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CASFS+ Does Not Cost, It Saves

Despite the often talked about benefits, integrating big data processing into a business still comes with a hefty price tag attached. As the amount of data consumed by businesses grows every passing day, the computational power required to take advantage of advancing big data techniques inevitably puts a strain on business spending. Even with the cloud’s pay-as-you-go model, these solutions can easily consume more resources than you initially planned. 

Our CASFS+ tools are specifically designed as a solution to the dilemma of rising cloud computing costs. From resource-saving caching and deduplication mechanisms to cost-monitoring features introduced by the file system, CASFS+ helps organizations significantly minimize cloud resource usage in big data processing. 

How Quantbot cut cloud computing costs with CASFS+

Quantbot Technologies, a leading global quantitative investment advisor, is one of the clients that has reaped the benefits of the cost reduction techniques employed by CASFS+ tools. The company joined hands with us to “control the potential for runaway costs” as it prepared to expand its cloud computing resources to support new research activities.

With the successful integration of our smart content hashing mechanism alone, the system was able to reduce the required storage capacity by 21%, bringing down the volume from 245 TB to 197 TB. Despite excessive cloud services usage, the company also managed to stay within its budgeting limits with the help of team and user-centric budgeting facilities provided by the file system. 

“Using the CASFS+ tools, we are now able to run average loads on the cloud using about ten times the capacity of our on-prem compute farm, all this at a cost of about 20% of what we’d need to pay to support that processing in house,” Paul White, Quantbot’s chief executive says, emphasizing how CASFS+ has allowed the company to fulfill its business needs. 

How CASFS+ helps you save money

With the expanding computational demands of big data processing, your business’s cloud computing costs can easily get out of hand as solutions advance and scale up. The integration of CASFS+ provides an additional layer to your cloud solutions, optimizing and controlling resource usage to help you stay within your budget. Whether or not your business needs are similar to Quantbot, CASFS+ has the tools to control different areas of cloud resource consumption and rein in your expenses. 

From deduplicating data to creating cloud budgets, here are the main techniques CASFS+ employs to reduce cloud computing costs:

  1. Deduplicating data to save storage

CASFS+ inherently prevents redundant storage of content in the file system, which we call deduplication. It employs a smart hashing technique that recognizes when multiple files have identical content, allowing the system to use a single object to refer to all of them. In datasets with a high amount of redundant content, deduplication alone can support up to a 20x reduction in the utilized storage. 

  1. Minimizing S3 requests through caching

In addition to the utilized storage space, the number of data retrieval requests sent to Amazon S3 plays a significant role in determining cloud computing costs. Therefore, CASFS+ uses a local caching mechanism to minimize the number of S3 requests sent by your cloud applications. The cache stores the frequently accessed content in the system’s local storage and uses a caching algorithm to determine the objects that should be added or removed. 

  1. Minimizing S3 requests through user access management

Another method CASFS+ employs to limit S3 requests is managing user access. When only the users who need to work with the data can access it, the system doesn’t have to worry about any idle requests made to S3 contributing to its overall costs. CASFS+ makes it incredibly easy to define user access levels and permissions. In addition to creating POSIX access control lists, you can also grant access permissions to users for a specific time period by simply modifying the file names. 

  1. Updating costs in real-time and applying budget quotas

CASFS+ allows you to allocate cloud budgets for users and teams. They can then view the incurred costs and remaining budget amounts in real-time through the file system. It enables users to plan ahead and adjust their activities each month to prolong the budget without overspending. If the user spends 100% of the budget, CASFS+ restricts them from creating new servers within the cluster. If the costs exceed 130% of the budgeted amount, the system automatically terminates the entire cluster the user is working on. 

  1. Simplified spot instance usage

Spot instances provide an excellent cost-saving alternative to on-demand servers where big data processing tasks are concerned. CASFS+ makes it easier to take advantage of this effective cost reduction opportunity by storing all home directory data, supporting faster mounting when creating new instances. 

Conclusion

Today, due to the easy-to-use and affordable computational resources provided by the cloud, big data processing has become more accessible to companies of all scales. However, as the volume of processed data increases and big data techniques advance even further, cloud computing costs can rise beyond what your business can afford. CASFS+, as a cloud-based file system and a resource manager, gives you a solution to this problem by employing numerous cost-saving mechanisms and budget controls. So, by integrating CASFS+ when you transfer your applications to the cloud, not only will the migration be smoother, your business will also save money and resources.

