The Cloud or Cloud Computing is an umbrella term for technologies hosted over the internet.
It has a wide range of services and applications that help to grow businesses. Over 98% of businesses use the cloud for its services and cloud infrastructure spend is estimated to increase by 23% during 2023.[1] This is because more businesses are incorporating more cloud-based services to help to grow their businesses.
What Cloud Computing services are there for businesses?
The three main categories of Cloud Computing services are: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
SaaS for businesses can be broken down into:
- Sales management e.g., Salesforce.
- Customer relationship management
- Financial management
- Human resource management
- Billing
- Collaboration
For these software services to be effective the software engineers who develop the software resources need to have software engineering skills at every stage of the software development lifecycle.
Cloud software development
In any software development lifecycle, launching and maintaining the final product (deployment) is the last stage. In cloud software development, there are four different deployment models for cloud software development.
These are:
- Public cloud – cloud resources that the public can access, and multiple users can use the software at the same time.
- Community cloud – cloud resources targeted to a limited set of businesses or employees, such as banks.
- Private cloud – cloud resources are not available to the public. They are designed to address the specific needs of the company they’re exclusive to.
- Hybrid cloud – cloud resources are run using a combination of computing, storage, and services in different environments. These environments are a combination of public and private clouds.
Each model suits different business, employee and client needs. To successfully deploy products under each model, software engineering skills are required at every stage of the software development lifecycle.
Scaling software engineering skills
Businesses that provide services for the Cloud, such as, software development companies, require software engineering skills to do this. By scaling software engineering skills, we can help supply software for every business, employee, and client. As well as address the digital skills gap.
We introduce and grow software engineering skills to support cloud computing, SaaS, and all associated businesses through our software engineering apprenticeships.
[1] AAG | Cloud computing in business statistics