The cloud has become one of the most disruptive technologies of the digital age. By allowing companies to access processing power on demand, cloud providers have democratized computing power for organizations of all sizes.

The dominant cloud services — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — provide a wide-ranging array of capabilities covering basic storage to cutting-edge analytics.

A major benefits of cloud computing is scalability. Legacy computing systems involved substantial hardware costs. In the cloud era, teams can scale from zero and scale up when required.

Data protection continues to be a top concern for organizations evaluating the cloud. While early concerns assumed the cloud was riskier than on-premises systems, today's cloud providers spend significantly in security controls.

The future of cloud computing appears incredibly promising. New developments such as edge computing are pushing intelligence right to the data source. As bandwidth improves globally, cloud computing will be further essential to business operations.