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Is Your Business Ready For Cloud Computing?

At the beginning of the 2010s, it would’ve been difficult for anyone to imagine how cloud computing would change the outlook of the entire IT industry in the coming decade. But now, after a pandemic that forced the world to abandon offices and limit movement, even thinking about how the business world could survive if not for the cloud feels a little absurd.

With 92% of enterprises relying on cloud solutions to run their operations today, the debate surrounding the necessity of the cloud is no longer about whether your business should consider a cloud transfer. Now, it’s about when and how the transfer should happen.

Stakes of Transferring Your Business to the Cloud

As more businesses begin to understand the importance of keeping up with the latest technology and yielding the power of data, the cloud plays a significant role in supporting this forward momentum in the most affordable and seamless ways possible. With the way it can positively impact different business areas in the short and long term, the cloud doesn’t disappoint in this regard. Here, we will discuss several ways a cloud transfer could benefit your business.

Reduce Operational Costs

Setting up and maintaining on-premise infrastructure for software solutions is a costly process. From necessary hardware components, such as servers and networking devices, to services of technical experts, businesses make a huge upfront investment to introduce on-premise solutions. Add to that the expenses of regularly maintaining and upgrading these components, it doesn’t take long for the costs to snowball by just running a moderate-level software solution on-premise.

However, relying on the cloud eliminates the risks and costs associated with on-premise solutions. With the pay-as-you-go model followed by cloud services, you can run the software, paying only for the resources you use. Utilizing hardware and software infrastructure maintained by a third party allows you to rely less on technical experts, so you can focus on the tasks at hand. According to Accenture, such cost reductions brought by a cloud transfer stretches as far as 30-40% total cost ownership (TCO) savings.

Whether yours is a small business or a large enterprise, a cloud transfer allows you to find a solution that fits under your budget and scale up as your business requirements grow without taking unnecessary risks in the beginning.

Make Your Business Location-Independent

If there’s one thing the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic taught us, it’s the importance of making a business accessible from anywhere. At the beginning of the pandemic, we saw some businesses fall behind their competition due to difficulties in managing and maintaining on-premise software solutions. This situation created a huge increase in cloud transfers in the business world, forcing 90% of companies to exceed their pre-Covid cloud spending budgets.

The cloud releases you from the burden of managing on-premise hardware and setting up advanced networking solutions to make your business truly location-independent. If your business processes are hosted on the cloud, the only requirement employees must have to continue working is a reliable, stable internet connection.

Benefit From The Power of Big Data

As data flowing through business systems continue to grow in stride, not having proper big data solutions in place to analyze and draw insights from data is one of the biggest mistakes a business can make today. Using on-premise solutions for processing such huge data volumes is not affordable or cost-effective in most cases, especially for small to medium level businesses.

However, its alternative, cloud computing, provides a more affordable and easily scalable option for businesses working with big data. Also, its flexibility allows companies to experiment and fine-tune data processing models to get the desired outcomes without lengthy setup times.

Platforms dedicated for running data science tasks are also now in the cloud market. They come with unique features that facilitate the fast setup of data pipelines from different sources, implementation of analytical models, and integration of AI and machine learning techniques in big data solutions.

Implement Better Disaster Recovery Solutions

While many businesses hurry to embrace the latest technology, only a few make the effort to implement proper backup and disaster recovery solutions for their systems. One major reason behind this hesitancy is the extra costs it adds to the already hefty bills of installing and maintaining on-premise software systems.

But in today’s business climate, you must minimize your service downtime and prevent data losses to win over customers’ trust in the long term. A cloud transfer can help your software systems in both these cases by scaling up or assigning newer servers and maintaining regularly updated data backups. And because of the cloud’s pay-as-you-go model, you only pay for the instances where the system actually relies on these additional resources.

Not One Kind of Cloud

Despite its many benefits, some businesses still hesitate to initiate a cloud transfer for their on-premise software solutions. The reasons behind this vary from wanting to avoid the hassle of transferring legacy codebases to doubting the protection the cloud provides for highly sensitive data.

