This article shares a perspective on application transformation and service convergence trends observed in the small business space.
What is Multi-Cloud
![What is Multi-Cloud?](https://www.rabbit.run/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/SM-2-SNIPPET.jpg)
The SMB is Transforming to As-a-Service Cloud Applications
Unlike Enterprise customers, the smaller businesses often have limited budgets with less room for capital expenditures to support their own Cloud application builds. Fortunately, the “as-a-Service” and Cloud Native application models leverage cloud in a way that commoditize these large capital expenses and puts them in reach for Small Businesses. These cloud applications are sold as-a-service and can be purchased and consumed on monthly subscription plans which makes them viable even for smaller companies.
![SMB Apps Transformation to Cloud](https://www.rabbit.run/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/25.png)
SMB Convergence at the Branch
Another SMB trend is convergence at the branch level. As Cloud Applications are encompassing services like Voice, Point-of-Sale, Video Collaboration and Video Surveillance along with other mission critical systems beyond traditional SaaS, these applications begin to interact and converge. The convergence of applications with services often requires a single location to access multiple clouds from different providers, some SMB customers also require connections to the corporate network as another hybrid cloud.
![SMB Apps convergence at the branch](https://www.rabbit.run/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/26-1.png)
SMB Needs SD-WAN
For small businesses, SD-WAN can be a Catch-All Term for Advanced Connectivity and can start with just Quality-of-service (QOS) & managed network/router service. SD-WAN is also known for the ability to failover from one provider to another and the more advanced solutions do this without dropping live voice calls, video meetings, and point-of-sale transactions continue.
Until now, SD-WAN was typically used by larger organizations to bring multiple ISP connections from diverse carriers into a unified managed network offering. If branch offices were involved, then SD-WAN provides a means to tie them into the corporate network. In the past, most Small and Medium Business (SMB), with limited budgets and compact footprints, could not afford this new converged SD-WAN technology.
![QOS-and-Failover](https://www.rabbit.run/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/QOS-and-Failover.png)
Multi-Cloud & Multi-Path SD-WAN for SMB
The SD-WAN needs at the branch are evolving to include Seamless Multi-Cloud technology (Overlays) supporting SaaS applications as well as converged business voicee47e30, video, and surveillance services over internet protocols. Moving forward, the cost-effective unified transformation and convergence of all these systems is necessary to truly address the needs of the small business customer.
![Multi-Cloud_SD-WAN](https://www.rabbit.run/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/SM6-Multi-Cloud_SD-WAN.png)