The global communications market is growing at astronomical rates, a lot of which is powered by the cloud.  In fact, a report by Marketsandmarkets.com, shows that the global communications market will reach $4.45 billion by 2021 and this robust growth will be aided by cloud-based solutions.

We can even say that cloud will power the future of global communications market due to a combination of many factors. First off, the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement is catching up in a big way, where employees can use their own personal devices to access work files and even complete their task. Such a system works best with cloud-based solutions where employees can access whatever they want from a cloud system and can put it back there once they’re done.  Since idea is prevalent across all businesses, cloud is becoming an integral part of the network.

Another reason for the emergence of cloud as an important aspect in the global communications market is the cost-effectiveness. As companies expand their reach, they need to tap into a global market. In many cases, their operations are spread across different countries and continents, so building a communications network can be prohibitive. A better option would be to use the cloud as employees from any part of the world can access a central repository to complete their work. Also, subscriptions to cloud-based services are dead cheap and this is another reason for adopting cloud.

The third factor is there is a marked shift happening from standalone communication systems to embedded ones. Many companies today are faced with the choice of replacing their existing PBX systems simply because they’re old and outdated. Instead they have a choice to either have a contact center or to move operations to the cloud. Many are choosing the latter option simply because it’s easy and convenient. Also, it requires no huge investments like rental space and equipment.

The last reason is customization. The needs of every company is unique, so a one-size-fits-all solution is not a practical approach anymore. Each company needs a customized solution that best addresses its needs, and cloud offers the level of customization that companies need in order to make the most of their resources and capabilities. This is more relevant in the communications industry than others, simply because the geographic spread, nature of business and the number of employees will vary greatly.

Besides these factors, companies understand the benefits that come with cloud-based solutions and these include increased operational efficiency, lowered costs, greater flexibility for employees and so much more. Every company wants to leverage these benefits and this is another reason they’re embracing the cloud.

In short, the communication market is adopting cloud-based solutions in a big way as it believes cloud can power the next generation of systems needed for a diverse and globalized workspace communication network. Already many companies have joined this bandwagon and it’s only a matter of time before others get on it too.

Overall, this is fantastic for both the cloud and communications sectors.

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We’ve heard of many new jargons in the world of cloud such as Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). The latest to join this list is Identity as a Service (IDaaS).

First off, why do we need IDaaS? As more companies adopt the cloud in a big way, there is a need to strike a balance between cloud identity and on-premise identity, not to mention the management of both. This need can be filled by IDaaS.

In addition, it can also lower the cost of owning Identity Access and Management (IAM) solutions. And that’s not all. IAM faces many challenges with respect to both business and technology. For example, the concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is catching up around the world. Under this idea, users can log in from any personal device into the office network to work. Obviously, this has raised many concerns about security and identity management.

Other segments such as administration, auditing and authentication are creating their own technologies to provide accuracy and cost efficiency. These technologies have also contributed to challenges in IAM because poor identity management practices open the chances for hackers to enter into the system and compromise the company in a big way.

There have already been a few incidents that have cost the respective companies thousands of dollars in loss and a ruined reputation. A case in point is Dropbox. In 2012, an employee had reused a password on an internal system that was earlier used on LinkedIn. This was cracked by hackers and they entered the company’s network with this employee’s credentials. It is estimated that they stole 68 million records along with their passwords, all of which was sold in the black market. In 2016, it came to light that all these Dropbox accounts and their passwords were posted online.

This incident goes to show how an employee’s login credentials, and the identity management as a whole, can protect a company’s assets from hacking and possible misuse by hackers. Since 2012, cloud adoption has grown in a big way, thereby raising the bar for identity management.

All these aspects have together led to the emergence of IDaaS. Already, it’s proving beneficial to companies as it not only adds an extra layer of protection to the overall authentication network, but also helps with regulatory compliance. Since the standards for compliance have become stricter than before due to many hacking incidents, this IDaaS can take the burden off a particular team since they are in tune with most compliance standards.

In addition, the cost of extending an on-premise solution to the cloud has come down as these modules can be applied separately on the resources that are in the cloud and on-premise.

From a service provider point of view, these above features are the baseline of any IDaaS platform. They have to innovate and come up with additional features that will make these platforms more appealing to clients. Also, these solutions should support cross-platform authentication such as portable biometric technologies to make it truly useful for end-clients.

It’ll be interesting to see how IDaaS shapes up over the next few years.