Also, when pondering the possibility of moving your business to the cloud, you can consider other alternatives to the most discussed public cloud. Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud are two popular alternatives that have allowed businesses to experience the convenience of the cloud despite any hang-ups and concerns related to their systems. In fact, according to a survey conducted by Flexera, 92% of modern enterprises have adopted the multi-cloud strategy, and 82% have relied on the hybrid cloud.

Hybrid cloud permits businesses to run their software solutions on both public and private clouds. This type of setup gives you the freedom to run legacy systems without change while transferring more time-critical, data-intensive processes to the cloud.

Multi-cloud takes this convenience one step further and builds a strategy that can combine cloud services provided by several vendors, public or private, to suit the requirements of different software processes.

Start Planning For Your Transfer to the Cloud

Cloud computing has changed how businesses all around the world operate and evolve with the latest technology. From reduced costs, accessible business solutions, robust data recovery solutions, and easily deployable big data solutions, a cloud transfer will benefit a business relying on on-premise solutions and give it a much-needed edge to stay ahead of its competition. As more businesses move their software processes to the cloud following the lessons learned during the pandemic, it’s now your time to start planning to adopt a suitable cloud strategy for your business.

With the popular vendors in the market today, a cloud transfer has to go through the hassle of altering the business’s original on-premise applications to fit the chosen cloud platform. But with our CASFS+ cloud platform and workspace, you can simply lift and shift your applications to the public cloud and run them as they were without needing any code changes. CASFS+ smooths the transferring process so that you can start running your applications immediately on the cloud without wasting time on complex configuration steps.

Contact us today to set up a demo and see how CASFS+ can put your business quickly and securely in the cloud.

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3 Tips For Your Business When Turning To Cloud Migration

If there is one thing we can all be sure of, it is constantly evolving technology. Odds are, whatever latest-and-greatest phone or computer you just bought is already becoming outdated by some other competitor.

When it comes to businesses, this also applies to how they have always stored their data. First, you start with some servers to get the ball rolling on your business, but as it grows, you need more and more servers to hold the workload and run the program.

Not only that, you’re limited to when you and others you work with can access the program. Sometimes Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 just doesn’t cut it, and you’ll need a way to get into your servers when you are not physically in the office.

You begin to realize on-premise servers are just not keeping up with the speed of our ever-evolving technology. They are not keeping up with your growing company. 

The good thing is, with technology always becoming more accessible and convenient, this also applies to how you can store your data and run your company’s program.

Here, we will discuss three different tips and things to ponder when taking the plunge and moving your business to the cloud. 

Take Overall Cost Into Account

Quite possibly the most important tip when contemplating cloud migration is considering the overall cost of housing your data and running your program.

With on-premise servers, it can start at a cost that fits into your budget. But as your business grows, so will the number of servers you need to hold all of your data. Ultimately, this guarantees an increase in costs with no end in sight.

However, by migrating to the cloud, there are no servers to purchase and run.

While the cost to migrate to the cloud can be viewed as costly initially, the overall costs, when compared to continually purchasing and updating servers throughout your business’ life, can be exceptionally lower in the long run. 

Also, when moving to a cloud-based file system, you should consider the possibility of users creating and saving identical files, as this can unnecessarily increase the cost of working in the cloud.

Numerous employees could be working on the platform at once and creating the same files, but there is a solution. Smart content hashing spots these types of repeats and controls them through deduplication. This feature can save a business an incredible amount of cost, keeping their budget well within the desired range.

In a recent case study, Code Willing’s cloud-based file system and resource manager, CASFS+, was able to identify multiple copies of the same file for one of the clients. The client, a global industry-leading data science and quantitative research hedge fund, intended to store 245 TB of data in AWS. However, by using smart content hashing, they only needed 197 TB of storage. This feature created 21% in storage savings.

CASFS+ integrated deduplication into their platform to make sure their clients are only paying for what they need and paying for it once.

Consider Code Changes

There are plenty more fish in the sea these days that provide a cloud-based file system and analytics. But all are not created equal.

When migrating to the cloud, some code changes may be needed for your program to function. It’s important to think about how inconvenient it would be to change code and possibly even learn a new kind of code in order to work in the cloud.

So, the question is, how do you go about migrating to the cloud with the least amount of downtime? The answer is Lift and Shift.

