Applications Meant for the Cloud
Everyone’s moving to the cloud, right? Wrong. Security and availability concerns have enterprises tip-toeing with trepidation into cloud territory. But, top analysts at IDC say the benefits of moving certain applications to the cloud outweigh the risks for some enterprises. IDC revealed the top 5 cloud applications most likely to gain traction this year.
Cloud Drivers
IDC’s survey of IT professionals indicates rapidly growing organizations with an increasing data retention needs are most likely to adopt cloud applications. Driven by lesser capital at their fingertips and the need to contain costs, users are looking to the cloud.
#1: Collaboration Application
Businesses have been moving their email and PIM to managed service providers (MSPs) for a while, but IDC says that 67 percent of survey respondents believe collaboration applications such as email, chat, conferencing and collaborative file sharing solutions such as SharePoint are a great fit for the cloud because they reduce costs in the short term.
#2: Web Serving
Moving web servers, management and analytic tools to the cloud is also at the top of the priority list-67 percent report they are considering the move. Cloud-hosted web infrastructure and software offers cost savings across the board. Reductions in maintenance costs, the predictability of subscription models and rapid deployment are key benefits to the enterprise.
Cloud Backup
Companies like Asigra are banking on enterprises moving disaster recovery and back-up to the cloud. IDC says that although 87 percent of businesses are concerned with cloud security, 60 percent are still considering moving back-up off-site to the cloud to protect against natural disasters, IT mishaps, power outages and other unforeseen catastrophic events.
Business Applications
Business applications hosted in the cloud give businesses the option to pay as they go while providing the big-impact benefit of the latest technology advancements. Moving efficiency and compliance apps like CRM, ERP, Human Resources and Financial and Accounting solutions to the cloud limits up-front investment and costly integration required for in-house deployments.
Personal Productivity Applications
Applications targeted at increasing employee productivity and facilitating more rapid reporting of business processes are also on the docket for 55 percent of survey respondents. Hosted mobile applications through carriers and mobile software providers as well as document-editing applications like those from DataViz and Quickoffice are also expected to gain traction.