Cloud Adoption is increasing across the industries and it will continue to do so for many years. The public cloud market size is growing at a CAGR of 17% to hit around $1 Trillion by 2027.

While there are no questions in terms of benefits offered by moving to cloud many Enterprises are facing significant challenges while migrating to cloud and realizing those benefits. 43% of cloud migrations projects are running into delays due to complexities, many are not able to get the cost advantage which were promised, and also challenges in integration across on premise and legacy many applications and issues with interoperability across cloud vendors.

Challenges in Cloud Migration/Adoption :

• The technology options are plenty while migrating to cloud and it is also keep changing at a faster pace.
• There are significant delays in adoption of PAAS and cloud native architecture which need huge investment to rewrite the applications.
• Challenges in integration with legacy infrastructure and applications.
• Enterprise need a strong engineering and operations team to leverage the scalability and benefits offered through cloud.

While migrating applications to cloud there are broadly 3 options, IAAS for lift and shit, PAAS for leveraging cloud native services to redesign and refactor, and SAAS for replacement. The most commonly used cloud services are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), with 69% of organizations using it, followed by Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) at 57%, and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) at 45%. (Source: Flexera State of the Cloud Report 2021)

Which means more organizations opt for ready to use applications which can address their business needs and do not want to reinvent the wheel by building their own applications for standard functionalities in cloud native technologies. Currently the SAAS applications are primarily addressing generic functionalities like CRM, Customer Service etc., which are common across industries.

Here comes the Industry cloud, which address these challenges and help accelerate cloud adoption. As per Gartner industry cloud is one of the top strategic technology trends and by 2027 more than 50% of enterprises will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business value .

Industry cloud is a set of composite applications which are tailor made for a specific industry. They are designed as cloud native to take complete advantage of the cloud in terms of scalability, availability and performance. Industry cloud will significantly accelerate the digital transformation, modernization and cloud adoption of enterprises.

Why Industry Cloud Makes Sense :

• Option to Plug and Play industry specific applications based on the enterprise need.
• Consistent user experience across many applications designed specifically for the industry.
• Faster time to value
• Reimagining business processes and drive innovation while entering new business and markets
• Seamless integration with enterprise systems and prebuilt integration with partner ecosystem
• Security and regulatory compliance for the industry
• Data consolidation across many applications which helps in data driven insights
• Faster adoption of newer technologies like Generative AI, 5G, AR/VR.

Everyone is looking to have a pie on the Industry cloud

• Hyperscalers – AWS, Azure and GCP have already articulated their industry cloud strategies
• Traditional ERP companies are already offering Industry cloud functionalities.
• SAAS Platforms companies are expanding their horizontal offerings to focus on industry verticals.
• System integrators like Infosys who has deep domain knowledge and client context

Industry cloud offers whole new possibilities for different players in the market and offers plenty of choices for enterprises and it is a good problem to have.

So we are in early stages of the industry cloud phenomenon and exciting times ahead .