Choosing a cloud platform with a Lift and Shift mentality means you will benefit from little to no code changes or needing to learn any new code for your program.

These types of platforms are built with your business in mind, so switching from your on-premise servers to a cloud platform leaves you with no headache and keeps your business running.

Study Level of Security Needed For Users

Another tip when looking into cloud migration is to think about how much security you will need for your program. This also includes in-house programs.

The financial management company, Code Willing, has clients who work in the quantitative investment sector. Their clients deal with massive amounts of data and billions of dollars a day. So for their clients, the level of security within their company is of the utmost importance. 

By utilizing Code Willing’s cloud-based platform and resource manager, they can ensure security through monitoring and permissions run on a segregated metadata server, FSDB.

Their security setup includes data hiding, date-range restrictions, and a client-trust model.

This level of security puts the power in the hands of admins. They get to determine who sees what and at what level. The additional security benefit to their platform is that users can only see what is made accessible to them. This means any files or information they are not privy to will effectively not exist while in the program.

Data-breeches are becoming more commonplace, and it’s not always someone from the outside getting in where they should not. Depending on the sensitive nature of your business and data, it’s crucial to know what level of security you need.

Conclusion

Once you decide to move your business to the cloud, there will be multiple options. The key is, review what each one offers and how it will benefit your business financially, productively, and securely.

With these few things to consider, you can now feel more confident in deciding which cloud platform is best for your business.

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Apache Airflow Integral Part of the CASFS+ Cloud Workspace

When building and creating CASFS+, Code Willing wanted to provide as much as possible to their clients without clients needing to download other extensions or add-ons. One thing that has come out of this standard is the use of Apache Airflow, one of the most popular open-source tools for building robust ETL pipelines.

When working in the CASFS+ Cloud Workspace, clients immediately have access to Apache Airflow. No configuring or downloading is needed. By utilizing Airflow with CASFS+, users can easily launch multiple nodes in their network, each with their own pre-configured and isolated Airflow instance.

Following their completion of building CASFS+, Code Willing utilized their own program to solve problems with their own clients. To better understand how Code Willing is specifically leveraging Airflow in CASFS+, here are three different situations in which they leverage Airflow and CASFS+ to deliver data ETL solutions to their clients:

Data Processing

The data processing “Directed Acyclic Graphs” (DAGs) in the Code Willing CASFS+ environment are the core of their Airflow ETL pipelines. These DAGs are responsible for extracting, transforming and loading (ETL) raw client data into a processed, usable dataset.

Airflow assists in this process by monitoring the CASFS+ file system in real-time for the arrival of dependent files, and launches these tasks as soon as the files arrive. This ensures that Code Willing’s clients will always receive their time-sensitive production data as soon as possible.

Data Quality

Second, several data quality check DAGs are implemented to test the quality of the data from the Data Processing stage. These data quality checks aim to do several things, from checking the format of the ETL data from the Data Processing stage to ensuring that files in the ETL stage are arriving on time. In addition, Airflow has been configured to send both emails and Slack messages to their support team in the event that an alert, such as a failed data quality check or a late file, is raised.

System Health Check Alerts

Finally, Code Willing has also considered the possibility that the entire Airflow service could fail. If this happens, the data quality DAGs discussed above become obsolete, as the service can no longer run them to ensure data is arriving as expected. In response to this situation, Code Willing also utilizes Airflow’s external health checks by regularly monitoring the API endpoints for errors. Similarly to the data quality checks above, in the event that the Airflow service is deemed to be “down,” the Code Willing team will receive Slack and email notifications about the issue. 

Conclusion

Code Willing’s goal is to have a high level of expertise on most popular data engineering and analysis tools. Building this expertise allows Code Willing to effectively support clients when they are using well known third-party tools and infrastructure in CASFS+. In addition, leveraging these open-source tools allows Code Willing to be both flexible and effective in meeting its client’s needs. In particular, Apache Airflow has been instrumental in Code Willing’s ability to manage time-sensitive data ETL pipelines for its clients, so much so that it is now part of the CASFS+ Cloud Workspace suite of tools by default. 

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Data Processing Study Reveals Quick, Economical Way to Process Big Data

Following their study of several Python DataFrame libraries, the Financial Tech company, Code Willing, determined the fastest and most cost-efficient libraries while using CASFS on AWS for big data processing were Ray and PySpark.

