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Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer software, and there are thousands of examples of cloud computing implementation. Almost any application can be turned into a cloud application by putting it on a server and making it accessible to the world.
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By taking advantage of the unique features of cloud computing such as the huge amounts of computational power available, some businesses have developer top-tier applications.
In this article, we will look at 11 examples of the best implementations in recent years, some of the problems they intended to solve and how cloud computing enabled them to do this.
1) Dropbox: File Storage
Data storage is the classic example of how cloud computing has made it into the everyday life of people. The clear leader of this implementation is Dropbox, which offers up to 1 terabyte of storage per account.
To understand the scale of this, it’s equivalent to 4 Windows or MacBook laptops.
While hosting other people’s data on a server sounds trivial, Dropbox is able to serve millions of users concurrently as they access the platform from dozens of different types of devices. To respond to these web requests at an almost instant speed is truly a sign of a top-tier example of cloud computing.
2) Netflix: Online Streaming
The online streaming market is worth over $50 billion annually and is expected to continue growing in years to come. Big players in this market, such as Netflix, have several challenges to overcome.
If users can watch movies and series offline, why would they put up with buffering videos from an online service? Cloud computing gives companies like Netflix the ability to offer the same quality as standard TV.
Several technological advancements have come out of this sector in recent years to deal with scalability in cloud computing, as it is pivotal
Scalability and efficient usage of bandwidth are pivotal for the success of the service, as they need to deal with fluctuations in usage to maintain their streaming quality.
3) Trello: Productivity Management
One of the core advantages of the cloud is that it is accessible anywhere. Data can also be shared with anyone, providing the specific platform allows it.
Trello is a productivity management tool that hinges on these two benefits. It is a Kanban-style list-making tool that teams can use to share tasks and update each other on their progress, and has over 50 million users worldwide.
As many people now work from home, they need to be able to share their work progress and Trello’s easy-to-use interface makes it easy for anyone to pick up.
4) Siri: Digital Assistant
Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant are all examples of cloud computing chatbots. By combining state-of-the-art machine learning techniques with advanced cloud computing, they intelligently interact with users.
Natural language understanding and generation are two technically difficult tasks. Computers do not communicate in the same way that we do, and the ambiguities of language can be hard for logical machines to understand.
With the large volume of computing power available, Siri can perform millions of mathematical calculations to understand your speech.
But as developers look to improve Siri they need more access to computational power, and this is only possible through cloud computing.
5) Salesforce: Customer Relationship Management
Salesforce’s primary service is in customer relationship management, using data analysis to administer interactions with customers. It also provides enterprise applications for customer service, marketing automation, and analytics.
The success of this platform is partly due to its audience.
While many cloud computing platforms are targeted at individuals, Salesforce prides itself on being used by many of the top enterprises in the world. These enterprises have a lot of customer relations, so make frequent use of the platform.
They partner with companies such as Saggezza to integrate the CRM offerings directly into businesses, giving them a product that they soon rely on.
6) Hadoop: Big Data Analysis
“Data is the new oil” is a popular claim in recent years. The more data that a company has, the better it can understand the past and predict the future of the business and income.
Hadoop is one of several big data platforms that can be used over the cloud for the handling of data. There are two big issues that Hadoop solves: how all of this data is stored, and how it is handled.
Hadoop combines networks of computers, the cloud, to split up the computation of big data tasks and solve them far quicker than could be done with a single computer.
For analysts and developers, the question is how they can divide the tasks to best utilize cloud computing.
7) Microsoft 365: Office Applications
If you were to step into an office 20 years ago, you would see machines with Microsoft products installed on them. Nowadays, Microsoft has been able to take advantage of cloud computing to improve their products.
Firstly, if you use Microsoft 365 you can access your office documents from anywhere in the world, acting as fuel for the modern remote-working world.
Secondly, Microsoft is able to update their products without users noticing. By using cloud computing Microsoft has constant access to the software code and can fix bugs in record time. This gives Microsoft 365 the reputation of being robust and reliable.
8) Slack: Internal Team Messaging
Slack is an American company that offers IRC-style chat rooms for businesses. When a business uses Slack, its employees can create different channels for their teams, working groups, and interests.
These persistent chat rooms have multiple features to enhance collaboration.
Slack was acquired by Salesforce in 2021 for over $27 billion and it is now the most popular cloud computing app for intra-business text communication.
9) Amazon SageMaker: Machine Learning
Alongside data, machine learning is invaluable to business. Machine learning models are used in products such as facial recognition, stock market trend predictions, and self-driving cars.
When performing machine learning you need to run lengthy programs that can take hours or days to complete. Amazon SageMaker is described as the most comprehensive machine learning service on the cloud. Its services allow data scientists to prepare, build, train, and deploy machine learning products.
With a quarter of businesses having already adopted machine learning, Amazon has managed to position itself at the front of a growing market with an extensive machine learning toolset.
10) GitHub: Software Development Versioning
GitHub is a cloud software platform for development management and the largest host of source code, with over 40 million users around the world.
Before the cloud developers would write code on their own machines, and then they’d have to share the code manually to other team members, making merging the code together a difficult task.
Through cloud computing implementation software teams are able to effortlessly collaborate on projects.
11) Citrix: Desktop-as-a-Service
While everyday more and more data is moved into the cloud, Citrix is a company going one step further. This company can move your desktop into the cloud through something known as “desktop-as-a-service”.
By making users access their own desktop in the cloud, businesses may soon not need any hardware. This would be the final step to a complete cloud revolution, employees would be able to work completely from their own devices from anywhere.
If any of these stories were inspiring to read, you might be surprised to hear that creating highly-innovative cloud computing implementations isn’t nearly as hard as it used to be.
With Microsoft Azure, you can get started straight away and make the best of your current and future operations efforts. Click on the image below to learn more about it!
Originally published May 7 2021
