industry will still involve relying on outsourced services.

Though it’s challenging for the IT Workforce to handle the infrastructure remotely, they are depending on co-location hyper-scale cloud service providers for installations, network optimization, and security services. These managed services will remain important even after the pandemic because of their value in business continuity.

What lies in store for cloud computing in the future?

The looming pandemic has not been able to impact the growth of Cloud computing companies. In fact, the importance of cloud has been realized by companies like never before. We can say that the future of cloud computing for enterprises is now, not tomorrow. In more precise, this pandemic crisis has accelerated cloud adoption at a steadfast rate. Those cloud-based application platforms allowed them to quickly scale & adapt to the evolving needs of the business.

The Post Covid-19 impact of Cloud computing clearly indicates that the market is all set to grow and be increasingly adopted across industries and businesses. All in all, the future looks promising for Cloud computing companies and their clients.