CASFS is the brainchild of Code Willing. Faced with time and cost constraints when processing enormous amounts of data, their data scientists needed something no one else had for their large-scale data analysis process. So, they built it, and CASFS was born.

In the study, the libraries used were Pandas, Polars, Dask, Ray, and PySpark.

The study included data processing with these five different libraries processing three separate dataset sizes:

  • 1 file – 2,524,365 rows x 20 columns
  • 10 files – 23,746,635 rows x 20 columns
  • 100 files – 241,313,625 rows x 20 columns

They processed the data on a r5.24xlarge machine with 96 cores and 768 GB of RAM. For the code processed on a cluster, they used 10 r5.2xlarge machines with a total of 80 cores and 640 GB of RAM.

Through these individual tests, they were able to discern that Ray and PySpark were the most useful to them in terms of performance and memory efficiency when used for big data processing.

While Ray and PySpark proved best for large amounts of data processing, Code Willing’s study also determined where the remaining libraries worked best in the data analysis process.

To see the more in-depth findings of the study, you can head over to their website and review the full report here

Link to Dalton’s whitepaper: https://www.codewilling.com/whitepapers/dataframe.html

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CASFS+: A New Kind of Cloud-Based File System

In a data-driven world, the amount of data an individual organization has to work with has grown in spades in recent years. To satisfy the rising demand, new platforms that ease your burden of handling the data storage needs have also grown in numbers.

The most prominent of them are cloud-based solutions. Cloud-based file systems are becoming increasingly popular among data scientists as well as other entities that have to deal with large-scale file storages.

Organizations are coming to terms with the difficulties of handling a large-scale file system without a significant amount of technical resources and seeking the help of cloud-based solutions that simplify the complex process of migrating to the cloud and managing a cloud-based file system.

CASFS+, as a platform born to solve this problem, has been able to take a step ahead and developed a solution. From its “Lift and Shift” concept, to providing an impeccably secure cloud storage, CASFS+ offers a number of crucial and easy-to-use features to its users.

In this post, we will highlight the benefit and easibility of CASFS+ in several critical aspects related to a cloud-based file system.

Lift and Shift

The specialty of CASFS+ is the “Lift and Shift” approach it facilitates for file system migration.

 CASFS+ provides the luxury of migrating your on-premises data to the cloud without any additional training on too technical aspects of the process. The migration process with CASFS+ is seamless, easy to execute, and requires no changes to the codebase on your behalf. It completely removes the hassle of having to know a system’s code for a successful migration that is common with other cloud-based storage systems.

After the completion of a painless migration, you will be able to run the same applications you were running on-premises with no additional downtime.

Though some other cloud-based file systems support Lift and Shift in principle, they require additional changes to the codebase and system architecture overtime to get the full benefit of the features they provide. Migration to these platforms involves a steep learning curve in terms of system configuration and a lot of time and technical knowledge for successful completion.

Deduplication

Deduplication is the concept of preventing the storage of redundant content in the file system. It saves the client from having to pay for storage space unnecessarily used by redundant content and helps increase the performance of the system.

CASFS+ is a content-addressable file system that uses a hashing system to prevent duplication in its file system. If two files in the storage have the same content, hashing helps CASFS+ to use only a single object to refer to each of them.

Security

CASFS+ provides an easy to use set of security configurations that essentially sets it apart as one of the most secure cloud storage available today.

It supports the creation of standard POSIX ACLs. On top of that, CASFS+ introduces the concept of data hiding.

With data hiding, a user who doesn’t have read access to a file or directory won’t see the file/directory listed at the directory level. It preserves the confidentiality of data better than simple read-access prevention. Most importantly, it prevents a malicious user from gaining insight into high-profile data stored in the system.

Another novel security measure CASFS+ introduces is the date range restriction. You can define a date range within which other users can access a file. The permitted date range is recognized using the file name. With a file name in the format, YYYYMMDD, and date restricted_attribute set to 1, access permissions to a file could be limited to a certain year, month, or date.

Additionally, CASFS+ uses a client-trust model to prevent rogue users from gaining access to stored files. An untrusted single-user client is not provisioned access beyond what is defined in user credentials. Meanwhile, a trusted multi-user client can use their credentials for access control checks to gain access to other parts of the file system.

