Enterprises are using more cloud applications than they anticipated

A study published by the company Blue Coat Systems has stunned CIOs, experts and market observers. According to the Shadow Data Threat Report , whose edition refers to the first half of 2016, companies are using 20 times more cloud applications than expected. At the time they were interviewed, participating companies were using an average of 841 enterprise applications.

These numbers are quite expressive, and reflect the realization of trends made by consultancies some time ago, that both the cloud and cloud applications would be increasingly used by companies. Indeed, this is happening, and at an unexpected speed. In today's post, we will discuss more about this report and the challenges that using more applications imposes. Follow:

But after all, why are companies using more applications?

In recent years, countless newspapers and specialized consultancies have disseminated the idea that cloud computing is extremely beneficial throughout the internal world. And with more and more companies putting aside obsolete systems and adopting cloud-based corporate applications – and proving the results of its use, IT leaders decided to test this technology and implement it for good in their environment.

As a result, they have streamlined their operations, achieved productivity gains and managed to reduce many costs. And as time passed, and companies got more results with the use of cloud computing, managers began to double, triple and quadruple the number of corporate applications implemented in their infrastructure.

And this rapid migration to the cloud contributed to the formation of the numbers shown in the Blue Coat report, and also to the realization of the trends shown by the specialists over the last few years. The IDC consulting firm predicts that, by 2018, 27.8% of the global market for corporate applications will be based on the SaaS model ( Software as a Service or, in Portuguese, Software as a Service).

In its studies, IDC also says that the number of applications in the cloud is surpassing that of local systems. The forecast is that the demand for SaaS software exceeds by up to five times that of local software , and the latter will continue to be used by factories. As for the types of applications, resource management and customer relationship will continue to be the most implemented.

The challenges that using more applications imposes

In addition to pointing to the fact that cloud applications are being widely used, the study also addressed the issue of security. The migration to the cloud originated a series of security challenges, which must be overcome by companies if they want to be successful with this technology. One way they do this is by relying on the support of vendors that provide cutting-edge security solutions, such as AWS.

Amazon Web Services has an infrastructure capable of ensuring the protection of all a company's applications, regardless of how many they have. And with the shared responsibility model, both the provider and the business are committed to adopting good security practices to protect applications and ensure their success in the cloud.

And your company, how many cloud applications do you already use? How are you ensuring the security of them and their data? Share your experiences with us in the comments!