Top 5 Industrial Applications in the Cloud and the Trends for 2019 - Innovation Opportunity for Economy 

In September 2018 Forbes published its Cloud 100 list. The business magazine ranked the top 100 global players with the most innovative and influential business areas in the cloud business. The list provides a representative overview of the most relevant application segments in the service sector of Cloud Computing 2018.

For 2019, a technical turnaround is on the horizon. It could offer a strong potential for the German economy to seize the desired innovation role in the future. 

A look at the past year shows that the top 5 companies on the Forbes list are all from California. Their business models focus on automation and services in the financial, communications, security and organizational management segments. Strike took 1st place. It offers infrastructure for cloud-based payment systems for millions of users. Slack on place 2 is provider of a communication platform for teamworking. Zoom Video Communications enables cross-company video conferences and Cybersecurity Company Tanium offers easy-to-understand security solutions. Procore Technologies came 5th with its software for project planning in the construction industry.

Current focus in German companies: Automation of business processes 

95 % of all companies in the Forbes ranking are based in the USA. None comes from Germany. Why this is the case can be seen from the Bitkom position paper 2018 for a digital Germany. In Germany, 69% of all companies rely on the digitization of their business processes. With this conservative approach, they are primarily pursuing an increase in cost efficiency and productivity.

Only 14% of local companies are working on digitizing their business models in order to gain new market share through the development of digital products and services. According to the position paper, the international pioneering role as an industrial nation can only be secured if, in addition to core competencies, new key technologies for the digitization of value-added processes are developed. The coming trends in Cloud Computing 2019 offer interesting approaches for this. If they are adopted at an early stage, the German economy could be given an independent innovation profile.

Multi-cloud, hybrid cloud and hybrid edge computing are on the rise 

The Cloud Monitor 2018 from KPMG/Bitkom shows that 66% of all German companies now rely on cloud solutions. 51% use private cloud computing and 31% public cloud computing. The second variant has been recording an increase for years. Originally, the main reasons were scalability of IT services and mobile access to IT resources. A third factor is increasingly attracting attention: the possibility of data analysis using the public cloud. Here, attention could be increased even further. According to data from DSP Selfcampaign, data management and data analysis in 2018 were only relevant to 0.9% of decision-makers. 

For 2019, there are also signs of the entrepreneurial will to reduce dependence on the cloud provider giants. For this reason, the focus will be more on the hybrid cloud on the one hand and the multi-cloud will play a greater role on the other. 

Another new paradigm for 2019 is hybrid edge computing. This third type of cloud infrastructure will collect the data from a G5 network at the edge of the cloud server provider network and thus provide intelligent applications with the relevant support. By bringing processes closer to the point of generation, Artificial Intelligence, Storage, Sensors and Compute are integrated into Edge Devices. This extension to today's private hybrid cloud infrastructure reduces latency by keeping network traffic local. However, only 0.4% of all decision-makers in Germany have dealt with the topic of edge computing in 2018, as the data from DSP Selfcampaign show. Here the focus could be further strengthened.

RPA, AI and Blockchain 

In the implementation of automation processes, the decisive breakthrough in the use of software robots will be achieved in 2019. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) enables the integration of all data – both from old legacy systems and new systems. By automating repetitive data, RPA is particularly suitable for standardized production processes. RPA can be implemented very quickly and, above all, cost-effectively throughout the entire company via an integrated, central platform. This increases employee productivity and processes can be streamlined. 

Analytics at scale as a result of the increased use of Artificial Intelligence in operations is also expected for 2019. For the mature use of AI and Machine Learning, however, relevant prerequisites have yet to be created, especially in governance and data control, in order to guarantee the necessary data integrity. 

In addition, the decentralized management approach of the blockchain will play a greater role. The decentralized cloud storage platform has hardly been established in German companies to date. Nevertheless, according to Bitkom, 63% of all startups and 53% of established companies in Germany estimate that the blockchain will be of great importance for competitiveness – especially since many revolutionary application possibilities are announced through it, even if they are still hardly suitable for everyday use.

Stronger willingness to innovate of great importance for German economy 

Overall, German companies have various options to take on a stronger innovative role in cloud computing. The digitalization of business processes is creating new opportunities through multi-cloud and hybrid edge computing. RPA in particular could make value-added processes much more efficient. Here it is worthwhile to realign the focus. However, it would also be desirable to have a stronger willingness to adopt digital business models in cloud computing. Using early development opportunities in the use of AI, RPA, robotics and machine learning could pay off in the future.