Along with simple encryption, another feature data hiding provides is additional protection to the stored files to preserve their confidentiality. It makes CASFS+ the perfect fit for a file system concerned about the security of stored data.

Another security feature provided by CASFS+ is that it logs user actions and exposes them as audits so that the client can inspect them to discover if there are any unusual user behavior or issues.

Budgeting

CASFS+ introduces new budgeting features to manage your file system so that your organization can limit your teams and users from overusing cloud servers and ending up with a huge AWS bill. With new budgeting features, you can configure the allowed budget for individual users and teams. In the case of a team, the system admin allocates the budget to the team leader and the team leader is responsible for distributing the budget among the team members.

If your business is concerned about user spending spiraling out of your spending power, CASFS+’s cost management solution will be an ideal fit for you.

Caching

Caching is a performance-enhancing feature adopted by many modern file system solutions. CASFS+ uses a configurable amount of space in the local storage to cache frequently used data.

It uses a caching algorithm to determine which items are stored in the cache and which are removed from it. The use of cache allows CASFS+ to mimic local-disk performance on a cloud-based storage.

The hashing system allows the caches to be stored locally or distributed among multiple devices. The use of hash keys ensures that the cached version stored in any distributed device is the most recent copy of the file.

Auto-scaling

CASFS+ is capable of dealing with billions of files and petabytes of data without compromising on the aggregate bandwidth supported by object data stores like S3.

When auto-scaling the file system servers, it uses the Node Balancer to dynamically increase the number of servers according to the number of jobs and the memory and CPU requirements for each job. The Node Balancer also handles the termination of created servers once the jobs are over.

Using the budgeting feature of CASFS+, the system admin can limit the number of servers each user can dynamically create for their jobs.

CASFS+ also monitors the performance of servers and alerts users of any server issues using email alerts. For system admins, it provides more functionality to clean up issues, manage job queues, etc.

Conclusion

Though there is a number of cloud-based file system solutions in today’s market, CASFS+ provides a unique set of features and functionality that are not provided by the others. At the same time, it manages to deliver the necessary requirements for such a file system including better performance, security, and scalability.

CASFS+ solution of the “Lift and Shift” approach stands out among the rest considering some of the existing solutions are too technically-heavy for an organization to handle on their own without expert advice and training. The added features including data hiding and date range restrictions introduce a new level of security to the platform.

CASFS+ has a set of functions ranging from performance, security, cost management, reliability, to ease of use, and provides the best and complete user experience to the users.

If your organization is planning to take your on-premises storage to the cloud, CASFS+ provides the an incredibly inclusive solution in the modern market. It caters to the needs of every entity, including data scientists to private businesses and government organizations, with a feature set covering numerous requirements for a cloud-based file system. 

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The Pandemic and The Cloud

How the Pandemic Intensified Demand for Cloud Computing

The cloud becoming the dominant solution to our data storage needs was a destination we were heading towards before the Covid-19 breakout. But the ensued pandemic has fast-tracked that evolution in a way we didn’t dare to predict pre-2020. From organizations being forced to work from home to lockdown procedures that limited movement, the post-pandemic world has grasped the real risk of on-premise data solutions—and unconsolidated data solutions—with first-hand experience.

It wasn’t a coincidence investments in data center infrastructure showed 19% returns in the first half of 2020, a period in which returns of most industrial sectors plummeted. People in the industry have now understood the potential and necessity of cloud computing for a future of secure, accessible and available data storage.

In this post, we are going to explore how the pandemic has affected the industry of cloud computing and what it would mean for you as an institution looking to migrate to a cloud workspace of your own.

Embracing the Cloud Amid the Pandemic

Most industries, whether it was IT, healthcare, education or government, had to adapt to remote work and work from home environments in a matter of days given how suddenly the pandemic became widespread. Most of them turned to cloud computing to find the fastest possible solutions to virtually continue their operations.

It’s not a stretch to say that cloud computing became the thread our economy has been hanging by since the start of the pandemic. With its ability to provide fast solutions and relative ease of migration, cloud computing kept businesses and their operations afloat and allowed employees to safely work from home.

