Impact of COVID-19 on Cloud Computing

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically affected the lifestyles of people all across the world. It has changed how people work and interact with each other. The restrictions imposed upon societies and workplaces due to Covid-19 have led to several people being isolated within the confines of their homes. This would have resulted in a society where all forms of communication and all workplaces have ceased to exist but, thankfully we have a technology that allows us to connect, work, and access various remotely through the internet. This technology is Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services like servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, etc over the Internet to offer faster innovation and flexible resources. It is the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer. Let's explore how Cloud Computing has been affected by Covid-19.

Work From Home 

The pandemic caught the whole world by surprise leading the world into the deepest global recession in decades. This led to millions of people losing their jobs and for the ones who could keep it, it meant a complete shift in the dynamic of their work process as they had to work from home instead of the offices that were equipped with all the resources they needed to function properly.

This “new normal” meant that everyone had to adapt to the new environment and still meet ends. This came with a unique set of challenges, and that meant an individual needed to have a unique set of tools to tackle them. These included basic tools like personal computers, faster internet connections, a desk setup, etc., and also professional tools like video conferencing apps, cloud storage, security tools, project management tools, etc.

This article will focus on the tool that has seen the most significant amount of growth during the pandemic - video conferencing software.

Prior to the pandemic, video calling was an occasional activity mostly limited to friends and family and with the use of simple video calling apps like Google Duo, Snapchat, Skype, and Instagram, but with the emergence of the pandemic, the need for more robust software with support for more users with a primary focus on utility increased. This resulted in the surge in the usage of software like Zoom, Google Meet, Cisco WebX that are primarily based on the Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

The global Web & Video Conferencing SaaS market was estimated at US$3.641 billion in the year 2019 and is expected to witness a growth spike by 110.3% in the year 2020. This has also led to dozens of new software services to emerge with unique new features complementing the essential requirements of companies.

The increasing prominence of cloud-based video conferencing services has led to the implementation of better encryption and password protection solutions for cloud-based video conferencing systems across the world. The high demand for these services also resulted in the increased demand for cloud services, for example, Zoom uses a blend of Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Oracle Cloud services.

Entertainment

The integration of cloud computing with entertainment is not a brand new prospect. For years different digital platforms have used a myriad of cloud computing technologies to get into the emerging field of internet entertainment. However, the Covid-19 quarantine and the travel and gathering restrictions that accompanied it were the perfect opportunity for these platforms to burgeon.

Due to the theatres shutting down all over the globe to comply with Covid-19 safety regulations, the media streaming services experienced a rise in traction as people stuck at home flooded these websites as their primary source of entertainment. Websites like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Hotstar reported a record amount of users during the lockdown. These companies function due to cloud computing. For example, Netflix uses AWS for nearly all its computing and storage needs, including databases, analytics, recommendation engines, video transcoding, and more—hundreds of functions that in total use more than 100,000 server instances on AWS. It is a prime example of a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) application in the entertainment industry. Several of these streaming websites also used cloud computing to introduce an option by which you and your friends can watch the same movie, at the same time, from your respective homes with an inbuilt chat feature to simulate the experience of watching a movie with your friends.

One of the biggest challenges that emerged due to Covid is social distancing. In Covid stricken areas, people have to isolate themselves for weeks or even months. Social gatherings seemed like a relic of the past. Yet, thanks to Cloud Computing, we can stay connected to our friends from our homes thanks to social media applications. Social Media applications like Instagram use cloud computing in several of their app features.

For example, profiles and photos are saved and stored in a database through the cloud and photo editing options have been created and provided through photoshop. Instagram runs its infrastructure on Amazon Web Services, running instances on its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). 

The use of Cloud Computing is not new to the gaming industry as for several years games have been utilizing cloud computing to provide a variety of multiplayer features to their users. Thanks to cloud computing, ever since the dawn of online multiplayer with the original Xbox, gamers all around the world have been able to interact and play with each other regardless of the physical distance between them. However, during the Covid period, several people who never played games before started playing multiplayer games as a replacement for the activities that they would do with their friends.

Multiplayer games seem to have replaced physical activities performed with friends in order to follow social distancing. Another cloud-based gaming service that has gained popularity during the pandemic is the rise of remote server-based gaming where people stream games on the device of their choice and the actual computation of the game happening on a remote server. Google’s Stadia and Microsoft’s Xcloud are leading examples of this service. Microsoft’s Xcloud runs via Microsoft's 54 Azure cloud computing centers, hosted in 140 countries, and can stream gameplay on a variety of smart devices including smartphones.

Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Cloud Market 

Post the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses & organizations are facing significant pressure on revenue and cash flows, which is adversely impacting enterprise IT spend. However, there is a significant positive impact on the cloud market in the region. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, due to lockdowns, a majority of the employees are working remotely. Thus, there is an increase in the demand for private cloud networks to improve the internet connectivity and security of vital data. As many employees are transitioning to remote working, there is a sudden surge in demand for collaboration solutions. Additionally, the demand for online shopping and video streaming is gaining traction due to lockdown initiatives in all major economies all over the world. This is driving the spending on cloud, as retailers, broadcasters, and government gateways are scaling up their eCommerce and front-end platforms to deal with the increasing demand.

