The statistics show that businesses now heavily rely on cloud solutions, although some cloud laggards still exist.
Among US companies the cloud adoption status breaks down as follows:
The need to collaborate, work from anywhere, and work securely are just a few factors behind the massive adoption of cloud technologies.
Currently, businesses handle a stunning 79% of the workload in the cloud, with 41% of the workload performed in the public cloud and 38% in a private cloud.
The remaining workload is run on-premises, and these two modes, on-premises and in the cloud, represent the two distinct ways of using business software.
How Much Do You Want to Manage
Further down the road, using the cloud can mean at least a few different models, depending on which aspects are controlled and managed by the software vendor and which by the customer.
There are three main models offered within the cloud: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Different business needs can be successfully satisfied by a different segment of X-aaS.
With on-premises solutions, a customer is responsible for the cost and management of the hardware, as well as the security, server rooms, support staff, and so on. The more we move to the right in the chart, the less there is to look after on the client’s side and the more ground is left for the vendor to cover.
SaaS solutions, therefore, are ideal for businesses that are in need of reliable software but are not willing to assign resources to software development, maintenance, upgrades, etc.
They would be interested in subscribing to a solution and being able to use it with their data added to the system. All this can be implemented in a relatively short time, as opposed to the typically lengthy and cumbersome implementation of an on-premises solution.
Benefit from the Cloud DNA
Another dimension by which we can differentiate software that uses cloud technologies is its development process.
Many business solutions that are still in use today were developed before such a pervasive use of cloud computing as occurs nowadays. They may have undergone changes to be compatible with the new cloud reality, but they also retain a large portion of their pre-cloud DNA.