A survey conducted by Flexera during the first quarter of 2020 discovered 93% of enterprises have integrated multi-cloud storage and 87% integrated hybrid cloud strategy. Also, 59% of enterprises expected an increase in their cloud-related spendings compared to the previous year.

According to the Synergy Research Group, pandemic-induced cloud computing transformation has taken the revenue of the cloud infrastructure market to $129 billion from the previous year’s $97 billion. 

Data from the Synergy Research Group also show that enterprises spent over $37 billion on cloud infrastructure in Q4 2020, a 35% increase from the expenses in Q4 2019.

When we look at these numbers, it’s safe to say the pandemic has resulted in a cloud computing revolution around the world. Even now, when the vaccine rollout has begun the process of containing the virus, companies are pushing towards finding secure cloud storage and secure cloud workspace solutions with the lessons learned from this unanticipated and devastating situation.

With the emergence of new technologies like 5G and AI, cloud computing still has room to grow and more value to offer to its customers. Hosting your organization’s data, file systems, applications and software, and workflow in the cloud is an investment for the future of your company. With the fast spread of Covid-19, we have seen how quickly the means of the economic world can change and the challenges it could pose.

Challenges of Increased Demand in Cloud Computing

While we have seen many organizations embrace cloud computing during the pandemic, the increased demand and need for fast solutions paved the way for several challenges in the industry too.

The biggest concern organizations migrating to the cloud had to address was ensuring the security of data hosted in the cloud.

Even though major cloud service providers have secure cloud storage options, their advanced configuration processes could result in loopholes in the system. Because the pandemic prompted fast migration responses from organizations, it’s possible their security could have been compromised when setting up the system.

As people began working from home, securely accessing cloud workspaces required special security procedures, like VPNs. Setting up VPNs for employees scattered around a region also under lockdown proved to be a challenge to organizations migrating to the cloud.

Increased network demand, caused by increased cloud demand, put an extra strain on the cloud service providers when trying to maintain undisrupted services. We saw the impact of increased demand when a popular streaming service reduced its picture quality to keep the services available to everyone. In an attempt to find solutions to this problem, 2020 brought a boom in data center constructions across the US with the aim of providing sufficient infrastructure to the growing demand.

While cloud-based solutions have provided ease of maintenance and expansion, access to better resources and increased accessibility to organizations, some have also added a considerable increase in spending to their operational bills.

According to the survey conducted by Flexera, businesses reported their cloud-related spendings exceeded the budgeted amount by an average of 23%. And 47% expected their cloud spendings to increase in the next 12 months. As this data suggests, we can understand that the high costs of cloud workspaces are one of the factors hindering the growth of businesses, especially small businesses. Cloud computing service providers are aware of this hindrance and some have found solutions.

The cloud services industry is now evolving fast as it looks for strategies and solutions to face all of these challenges. New cloud service platforms are entering the market with solutions that add improvements to these areas, some platforms more effective than others. The pandemic-driven digital transformation in the industry is a sure sign that whatever shortcomings still prevailing in cloud computing are going to be resolved sooner than we expected.

Migrating to the Cloud During a Pandemic

With the uncertainty of the pandemic keeping the business environment off-kilter and the rapid growth of the cloud services industry at the moment, right now is the best time for your business to move away from on-premise storage facilities and embrace the ease provided by a cloud workspace.

Setting up a secure cloud storage with minimal time delay, lowest downtime and low cost is not an easy feat. But there is a solution to that too. 

The Lift and Shift solution of cloud migration with CASFS+ provides a transition that fulfills all of these needs. You will also be able to access the same on-premise applications you used prior to your shift to the cloud. The best thing about cloud migration with CASFS+ is that their lift and shift approach saves you from having to make platform-specific adjustments to applications.

Summary

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the field of cloud computing to the point we are seeing a massive cloud revolution in the world today. Organizations are moving to secure cloud storage after realizing the reliability of on-premise storage solutions can change on a dime.
As we discussed in this article, the pandemic has significantly changed the outlook of the industry and created promising prospects for its improvement. There isn’t a better time for businesses to take the leap to the cloud than right now. And with secure cloud computing services, like CASFS+, able to achieve a smooth transition and allowing clients to start enjoying the benefits of the cloud right away, it really couldn’t be any easier.