Enterprise software spending is expected to show weaker growth. IT consulting and professional services market will be impacted adversely due to travel restrictions and project delays. These trends would increase the demand for public cloud services, especially SaaS-based industry-specific applications, including collaboration and other productivity and business continuity tools. 

The social shift towards online platforms - VOD, social media platforms, and cloud gaming - would induce spend on cloud infrastructure and automation/management software.

The major cloud market vendors include AWS (US), Microsoft (US), Google (US), Alibaba (China), SAP (Germany), IBM (US), Oracle (US), VMware (US), Rackspace (US), Salesforce (US), Adobe (US), etc.

Cloud Computing Trends: Compliance, Edge, and Security

Meanwhile, the pandemic has exerted other pressures on the cloud market that may have been less predictable.

Compliance Challenges

One of these cloud computing trends involves compliance. According to Deloitte and Touche, many companies that have rushed to embrace the cloud during the pandemic have failed to adjust their accounting practices in ways that meet regulatory requirements. In this respect, the pandemic has exacerbated cloud compliance issues that already existed before the coronavirus threat emerged.

This trend is perhaps not all too surprising. Compliance tends to take some time to catch up with sudden changes of any type in the tech industry. A rapid expansion of cloud-based services in response to the pandemic was to be expected at a time when companies were more concerned with maintaining business continuity in the face of unprecedented challenges than they were with the nuances of regulatory compliance. What remains to be seen is how much effort companies will invest in catching up with compliance rules once they finish reconfiguring their cloud strategies in order to thrive in a post-COVID world.

Edge Computing Interest

Although hard data on edge computing adoption rates over the past few months is elusive, observers of the edge market predict that the pandemic will drive increased interest in edge solutions. In settings like factories and retail stores, edge devices can help monitor operations, and thereby reduce the need for on-site human personnel.

Along similar lines, AT&T’s CTO envisions a post-pandemic world where edge devices collect data such as whether employees in stores are wiping down surfaces, and whether customers are maintaining social distance.

These visions for edge computing adoption have not yet come to pass but on the other hand, the value of edge-based solutions like these seems clear enough, especially if the pandemic goes on long enough that we need to be able to collect data as minute as the status of countertops.

Cloud Security Risks

Security threats for cloud environments, too, are shifting as a result of the pandemic, and there seem to be two main reasons why. One is the fact that remote workers are easier for the bad guys to trick. When employees are using personal computers and their home networks to do their jobs, corporate firewalls, email scanners, and so on may not be able to protect them.

This makes it easier for attackers to phish, deploy malware and otherwise wreak havoc on unsuspecting users.

The second factor is that the increased reliance on cloud-based solutions adds to the overall complexity of IT environments. In turn, visibility becomes more challenging. This was always true, of course; it’s not as if the pandemic made cloud environments more complex. But what has changed is that more companies than ever are now using the cloud, and many have rushed to implement cloud-based solutions during the past few months without the foresight or consideration for security that would normally go into a new service deployment.

Negative impacts of Covid-19 on Cloud Computing

As an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the internet, email and texts, e-commerce, or video conferencing have taken on a new importance, as they are now critical to our personal, professional, and economic survival. Being able to stay connected and interact with one another from anywhere has become critical in today’s time.

But at the same time, the spread of COVID-19 has caused increased use of online resources which in turn has increased the volume of data generated from various sources. The increase in the data volume needs additional data storage systems, storage mechanisms, new environments, and novel technologies, all of which create a critical challenge. 

From a security perspective, the current situation might expose both CCE(Cloud Computing Environment) and its users to different types of attacks due to the lack of preparedness to face such a sudden situation. Users are exposed to attacks as they operate untrustworthy Internet applications on their own home devices, which might not be updated or patched with the latest security policies. Therefore, there might be a risk of becoming the target of attackers to easily steal important data.

Another challenge is the over-provisioning of resources. Over-provisioning can lead to the lack of availability of resources or we can call it a denial-of-service attack which can be a problem for those working from home. Because CCE provides a virtual infrastructure through virtual machines (VMs), different CCE VM users may have the same or different physical hosts at the CCE center. This makes CCE vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks. If one VM is infected and initiates a service denial attack on the physical host, then the other VMs on the same host will also be affected.

IT infrastructure services — i.e., IaaS, CaaS, PaaS — are also experiencing negative effects as many small-and-medium businesses are either temporarily or permanently shut down as they are unable to remain financially viable, dragging down cloud revenue.

Covid-19 has suddenly made us turn into a virtual world. The use of the Internet and applications is so much that there is a fear of it collapsing.

The work from home phenomenon has led to users using applications from home. These applications usually need a good Internet speed to work properly for audio, video quality, and transfer of data. This increase in demand for the Internet has created a challenge for Internet service providers.

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically affected the lifestyles of people all across the world. It has changed how people work and interact with each other. The restrictions imposed upon societies and workplaces due to Covid-19 have led to several people being isolated within the confines of their homes. This would have resulted in a society where all forms of communication and all workplaces have ceased to exist but, thankfully we have a technology that allows us to connect, work, and access various remotely through the internet. This technology is Cloud Computing.

In conclusion, the pandemic has put forward many new challenges as well as opportunities for companies and employees bringing a drastic change in their working style. With the existence of risks, we can confidently say that cloud computing, as an industry, has been more relevant than ever before, and with the emergence of 5G, it will continue growing exponentially.