Cloud Computing Benefits for Streamlining Software Development☁️

Cloud computing has become one of the fastest developing technologies in the IT sector. The application of cloud computing continues to be a key driver in the development of technology trends, including artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), and work models (remote / hybrid).

Cloud computing can significantly reduce costs. Instead of expensive infrastructure needs, cloud service providers offer their infrastructure requirements “as a service” running on their own servers and data centers.

Worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecasted to grow 20.7% to total $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc. This is higher than the 18.8% growth forecast for 2022. (Source: Gartner)

“Current inflationary pressures and macroeconomic conditions are having a push and pull effect on cloud spending,” said Sid Nag, Vice President Analyst at Gartner. “Cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, supporting growth during uncertain times due to its agile, elastic and scalable nature. Yet, organizations can only spend what they have. Cloud spending could decrease if overall IT budgets shrink, given that cloud continues to be the largest chunk of IT spend and proportionate budget growth.” -Sid Nag, Gartner VP of Analysts

In 2023, we can expect cloud computing to continue to deliver greater benefits in leveraging cloud services to increase efficiency in operations and processes, while contributing to the development of new and trending technologies. Benefiting from the gains of cloud computing is crucial to progress in an uncertain economy. For this reason, the transition to cloud systems has become a necessity rather than optional.

Let’s take a look at the benefits of cloud computing in the software development process! 👇

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multiple locations, each of which is a data center. (Wikipedia)  

The architecture of cloud technology is not one size fits all system. A structure that is suitable for another company may not be suitable for your business needs.Flexibility is one of the distinguishing features of cloud systems. This feature allows organizations to adapt to changing markets.

With the availability of many cloud providers worldwide, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google GCP, you can consider different options for moving from physical servers to cloud servers.

According to research data from Cloudwards in 2022, While 94% of businesses use cloud services, Techjury states that today 67% of enterprise infrastructure is cloud-based.

✍️ For more detailed information on cloud technologies; You can take a look at our blog posts in the categories of “Migrating to cloud systems”, “Hybrid and multi-cloud”, “Cloud” and “Google Cloud”.

 

Cloud benefits for streamlining software development

Cloud computing has a significant impact on the IT resources of businesses. Let’s take a look at some of these benefits to better analyze why developers and organizations are moving to cloud systems.

1) Cost savings

Cloud computing eliminates the costs of purchasing hardware and software and setting up on-premises data centers. Whichever cloud service model you choose, you only pay for the resources you use. Cloud service providers also have their own DevOps teams. Therefore, there is no need for a team to keep your systems running and to maintain your cloud infrastructure. It allows your team to focus on more critical tasks like application development and customer support.  

2) Scalability and flexibility

Cloud computing enables IT resources to be managed and scaled flexibly to implement business demands. You can scale your cloud capacity as your business grows, without having to invest in physical equipment. Businesses using cloud computing can gain competitive advantage thanks to their flexibility. The pay-as-you-go model of cloud providers gives you the flexibility to scale up according to your business needs.  

3) Performance

Cloud computing services run on a secure network of data centers. Data centers are regularly upgraded to the latest fast and efficient computing hardware. In this way, it provides the advantage of lower network latency and more economical scaling in applications.  

4) Speed

One of the factors that contribute to the success of a business is control. Even a short downtime can have an extremely negative impact. Downtime in your services leads to loss of productivity, revenue and brand reputation. Thanks to the very fast and constantly updated structure of cloud computing, businesses gain flexibility and their complexity in capacity planning and control processes is reduced.  

5) Efficiency and agility

On-premises data centers often have extra effort and time-consuming tasks such as hardware tuning, software processes updating applications. Cloud computing removes the need for these tasks, freeing IT teams to use their time for more important business goals. Google Cloud’s Chronicle Security Operations suite works as you do—across the cloud, your enterprise, and any type of source, at any scale. Benefit from unique Google speed, scale, and threat intelligence while automating response to achieve a critical edge in today’s cyber threat  

6) Advanced security and reliability

Cloud computing provides the ability to redundantly move data across the cloud provider’s network and provides security-related policies and controls to help protect your data, applications, and infrastructure from potential threats. The key to this increased security is the encryption of data transmitted over networks and stored in databases. As an added security measure, many cloud-based services can have different security settings depending on the user.

7) Automatic software updates

Cloud-based applications automatically refresh and update themselves instead of manually updating based on system requirements. This allows IT staff to save time or individual effort spent on external consulting processes.  

8) Reduced development time

Before cloud computing, it was costly and time consuming for companies to set up and operate their own IT infrastructures. Thanks to the cloud architecture, scalable resources can be accessed quickly. This reduces the cost of software development and speeds up the procedure by eliminating the need to purchase and install hardware.  

