Online Business- Forecast 2017

Online business is the new buzzword in the market. Recently, there has been a lot of hype about cloud computing and its applications. Truth be told, it has not failed to live up to it. With so many small and mid-size companies adopting cloud-based applications, the demand has increased immensely. Online business, since its inception, has changed the traditional computing procedures and will continue to do so for the next few decades.

Much has been spoken about the advantages of cloud and how it would benefit small and mid-size businesses. More and more companies have migrated their business to the cloud due to its various benefits and cost effectiveness. Not only big enterprises but even small businesses have understood the scope of online business and have begun to invest in it.

There are some interesting predictions and business forecasts that have been made by business experts about the manner in which the cloud is going to impact businesses. A number of new trends that can already be seen in 2017-18. Though both online businesses as well as the concept of cloud have been evolving for more than 5 years, it has presently reached a new phase that is termed by experts as the second wave of evolution.

The developments are expected to change the overall awareness online business has over the traditional computing methods. Online businesses are expected to have an accelerated growth. According to a forecast by Forrester, the global public cloud market will reach $146B this year, from $87B in 2015. There is also an estimate which says that by the end of this year and start of 2018, around 59% of the complete business process will be on SaaS (Software as a Service), 28% as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and around 12-13% as PaaS (Platform as a Service).

Let us analyse what online businesses will be contributing towards small businesses this year and how the cloud is gaining popularity.

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Business on Cloud – Forecast 2017

This year is predicted to be a steam gathering and fast-paced year for cloud and cloud-based applications, with over two-thirds of business processes getting migrated to the cloud. Given below is a look at the forecast of business on the cloud for the year 2017 and analyze how the year is going to unfold for this customer-oriented and digitally centered market of the cloud.

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High-Performance Ecosystem of Cloud

Online businesses, with end-to-end cloud computing ecosystem, are said to be the next step forward. The cloud computing ecosystem is ideally an interweb of independent applications and processes that are linked together to facilitate cloud services. More than 35% of newly developed applications will be, by default, cloud enabled. The cloud ecosystem will enable the business to have an expanded network connectivity and next level wireless performance. The technologies that would trend in this area are the High-performance Point to Point (PtP) and the Point to Multipoint (PtMP) technologies.

Cloud as the New Delivery Model

According to a research forecast by IDC, businesses would see an 11% paradigm shift of the total IT budget towards the cloud-based delivery models, from the traditional delivery models.

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Lift and Shift Tools for Easy Migration to Cloud

Many cloud service providers will adopt a more viable lift and shift model which will enable businesses to migrate easily from the traditional process. These tools are expected to be low cost and will speed up the rate of bulk application migration to the cloud.

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The Advent of Hyper Converged infrastructure (HCI) solution

These are solutions that provide integrated storage, computing resources and applications that would aid businesses to run faster and more effectively. It is a very good alternate for a business which has sensitive data that can neither be entrusted to a third-party vendor nor deemed secure in private cloud services. Using an HCI solution, businesses can manage new workloads, which generally require fast and rapid scaling in and out.

Containers to Manage Software Codes

This is something in vogue now.  Containers are designed to make an application virtual/cloud based. It helps in creating isolation at the application level. This minimizes the risk of excess resource consumption. Any issue pertaining to it will affect the container alone and not the entire server. These containers also minimise issues caused due to the compatibility of applications with the operating system. Cloud containers are very portable and easy to deploy on different servers.

Dominance of Public Cloud over Private Cloud

This is due to the fact that CIOs are more confident of the security provided by third-party public cloud service providers than a private cloud network. It is also easy to manage and has fewer liabilities.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud is a blend of cloud computing ecosystem which has a combination of private and public cloud with an orchestration between them to perform certain functions in an organisation. Online businesses today have a choice of automating workloads above the orchestration layer and ensuring a consistent and smooth application experience disregarding the infrastructure under the workload. Businesses will slowly move from simple self-service portals to a much complex, entirely software based managed services platform.

Cost Saving on Usage Basis

Apart from the normal pay per usage model which the cloud computing service providers have been using to bill its clients, 2017 will see many more payment models gaining wide popularity. Some of these models are:

1. Pay-as-you-go: Businesses can pay for cloud-based services as and when they use them.
2. Monthly billing Structure: This is a monthly agreement between the business and the service provider for listed cloud-based applications and services.
3. A hybrid between a PAYG and a Monthly billing Structure: The hybrid payment model is a cross between the above two payment models wherein the business can have a monthly agreement and can increase or decrease the services and pay for it separately.
4. Prepaid Billing: In this, the business can pay for certain services and applications in advance and use the services for that period. It can be recharged after the validity expiration date.
5. Buying Services on Demand: In this model, a company can buy services based on the demand and business requirement.
6. Reserved Capacity Model: In this business, the company can set the reserve capacity of infrastructure and storages and physically upgrade on a need basis.

These payment models are aimed at providing flexibility and a scope for scalability for small businesses which would promote cloud services to an even greater extent.

There is an increasing number of trends and interesting predictions about cloud to look forward to this year. For all those businesses which have already invested in the cloud, this year will be all about innovations and technological advancements. However, those businesses which haven’t gone online yet, still have time to consider the various new emerging trends which will greatly impact their growth positively.