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Estonia is a country known for its digital way of life, and its latest program that is likely to make it the first “cloud country” is another feather on its cap. If you’re wondering where in the world is Estonia, well, it’s a small country in the Baltic region of North Europe.

Looking back a few decades, Estonia got its independence from the from USSR in 1991. Since then, it began pushing into the digital world in a big way. For example, it created an online voting system in 2007 to make it easy for its residents to vote from any part of the world. Other programs include providing government services online, including medical records and prescriptions, so almost what everyone wants can be accessed online.

To take this digital adoption to the next level, Estonia has established something called e-residency. Under this program, people from any part of the world can apply to become virtual residents of this country. Once approved, they can start business, run a company or do anything else that other residents Estonians can do.

This program has attracted thousands of people world over. Why? For its simplicity.

Any person who wants to become a virtual resident has to fill an application form online, upload a copy of passport and pay a fee of 100 Euros. It takes four weeks for the application to be processed and during this time, a background check including a police verification is done. After the application is approved, the applicant has to visit a check point, usually the nearest Estonian embassy, and collect a digital certificate with a digital identity. Each approved applicant is given a smart card and an email ID, using which they can open bank accounts or start a company. However, most banks insist that the applicant should visit the branch in person to open the account.

So far, more than 17000 people have used this program. Bulk of the applications have come from countries like Finland, Russia, the USA, and of late, the UK. This attraction is mainly because Estonia has no corporate tax on the balances left within the company. Since this tax advantage is not available in most countries, people are looking to make the most of this opportunity and setup a business here.

With such a residency model, Estonia has created what is called a “cloud country”, akin to cloud computing. This was probably a natural extension for a country like Estonia – a place that combines a digital economy with a fairly stagnant population and economy. To give you a perspective, Estonia ahs about 1.3 million residents and a GDP of $23 billion, which is less than 10% of Apple Inc’s company value. With such a program, Estonia aims to boost its population as well as its economy in a big way, and this strategy is paying off as well.

Also, this idea of a “cloud country” is unique simply because it erases the physical boundaries of a country, which is true in the world of cloud storage and computing. This step can be the first major change that can bring us together in a “cloud world.”

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Cloud is all-pervasive, and we see its presence in almost every sector today. The many benefits that come from it make it a potent technology for even traditional sectors like manufacturing. Industrial titans like GE and Siemens are vying to make the most out of cloud to boost their manufacturing processes and products.

One of the core things they are working on is the Internet of Things (IoT). To refresh on what this means, IoT is a technology that connects everyday devices like your watches, alarm clocks, refrigerators and more to create a complete digital system. Such a system would connect different things to create a smooth data flow, that in turn can make life much easier for its users.

For example, your refrigerator can constantly monitor the level of milk, and if falls below a particular threshold, the system can order milk for through your smartphone app. So, the milk will arrive at home without any effort from your end. That’s the power of technology, and IoT in specific. Since this is an evolving space, there’s a lot of opportunities here, and this is exactly what GE and Siemens wan to tap into.

While some smaller companies are working on specific products, the aim of these big players is to reinvent the manufacturing process as a whole, so individual firms can tap into each stage of the value chain, starting from design to production and maintenance. In other words, both these companies want to create a cloud-based IoT system that will form the backbone of industrial automation, and will provide vast amount of data about everything –  ranging from parts and inventories to the performance of different products.

To achieve such a smart backbone, GE and Siemens are looking to create built-in sensors and protocols that will enable communication between different industrial equipment such as pumps, drones, robots and more. The key aspect is the sensors that will monitor the systems and will send detailed data to the companies that own the system, and using this, they can learn about the health of machines, their performance and more. Along with sensors, platforms are the key to enable communication between different devices.

According to research firm, Markets&Markets, this market could be worth $150 billion within a short span of three years. They key for the success of this market depends to a large extend on the platform that is being used for the data flow. Microsoft has been an early leader in this aspect as it has entered into agreements with both GE and Siemens to use its Azure cloud platform.

Besides Azure, Siemens has officially announced six partnerships and has said that hundreds more are in the pipeline, and all this ensures that industrial automation is a reality soon. GE, too has a lead, as its platform is compatible with most other cloud platforms. Already dozens of companies are building their applications on GE’s platform.

In addition, both these companies are working on their automation by acquiring digital companies that operate in this sphere. Overall, it’s going to be a tight and interesting race that is sure to benefit everyone in the long-run.

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We know Netherlands for their beautiful canals and magnificent dykes, but did you know about their high levels of cloud adoption?