9) A collaborative DevOps culture

In the world of agile development, we need to quickly deploy applications and monitor that everything is going well. Cloud systems enable businesses to develop a collaborative DevOps culture. Programming, quality assurance and operations teams collaborate around the DevOps culture. Applying a DevOps culture can help standardize operational procedures, testing methodologies, and delivery standards for cloud-based development.  

10) Simple test procedures

Thanks to cloud computing, testing processes have become simpler for software developers. Businesses’ software quality assurance strategy depends on cloud-based testing techniques. Teams can test directly from the cloud. Simplified cloud-based testing techniques have had a significant impact on the development and testing process.

Some of the software tests conducted in cloud environments: Disaster recovery testing, Performance testing, Interoperability testing, Functional testing, System The “Shift Left” principle of DevOps encourages testing during the first phase of the development cycle. This practice can significantly improve software quality and system health, but the rise of containerized microservice applications brings new challenges. Google Cloud Build lets you run system tests securely and cost-effectively.  

11) Resilience

Resilience is your system’s ability to respond to failure and be functional. A resilient app is an application that continues to run despite failures in system components. Cloud computing provides tools and services to help you build highly available and resilient applications. For example; Google Cloud Computing Servives are available in regions worldwide allowing you to deploy your application to best suit your goals.  

12) Sustainability

Cloud systems can reduce carbon emissions and ensure sustainability thanks to their architecture. Developing sustainable software ensures higher quality products. Cloud computing has positioned itself as one of the most sustainable and efficient technologies, saving more than 59 million tons of CO2 and more than 200 billion Euros per year for companies. (Source: Plainconcepts)  

Some technology companies that use cloud computing effectively

PayPal

☁️ Cloud provider: Google Cloud

🔍 PayPal, which is in the top 10 among the largest internet companies and serves more than 300 million users worldwide, provides a secure and fast service for payments made over the internet. With the help of cloud computing, it aims to provide a better financial life to every possible point and person in the plan.

🥇 For more detailed information on how PayPal includes Google Cloud products in its payment systems, you can check out the “Success Story”.

Twitter

☁️ Cloud provider: Google Cloud

🔍 Twitter, the social networking platform, offers ad engagement activity that affects hundreds of people as part of its advertising operations. As part of the daily business operations on its advertising platform, Twitter serves billions of ad engagement events, each of which potentially affects hundreds of downstream aggregate metrics. To enable its advertisers to measure user engagement and track ad campaign efficiency, Twitter offers a variety of analytics tools, APIs, and dashboards that can aggregate millions of metrics per second in near-real time. Twitter uses Google Cloud services to increase the reliability and accuracy of its ad analytics platform.

🥇 For more detailed information on how Twitter has included Google Cloud products in its ad analysis systems, you can check out the “Success Story“.

Why Google Cloud? Digital transformation is more than “lifting and shifting” old IT infrastructure to the cloud for cost saving and convenience. True transformation spans the entire business and enables every person to transform. We deeply understand today’s technology requirements and the need to continuously innovate. That’s why organizations build their transformation cloud and solve their biggest challenges with Google Cloud. Accelerate your digital transformation. SMake smarter decisions with the leading data cloud. Run and build your apps, anywhere. Transform how your teams collaborate. Protect what’s important with advanced security tools. Achieve your ambitious sustainability goals.

Success Story To identify novel patterns in digital pathology images, the American Cancer Society partnered with Slalom and used Cloud ML Engine on Google Cloud to improve timeliness and accuracy. “By leveraging Cloud ML Engine to analyze cancer images, we’re gaining more understanding of the complexity of breast tumor tissue and how known risk factors lead to certain patterns. Our results might provide clinicians with more information to enable additional research that could translate to different treatment options.” —Mia M. Gaudet, PhD, Scientific Director of Epidemiology Research, American Cancer Society

⭐⭐⭐

The cloud has matured in the last several years and adoption rates continue to rise. Discussing the value of moving to the cloud for businesses is long over. Many researches and reports prepared are indicative of this. (Gartner, McKinsey, IBM, Cisco)  

Organizations need to adapt to cloud technologies in order to benefit from advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning and gain competitive advantage.

If your company and development team aren’t already leveraging the cloud, now is the time to act! Working with a reliable cloud partner facilitates access to the latest technologies and best practices, scaling quickly and efficiently as needed, and peace of mind knowing that your data and applications are secure. If your organization is looking to adopt a hybrid cloud strategy, please contact us to learn more about how we can help your business. By leveraging the expertise and resources at Kartaca, you can focus on the core business activities while we take care of your infrastructure and management of your cloud environment.  

Kartaca is a Premier Partner for Google Cloud in the Sell and Service Engagement Models with “Cloud Migration” and “Data Analytics” specializations.