A quick research shows that most large and medium organizations use cloud in one form or another. Take their Central Bank, for example. Many of their applications are in the cloud, and so is it with multinational companies, school systems and more.

A detailed study was conducted by an IT training provider called Global Knowledge in December 2016. This study included 500 Dutch companies, all of which were asked about their cloud usage including their SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and other aspects of cloud. The results showed that an astounding 75 percent of companies use cloud, and these numbers are only expected to increase in the coming years.

The participants of this study said that the main reason for them to move to the cloud is the flexibility and scalability that comes with it. They have seen their business performance improve and their upfront investment costs in hardware and software come down, and this is why many of them plan to completely move to the cloud soon.

Let’s take a few case studies to see how cloud has impacted the Dutch market. The Voice of Holland is a television talent show that saw a huge surge in network traffic on the final day of the season. Despite a sudden surge in traffic, there were no network breakdowns or distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. On the contrary, the network scaled up, and everything turned out to be fine.

This TV show uses cloud to increase or decrease its capacity, based on the number of users. The initial few weeks of the show will see a relatively lesser number of users when compared to the latter weeks when interest picks up and everyone wants to see the winner of the season. Since cloud makes it easy to scale up or down seamlessly, it has really helped this TV show to have a cost-effective operational model.

Another example of a Dutch company that uses cloud is Aviko, an international potato processing company. It adopted Amazon Web Service (AWS) only about six months ago, and this move has paid rich benefits for the company. When it had an opportunity to expand to China, this partnership with AWS helped to create the right hardware and computing infrastructure for the company.

Before AWS, Aviko was using SAP’s ERP, and the company is sure that it wouldn’t have helped its new center in Inner Mongolia to connect to its headquarters in Netherlands. To top it, there were restrictions on Internet usage by the Chinese government and this created a lot of latency and VPN-related issues. It was then that the company decided to have a copy running in China’s AWS, as this seemed like a simple plan. Today, Aviko is a well-established supplier in the Chinese market and is looking for more expansion within China. In this sense, this move to AWS has been helpful for its expansion plans.

These case studies show how Dutch businesses make the most of what cloud offers. Maybe there’s a lesson for each of us here!

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As 2016 comes to a close, it’s time to reflect on the good and bad things that have happened over the last year, learn from it, and get set to welcome the new year on a positive note. Over the last year, cloud industry has seen many positive developments that are likely to extend into 2017 as well, and there are some new developments that are expected to take place in the upcoming year. Here are a few cloud predictions for 2017.

Explosive growth

It’s no-brainer to predict that 2017 will see rapid growth in the cloud industry. Already, many companies understand the benefits that come from switching to cloud, so they’ve already moved their operations to it, or are in the process of doing so. In addition, emergence of technologies like augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), Internet of Things (IoT), and machine learning are likely to fuel the growth of cloud industry.

More acquisitions

2016 saw a ton of new startup companies in the cloud sector, that offered unique cloud-based products and services for end clients. We can expect many of these small companies to be acquired by the large cloud-providers, to keep pace with the business pressures and competition in this industry. In this sense, 2017 maybe a bounty year for many startups, as they can get a good deal in the acquisition, provided they have a unique product that adds value to clients.

Focus on management

Since companies are moving more operations and processes to the cloud, management of these processes would be a central aspect in 2017. Due to the growing nature of operations, it may no longer be possible to manage operations through manual processes, so they’ll have to look for automation tools. This means, it’s going to be double digit growth for companies that are involved in creating management consoles and tools.

Talent and employment

There is a big gap that exists between the demand and supply for cloud-related skills, and this gap is expected to further widen in 2017. Cloud companies are sure to expand their operations as more clients are considering the idea of moving to the cloud. This growth will generate a greater need for cloud talent, that is unfortunately falling quite short already. On a positive note, this trend can generate more jobs and job-related choices for those who are interested in learning the skills needed for this industry.

More breaches

As unfortunate as this may sound, we’re going to see more data breaches in 2017. The good news, however is that analysts predict most of this will happen over traditional systems, as cloud security has become stronger and more resilient over the last year. In fact, cloud systems may be the hardest to break since it has many layers of proactive monitoring and sophisticated security. Traditional systems don’t enjoy these advantages, so they’re more prone to attacks.

In short, 2017 is going to be a fun and exciting year for the cloud industry, and the benefits are expected to spill over to other industries, businesses, and economy at large. On this positive note, let’s welcome the new year.

Happy new Year!

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